Help: Increase Stamina (Personal Schedule)

Cheung said:
@Quentin11

How did you get on?

Found something interesting which is a bit unrelated. My friend in Mauritius plays a bit of badminton. Not competitive but she went and watched the Mauritian championships. It turns out she knows a lot of the competitive people in the badminton community. So one day, I might try to go out there for a visit. I have a stronger reason now!
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I've come a long way in badminton terms but not in stamina mainly due to work constraint. However, the improvement i've done in footwork is supporting the lack of stamina.

Stopped taking shuttle above my head and taking it properly which changed my smash completely. I was so excited by how much more powerful my smash was that I overexerted.

Then I went to check and got bad news on my health - the overexertion triggered something which was dormant ... I can still play and improve but I have to spend a lot of time strengthening my muscles to continue play and wear supportive clothes (groin area).

Oh okay. Well yeah we have a lot of good badminton players in Mauritius. Although our No. 1 will face Ginting on first round of WC2019 :(
 
I have a few questions.

Question 1

Let's take the case of two players:

- Player A: this player has good badminton training, good footwork, good technique, good stamina but lacking a bit in terms of physique.

Badminton sense = 8/10
Atheltic ability = 5/10

- Player B: this player has good racket skills, more or less okay footwork, has power in muscles especially in legs but does not get badminton training, lacks stamina and flexibility.

Badminton sense = 6/10
Athletic ability = 7/10

*Badminton sense means hitting technique, footwork, understanding of the game etc

*Athletic ability means power of muscles, flexibility, stamina etc

Which of these two players would prevail??

Question 2

As you guys know here, my problem was stamina as I would usually start a match with good everything until the rallies get longer then I make mistakes.

I've stopped any kind of badminton training as I had health problems etc. I have however started hitting the gym. Unlike before, I'm spending time in the gym having fun trying to increase my vertical jump. It is now about 3 weeks.

I got back to court on Saturday after a horse riding session and driving for 3 hours. To my surprise, I was able to hold longer and even kept rallying.

Yes I was out of breath but my muscles felt okay. They didn't feel heavy or showed sign of slowing down and the lunges were getting harder etc. I kept feeling light despite being out of breath.

When I had my stamina problems before I was slowing way down and it was getting harder to move. Now I feel way speedy and I still feel ok in long rallies. It's just my heart going a bit crazy. But I still get deceived pretty badly.

My question is, could it be that the vertical jump training I am doing is increasing my stamina as a by-product?


Question 3

I don't know if I mentioned this before but a few times now I found myself from ahead in points and just a few missing to win. But at the end I lose because I make mistakes. The opponent ending up admitting that I was good in the match but made too many mistakes. It usually happens at the end of the matches when I need to finish it.

I lead up to 17/19 and end up losing 21-19 21-18.

Is this a mental block or what?

@MSeeley @Cheung @llrr @visor
 
Quentin11 said:
I have a few questions.

Question 1

Let's take the case of two players:

- Player A: this player has good badminton training, good footwork, good technique, good stamina but lacking a bit in terms of physique.

Badminton sense = 8/10
Atheltic ability = 5/10

- Player B: this player has good racket skills, more or less okay footwork, has power in muscles especially in legs but does not get badminton training, lacks stamina and flexibility.

Badminton sense = 6/10
Athletic ability = 7/10

*Badminton sense means hitting technique, footwork, understanding of the game etc

*Athletic ability means power of muscles, flexibility, stamina etc

Which of these two players would prevail??

Question 2

As you guys know here, my problem was stamina as I would usually start a match with good everything until the rallies get longer then I make mistakes.

I've stopped any kind of badminton training as I had health problems etc. I have however started hitting the gym. Unlike before, I'm spending time in the gym having fun trying to increase my vertical jump. It is now about 3 weeks.

I got back to court on Saturday after a horse riding session and driving for 3 hours. To my surprise, I was able to hold longer and even kept rallying.

Yes I was out of breath but my muscles felt okay. They didn't feel heavy or showed sign of slowing down and the lunges were getting harder etc. I kept feeling light despite being out of breath.

When I had my stamina problems before I was slowing way down and it was getting harder to move. Now I feel way speedy and I still feel ok in long rallies. It's just my heart going a bit crazy. But I still get deceived pretty badly.

My question is, could it be that the vertical jump training I am doing is increasing my stamina as a by-product?


Question 3

I don't know if I mentioned this before but a few times now I found myself from ahead in points and just a few missing to win. But at the end I lose because I make mistakes. The opponent ending up admitting that I was good in the match but made too many mistakes. It usually happens at the end of the matches when I need to finish it.

I lead up to 17/19 and end up losing 21-19 21-18.

Is this a mental block or what?

@MSeeley @Cheung @llrr @visor
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Q1: there's no sense in this comparison coz there's no measure to determine what 1/10 means. Someone who's better in a technique and game sense will often lose to someone who's fitter, but vice versa also happens often.

Q2: I find that there are two parts to stamina, anaerobic which is how fast your muscles tire and produce lactic acid, and aerobic which is how fast you run out of breath. It sounds like your muscles are conditioned better but your heart can't keep up. More cardio like running will help, especially if you go for a moderate pace and try to run for as long as possible.

Q3: This is absolutely a mental block. Your mind is thinking "I'm at 19 surely I can get two more points now and win" and this is when you start to relax and lose concentration. A game is never over til it's over. Try to tell yourself it's 0-0 and play accordingly.
 
Quentin11 said:
When I had my stamina problems before I was slowing way down and it was getting harder to move. Now I feel way speedy and I still feel ok in long rallies. It's just my heart going a bit crazy. But I still get deceived pretty badly.

My question is, could it be that the vertical jump training I am doing is increasing my stamina as a by-product?
Click to expand...

I suppose there's two aspects to Stamina.. The heart, and the muscular endurance. Obviously that exercise can improve both.

I don't think it's a good idea to play when your heart is going mad.

It may be worth jogging for a while to get your heart rate up gently. Not to a crazy level though.

I don't know how you define mad, but e.g. probably not a good idea to play for a long while if your heart rate hits 180

Years ago, 2002, there was a tennis player, Malisse who once left the court due to 'racing heart' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/t...7/Doctor-arrives-to-end-Malisses-malaise.html and that's at Wimbledon and he still took that seriously enough to not play!
 
Quentin11 said:
The opponent ending up admitting that I was good in the match but made too many mistakes. It usually happens at the end of the matches when I need to finish it.
Is this a mental block or what?
Click to expand...
Exactly this is happening to me too and I believe, that this decrease in performance is mostly due to lacking stamina/endurance.

When it comes to stamina/endurance, then it is not as simple as to do more jogging. There are three major parts you need to consider:
1. the cardiovascular system
2. energy efficiency
3. energy metabolism

1. This is about your capacity to pump blood through your body, for sports, it is the primary goal to get oxygen into your body. I think, that this is the most general aspect of endurance and it will benefit from almost all endurance traning.

2. When it comes to energy efficiency, you need to consider, that strength and eventually energy efficiency is not a pure result of muscle mass. Your body has around 400 mucles responsible to move your bones, every muscle consist of several muscle fibers of different types. To move your body, your central nerve system needs to coordinate lot of muscles and their indivisual muslce fibers.
When you are not used to a certain movement, you body is very ineffective, using a lot of power, controlling wrong muscles, have trouble to time them etc., therefor only training these movement patterns will grant, that your central nerve system will move your muscles (each fiber) at the right time, with the right power in complete harmony (think of a conductor and an orchestra).

3. When it comes to metabolism, each muscle cell uses carbs and fat as external fuel (besides internal fuel like ATP, which I will ignore for now). In short, carbs are more used for fast/powerful/explosive actions, fat is more like a slow continous energy supply. Thought badminton is dominated by explosive movement (carbs), it has been shown, that more than half of your energy supply during a badmintion match is provided by fat.
Endurance training will increase the capacity to use fat as fuel in all muscles, which are used in a certain movement pattern.

So, getting up a good cardiovascular system might be a good idea, but maybe you already have a good one, when you do other sports. But more important is the optimization of your energy efficiency, and here you need to train movement patterns. Jump training will have a better benefit for your badminton movement than bench press, but you will make best progress if you do either badminton specific movement (shadow footwork) or movement which mimics certain parts (e.g. rope jumping). Jump training on the other hand will have a great impact in your capacity to do better and more jump smashs.

Personally I think that I have a relative good cardiovascular system, doing sport all my life (resting pusle <50, able to reduce oxygen deficit quite quickly when resting), but certain movement patterns I do not execute very often, do produce such a large oxygen deficit so quickly, that I'm unable to keep it up (I can't jog for a mile). When I started with badminton at the start of the year, I get exhausted very quickly. Just by training the movement patterns (lot of single games and some shadow footwork), and no other endurance training, I was able to greatly improve my stamina/endurance.
 
@llrr

With respect to the mental block, this is exactly how it plays in my head. The thing is as soon as I get a 5 points lead I start to relax a little bit. But even though I am relaxing, I can still maintain my lead until I get to the point where I starting thinking that I need to win. I tell myself I need to win it now and I just lose the game. It doesn't matter if I dominated the opponent, as long as the opponent is strong enough to put a fight, I lose the match.

However, against stronger opponent then it is more like @Ballschubser is saying but it happens earlier. I usually keep up with the stronger opponents until 13-14 and then start making mistakes on mistakes. I assign this to simply being not good enough for the opponent. I can't keep up with their pace and in trying to do so my shot quality gets worse and worse.

@ralphz

I don't feel like my heart is beating abnormally but it is just while I am in the rally I get the feeling of wanting to catch my breath a bit and then keep going. As a matter of fact, as soon as the rally is over and I/the opponent is picking up the shuttle my heart is quickly back to rest and i'm ready to start again (and it is back to rest a lot quicker than before).

I know the easiest solution would be to play a high clear and give myself time. But I don't always get the opportunity to use a high clear especially since I feel more under pressure when I feel out of breath and can't think properly.

But now I get the two parts of stamina and I am focusing a lot on the muscular side of it. I need to work on the cardiovascular side of it. But to be honest I really hate cardio and with my recent health problem running and cycling cause a lot of discomfort. I'm surprised I am able to play badminton. I'll look into how to increase my cardio.

Thanks a lot guys!
 
No no no wait! I got a bit lost into what I initially wanted while reading your nice posts.

The reason I asked question 1 and 2 was to understand whether I could improve my badminton drastically by simply becoming more explosive and more powerful and increase my badminton experience by playing a lot of matches.

I think my body is absorbing the jump training quite well, it is not getting in the way of the recent health problem I got and I am seeing the progress week by week.

So instead of running for a long time, I just work on becoming more explosive and powerful and flexible. I reduce my rest time between sets and I can do more sets as I become stronger. I can also do kettle bell swings which really get the heart going as well.
 
Quentin11 said:
No no no wait! I got a bit lost into what I initially wanted while reading your nice posts.

The reason I asked question 1 and 2 was to understand whether I could improve my badminton drastically by simply becoming more explosive and more powerful and increase my badminton experience by playing a lot of matches.

I think my body is absorbing the jump training quite well, it is not getting in the way of the recent health problem I got and I am seeing the progress week by week.

So instead of running for a long time, I just work on becoming more explosive and powerful and flexible. I reduce my rest time between sets and I can do more sets as I become stronger. I can also do kettle bell swings which really get the heart going as well.
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I would say nothing will improve your game drastically. This applies to just about everything in life. You can only make small steps and over time it will become a noticeable difference.
 
Quentin11 said:
@llrr
I usually keep up with the stronger opponents until 13-14 and then start making mistakes on mistakes. I assign this to simply being not good enough for the opponent. I can't keep up with their pace and in trying to do so my shot quality gets worse and worse.
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It is funny, the problems you describes are mine too. One game I lead 15-10 and in the next 12 rallies I was only able to get one single point, losing 16-21.
Paradoxically I think, that this is a good development. I often observe, that better player either underestimate you or have mercy with you, but once you get too many points, they increase the pressure. This increase of pressure will result in you making more errors.
This kind of opponent is both good and annoying . They are much better than you and they will be able to win games for a long time, even when you get better, they have enough buffer and can easily increase the pressure, step by step. It is annoying, because you can't measure your progress, it is like you always lose 15-21. But on the other hand, if they would go all in, you would lose 3-21 and you would not be able to learn anything at all and get demotivated quickly.
At the end you will make progress, don't get disheartened .

Quentin11 said:
@llrr
I know the easiest solution would be to play a high clear and give myself time. But I don't always get the opportunity to use a high clear especially since I feel more under pressure when I feel out of breath and can't think properly.
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I have good experiences with this approach. The benefit of this approach is not, that you choose some shots which are hard to get, but you choose to start to control the game instead of just reacting to the game of the opponent.

The best rallies are not the one when you kill a weak return with a jump smash, but the one where YOU control the pace, shot placement and eventually force an error or weak return.
To be honest, I'm not able to pull this control off very often, but once you experience it, you know that you need to do exactly this.

Back to the question you have regarding your endurance/stamina. Try to rate your endurance/stamina. E.g. how many continuously 6-corner shadow footwork runs can you do without slowing down. E.g. if you are able to do 2x 6-corner shadow runs, that are 12 shots or a vitual rally length of ~24 shots. Take a break of 60 seconds, repeat.
By increasing the number of runs (3x, 4x), by reducing the break (45, 30 seconds), by increasing the number of set (5, 10, 15), you will be able to measure your progress.
 
@Ballschubser

Yes a lot of time it happens as you are describing. But against some stronger opponents, I know I am pushing them the first 12-14 points and I know they are attacking me seriously and making me move etc. To ensure they are doing their best, I challenge them to beat me 21-0.

But at 14 I reach my limit and I can no longer keep up and make ridiculous mistakes. Even shuttles going way outside the court, dropping in my own court or smashing in the net. Each and everyone of them tell me, 'You made too many mistakes' as if they are acknowledging my game but the last part spoiled the fun for them.

And yes the even stronger one will beat me under 5 if they are serious.

I've been experiencing the approach you described recently and not focus on looking for a weak return. I enjoy it when the pace is not too high but as soon as the pace picks up and is too intense for me ... I try to look for weak returns and sometimes I get burn when the return are better than I expected.

Yes I do the shadow footwork before playing or when I waiting for an opponent to play against. I also run thrice the distance I usually run today at a steady pace and did more kettlebell swings just to get my heart beating and getting used to it.
 
We need a video. I don’t want to commit to saying it is a mental block. It maybe your opponents have simply outmanoeuvred you or they have changed the pace near the end of the game (which you cannot yet handle).
 
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Quentin11 said:
But at 14 I reach my limit and I can no longer keep up and make ridiculous mistakes. Even shuttles going way outside the court, dropping in my own court or smashing in the net. Each and everyone of them tell me, 'You made too many mistakes' as if they are acknowledging my game but the last part spoiled the fun for them.
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This is really exactly what I experience. I record some games and check the number of errors each player made. 30-50% of the rallies ended by an error by me, and 10-30% of the rallies ended by an error of the opponent, the rest of the rallies are ended by a "direct" point.
That is, I lost against myself, they really just need to get the shuttle safely over the net and I will make eventually the misstake or went out of endurance.
So, why do I run out of endurance/stamina and my opponent not ?

As mentioned above, I think that movement efficiency is a major part of it, and here you need to practise, practise, practise and need patience. Your body will need time to adjust.
On the other hand it will be an issue of lacking shot quality and shot variance. With lacking shot quality you will need to bring the shuttle closer to the center or you risk of kicking it out. But if it closer to the center, your opponent needs to move less.
Shot variance is an other issue. If your opponents knows, that you will do only shot X in certain situation, then he can base his position to easily take the expected shot. Ergo, he needs to move less.

Work on your endurance/stamina, but accept, that you need to improve in other aspects too. Just keep practising in all aspects and you will get better in your game which will help you to last out for longer.
 
I absolutely intend to work on other aspects too. But right now, with the time schedule and the unavailability of court/coach I am not in a position to do so. But I still want to improve in badminton. So I will focus on improving my physical condition as much as I can and use whatever I already know and can learn to improve.

I talked to a coach but it is very difficult to get a court in my country.
 
Updates:

I have been improving a lot lately and got rid of this mental block slowly as I am able to win matches. I am even winning comfortably now depending against who I am playing. I can do a rubber 1st game against the strongest guys but then second game or third game I slow down simply because I can no longer keep up with their pace. But i'm working on my stamina.

Two things which would really help me are:

1. early reading of the course of the shuttle out of the racket of the opponent (although I know I can influence that to some extent); and
2. a great backhand clear when i'm under pressure.

Now, a national kid came to play with us a few weeks ago. I analysed his match well and notice something which is why I mentioned point 1 above. He had an amazing read of the shuttle, he was able to judge very early whether the shuttle was in or out very early. In my mind, if he can judge the course of the shuttle that early, he will automatically be able to react faster to it.

I was wondering whether this was something possible to train for someone like me and how could this be trained?

@visor @MSeeley @Cheung @DarkHiatus
 
i have this stamina issues too, when i didn't do any offcourt excercise at all (joggin, skipping, swimming, plyometric, interval, etc.) for more than two/three month and have a bad diet also, due to bussy work.

just play badminton 2 to 3 times per week, without support offcourt excercise and healthy diet. is like suicide to play badminton. same like ur experiences, only survive for half set only. the 2nd set feel like all my stamina already drained, easy mistake due to lost focussed.

for people doesn't have proper coaching experiences. offcourt badminton training and good diet is a must to do, to keep enjoy playing badminton.
 
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Quentin11 said:
Two things which would really help me are:

1. early reading of the course of the shuttle out of the racket of the opponent (although I know I can influence that to some extent); and
2. a great backhand clear when i'm under pressure.


I was wondering whether this was something possible to train for someone like me and how could this be trained?
Click to expand...

1. Depends a lot on how explosive you are and how effective your split step is. How well you can anticipate your opponent's shots taking into account their habits/tendencies and weaknesses/strengths. Also how much risk you can naturally accept, ie an occasional misjudgenment will lose a point.

Against a player who is deceptive, ie able to hold a shot and quickly change their shot direction or swing speed from slow to fast or vice versa, this can purposely be used to upset your split step timing, so best not to over anticipate in these cases.

2. Not only great backhand clear but also drop/block. Very effective as your opponent usually doesn't expect it. To get a good backhand clear or drive that can go end to end, you must include finger power right at the end of your kinetic chain.


3. Both of these skills can be polished and improved only through many hours of intentional practice and game time on court. No short cuts.

Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk
 
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