How to Jump Higher in Badminton

Have you ever watched professional players and gawked at how high they’re able to jump? The hang time of some of these players is amazing. Many amateur players want to improve the height of their jump to mimic the professionals. And who can blame them? What’s important though is that to really benefit from learning how to jump higher, you first need to be secure in your footwork and overhead strokes as these are combined with the jump.

If you want to learn how to jump higher, read on!

Some Physics Of Jumping

We are mostly all born with the ability to jump, but the physics of it is pretty interesting! At all times, your body is held to the earth by gravity. If you remember this fact, then I can safely assume you’re at least eight years old. Now when you jump, you apply force to the ground and in line with Newton’s third law, the ground applies an equal and opposite reaction onto you. When you jump you exert greater force into the ground than your bodyweight. The ground reacts and it’s this force that propels you into the air.

Kind of confusing right? All this time I thought you were pushing away from the ground. Turns out the ground is pushing you away! If you’re smarter than me, which is highly probable, this might be something you already knew.

So I guess you’re wondering how this is relevant? We’ll get to that in a second, after another one of Newton’s gems. In order to jump higher, we must also consider Newton’s second law: Force = Mass x Acceleration. When standing still, the net force acting upon you is zero. The gravitational force pushing down on you is counteracted by the upward force from the earth. So if you weigh 70Kg for example:

Therefore Force = 70 X 0 = 0

An Example Of Jumping Force

When you jump, you then make acceleration part of the equation. Taking the formula above, there is a direct relationship between force and acceleration. By increasing force, we increase acceleration. You can test this yourself when jumping. If you jump with half your effort, you will generate some force and go a certain height. If you double that and jump with 100% effort you will generate more force and jump higher because your acceleration will be faster. All other factors remain the same so acceleration must be the differential in jump height and force production in this case.

However, mass and acceleration have an inverse relationship. We can see this if we rearrange the earlier formula to Acceleration = Force/Mass. Therefore if you decided to suddenly pig out and double your body weight, you would reduce your acceleration by half. The greater the mass, the greater the force is required to accelerate. At the extreme, a very heavy person would not be able to accelerate upwards in a jump because they simply can’t generate enough force to do so.

So, therefore, if we apply this to your jump, what you’re aiming for is:

1. Reduce your weight – being heavier requires greater acceleration which is more challenging, especially when you consider the biomechanics of a jump when overweight.
2. Improve your ability to produce force – through strength training. The more force you can produce, the greater acceleration you can achieve and the higher you can jump.

Most badminton players fulfil this criterion, being pretty lightweight athletes but very strong in their legs, therefore being able to generate a greater power-to-weight ratio.

Muscles Used In Jumping

Luckily for you guys, class isn’t over. This is why you play badminton instead of studying I guess! Feel free to skip ahead if you literally just want to know how you can jump higher…

In badminton, we do not swing both arms up as in a straight vertical jump. However, we do extend our non-racket arm to “pull” ourselves up and to balance ourselves. Primarily, the muscles used in a jump are in the legs but also the core plays an important role in keeping you balanced and also in the efficient transfer of power from the lower to the upper body. Therefore it makes sense that these are the areas we want to focus on if we want to improve our jump height.

Muscle Fibres

There are two types of muscle fibres, slow-twitch and fast-twitch. Roughly people are born with a 50/50 split of these fibres but some are born with a greater proportion of one or the other.

Slow-twitch fibres contract slowly and have a greater capacity for blood, with more blood vessels. More blood equals more oxygen. This makes them aerobic in nature. They are particularly suited to endurance training, such as slow jogging and release energy slowly over time.

Fast-twitch fibres contract very quickly and use the anaerobic system to generate high levels of immediate energy. Of course, blood is still supplied to them but at a reduced rate. These are suited to explosive activity such as sprinting or jumping.

In the same way, the energy systems work together, so do both muscle fibres. Each activity you do might employ a greater proportion of one over the other but both are working alongside each other. The good news is that, depending on your goal, you can increase each type of muscle fibre. For example, a powerlifter is likely to have significantly more fast-twitch than slow-twitch fibres. Conversely, a marathon runner is likely to have more slow-twitch fibres.

Jumping In Badminton

The reason I’m telling you all this background stuff is so that you can consider how the jump works and think about it concerning badminton. Some might think it seems pretty clear from the above that to improve our vertical jump, we need to increase the amount of force we produce, maybe lose some weight and improve our fast-twitch fibres. It’s easy to identify improvements in one aspect of your badminton game in this way. However, we need to consider all the other areas of badminton as well.

Badminton is such a well-rounded sport and therefore requires finding a middle ground for your peak fitness. If you simply put all your effort into improving your strength to jump higher, you’ll develop a much higher proportion of fast-twitch fibres which use energy very quickly. This would be at the expense of your slow-twitch fibres, making you fatigue quicker on the court.

Badminton is multi-dimensional. So to improve on one goal, we need to consider how it affects the others. In addition, you need to factor in the discipline you play – especially at higher levels. Singles players have greater aerobic capabilities than doubles players on average and therefore probably have more slow-twitch muscles. Are you going to forgo some of your endurance ability to jump marginally higher? Probably not.

How To Improve Your Vertical Jump

Ok now we got all that out of the way – there are really only two tried and tested methods of improving your vertical jump. Plyometrics and Strength Training.

Plyometrics

Plyometrics is also known as jump training, so you can see where we’re going with this. Plyo is rooted in power development, therefore satisfying the speed element of the power equation, but also helps to develop strength. Exercises in plyometrics focus on three phases:

1. Eccentric Phase – Preloading the muscles. For example, squatting before you jump.
2. Amortization Phase – This is the transition between the eccentric and concentric phases. In jumping terms, it’s the movement upwards from the squat. This is really the key part of plyometrics as this phase needs to be as short as possible to maximise the use of kinetic energy. The longer this phase takes, the more kinetic energy is lost as heat and the less force you’ll be able to produce.
3. Concentric Phase – This is the actual jump – leaving the ground to reach maximum vertical height as a result of the two preceding stages.

These phases are a cycle. Once you land the jump you’re immediately in the eccentric phase and the cycle repeats until you stop the activity.

Why It’s Good For Jumping In Badminton

Many studies support the use of plyometrics to improve your jumping height. It is a particularly useful training method for badminton because it mimics the way jumping is performed on the court. Not always in appearance but by method. When playing a jump in badminton, it’s rarely from a standing start. It’s almost always using kinetic energy from movement to the shot. You can see that when you watch players “load” their jump (eccentric phase).

Secondly, because it only uses your bodyweight it helps you become more efficient at getting off the ground. The more your body does something, the more efficient it becomes at doing it. Plyometrics excels in this area due to its cyclical nature. This is applicable particularly to doubles. In doubles the jump is used a lot more liberally than in singles, you will often see a player perform many jumps in a single rally. Plyo helps to prolong your ability to continue to jump before fatiguing – making sure you can maintain steep attacking shots for a longer period of time.

Lastly, although it is an anaerobic training method, we know from studies that training anaerobically has secondary effects on the aerobic system, therefore, a badminton player’s ability to recover. While this is not the goal of the exercise, it’s certainly beneficial to your badminton that other aspects of fitness are incorporated.

Examples of plyometric exercises include jump squats, box jumps and drop jumps. It’s also important that during your plyometrics training, you try to jump as high as possible. If you’re half-assing it, you won’t be reaping the real benefits of this training method.

The only real drawback of plyometrics is that it can be very taxing on joints and therefore there is a higher risk of injury.

Personally, I have used home DVD’s to help with his element of my badminton. In particular, I highly recommend Insanity by Beach Body It’s pretty old now but one of those home workouts that will kick your ass and certainly improve your vertical jump and aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

Strength/Power Training

In order to create more force, you need to be stronger. How do you get stronger? Lift heavy things! Improving your jump height relies on your leg strength to be developed. However, you must not lose sight of the goal. If you’re new to strength training, you would probably see quite quick improvements in your vertical jump. At this point newbie might think that this is the key, just lift more and you’ll be able to jump higher.

There are a couple of problems with this approach. Firstly if you keep training for strength you can generate more force but what about your power? Just because you’re really strong doesn’t mean you can translate that well into jumping height. Secondly, strength training is very static. In a squat, for example, your feet are planted on the ground consistently. The more you focus on only the strength element, the less explosive you will become. Not particularly beneficial to badminton.

However, when the right approach to strength training is taken, it will certainly help improve the height of your vertical jump. Not only that, it will help to protect your joints, and will also help you cope better with the demands of other training methods – such as plyometrics. Strength training can be done by:

• Using your own body weight (or adding additional weight using a weighted jacket for example)
• Using Dumbells Or a barbell.

In terms of strength exercises, the best exercise you can do to improve your jump is the squat. It’s been shown in studies to improve vertical jump by about 12%.

Power

Remember Power = Strength X Power. Strength training involves overcoming resistance. It doesn’t matter how long as long as you get it up. Whereas power is overcoming resistance as fast as possible. Nowadays, I feel bodyweight is enough when training for power in badminton because how strong you are is already factored in. Lifting a weight as fast as possible, such as a squat or deadlift can be a recipe for injury. You need to be very confident in your technique to lift any resistance with significant speed. I find that resistance bands are often a safer option and can offer enough resistance for training for power in badminton.

Both strength and power should be incorporated into your training to jump higher. The stronger you are and the faster you can use that strength, the higher you can jump.

Conclusion – How To Jump Higher

Don’t let this goal overtake some of the other aspects of your game. In reality, you probably aren’t going to add a significant amount onto your jump but damn will you look cool when you get some real airtime! There are also many books available on the subject, mainly centred around basketball, but the techniques mentioned in these books are just as effective for badminton. For example – Jump Attack has been widely praised.

Is jumping higher one of your goals? Let me know in the comments below!

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