This post contains affiliate links to Everything Badminton's E-Book from which I receive commissions if purchased through the links provided throughout this post There are also Amazon affiliate links. As an affiliate I earn on qualifying purcahses. Disclaimer: The review is intended to be an honest opinion of the ebook and being an affiliate does not bias my opinion.
Everything Badminton is a fellow badminton website/blog focusing on reviews, racket comparisons and on-court and off-court tips designed to help improve your understanding of badminton. All their articles are written by badminton players that are at varsity level or higher (e.g- county, state, national). Edits are made by their own team of coaches and ex-national players. So Everything Badminton has some experience in their team!
So along the lines of the above, they’ve recently launched a new Ebook. It claims to help you develop your fitness specifically for badminton. Let’s get into the review.
Overview
The book itself is 137 pages long, focusing on weight training, on-court and off-court training methods to improve your badminton fitness. This book is not designed to improve your racket skills. It starts with a general introduction about the physiology of badminton, an analysis of strokes from the point of view of mobility of the muscles and an analysis of the lower body movements. They have also helpfully included a key to show which elements of fitness you will be working on as you perform each exercise.
The Ebook has had lots of input from several coaches and players, including ex-Malaysian professional Goh Jian Hao. So let’s get into it!
Introduction
The introduction includes some basic information about the physiology of badminton. It also emphasises the fact that both aerobic and anaerobic training is required for all-around badminton fitness. This is something I was pleased to see as newbies or intermediate players can often get caught up in training one or the other. They also highlight several elements of fitness which was great to read. I always enjoy this background knowledge as it provides context to the rest of the text. While the elements they have mentioned are slightly different to my own, the components are broadly similar.
The analysis of strokes focuses on which muscles are used during the action of the stroke. This is mainly the upper body muscles when talking about the stroke in isolation. It also highlights the nature of badminton as a total body workout. Therefore, the body should be primed as such to perform optimally. I also like the specific mention of the core as I have highlighted this before to be perhaps the most important part of the body for badminton.
So overall, the introduction sets the tone of the muscles in use during badminton. During the course of the next section of the book, I expected there to be more information about each specific muscle, its function and how it works to support the performance of badminton. And importantly how to train.
How To Use This E-Book
Here, Everything Badminton has provided a how-to guide – as in how to use the book effectively. However, I don’t believe this provides the right information on how to use the book at all.
For example, they mentioned that the exercises are grouped into push/pull exercises. Now a regular gym-goer would immediately recognise what that means, however, a newbie might not. You could infer that a push exercise is an exercise that pushes the weight away from you, and a pull exercise is one that pulls the weight towards you. However, you might not understand the nuances of splitting the exercises in this way. Perhaps a little more clarity here would aid understanding.
They then suggest working out three times a week (at least).
The book says you can structure your workouts however you like but this is minimally useful, especially to beginners. How many exercises? Which exercises? What does full-body mean? Should I do three consecutive days? All these little nuances should be addressed. While the Ebook doesn’t specifically say it is a program as such, I think some guidance would have been beneficial.
Assuming a beginner picks this book up, it would be confusing to them on how to structure a workout. If I purchase this book with the intention of badminton training, this section really doesn’t tell me how I should approach it. I would want a plan which shows what I should be doing and when at least as a starting point.
Weight Training Section
The next section is the bulk of the book. They have included bodyweight exercises and resistance bands as an alternative to the free weights. This is great to see as not everyone has access to a gym and you can have a great workout with minimal equipment. There is also the free weight option should you have access. The exercises are laid out per body part, separating the upper and the lower body.
If you wanted to design your own workout and you knew what you were doing, there are a good few options here for you to add to your routine. Whether it’s free weights, bands, body weight or a machine-based workout you’re after – there’s lots to check out and see which works best for you.
However, it is also in this section where I feel the book does not provide as much value as it could. It’s essentially 90-odd pages of various exercises with a few fitness challenges thrown in (which I’ll talk about a little later).
Problem Areas
I think my first issue is that the book gives too much flexibility on exercise choice. Of course, some people like flexibility and this is just my personal opinion. Like I said earlier, if I was purchasing this book to improve my badminton fitness, I want to be told specifically which exercises I should be doing. I do not want to trawl through 90 pages to pick out the ones I want. Particularly as a beginner who might not be familiar with any of them. I would want the most effective ones and a focus on how to approach them.
Secondly, the book suggests X number of reps and X number of sets without actually explaining what that means. What are reps and sets? Perhaps one of the first questions many newbies ask! And more than that, it’s also doesn’t explain the appropriate form for each exercise. Of course, it is difficult to show the form illustratively in an Ebook. But a description of how to perform the exercise would be welcome.
The Ebook tells you to lift the weight 12 times for 4 sets. This means that the suggestions for reps and sets are very static and do not factor in variation or progression. Perhaps it expects that you would know when to increase the weight. Or simply assumes you have basic gym knowledge so be able to adapt your workout to make it more challenging. However, this is a key element in weight training and should have been addressed.
There is also the omission of how to train. You can focus more on strength, power or muscular endurance depending on how you perform an exercise and all three are relevant to badminton. 12 reps for 4 sets or any other constricted rep and set ranges will not allow you to train the different aspects of badminton as thoroughly.
Fitness Challenges
What they do include, however, are various fitness challenges throughout. For example, the “Push Up” challenge tests you to do press-ups in increasing difficult time constraints. What’s good about these challenges is that it is visual Measurable progress is a great motivator and proves how far you’ve come so far. As you see yourself improve, you’ll be able to achieve the more advanced challenges.
I do think perhaps some of the beginner levels can be fairly challenging depending on your current fitness or weight. For example, 10 sets of 10 pushups might be very difficult for someone who is overweight. As I said – these challenges should be seen as goals and progression benchmarks.
I will say here that you need to understand what these challenges are actually trying to achieve. They helpfully do note with their key system what fitness component is being utilised. However, these are not always accurate. I would also argue they are not always explosive strength as suggested by the key system depending on how advanced you are. Taking into account the example above, if you can do 100 press-ups, even at the advanced level, this is not explosive at all.
What is also not clear is whether the book intends each page to be the workout in itself. For example, whether the dumbbell exercises are the workout or just suggested exercises. Obviously, if you only have a certain type of equipment then you should focus on those specific exercises! They also have a “mixed” page at the end of each body part section. This contains a selection of exercises from each of the previous dumbbell, barbell, bodyweight and bands sections. This sometimes duplicates the exercises and I feel is unnecessary when people can pick and choose the exercises from the preceding sections.
Cardio
The next section focuses on cardio. Similar to above this section is a selection of suggestions for cardio. There is nothing groundbreaking here and it’s stuff you are likely already familiar with. They do suggest challenging yourself to do better every time you set out to do your cardio by setting targets and times. What is great is that they have chosen exercises that are a little easier on the joints which obviously are heavily impacted by badminton to avoid injury.
On Court And Off-Court Footwork
This is certainly the most badminton specific part of the book as they are exercises within the confines of a court. The problem here is, how many people have access to a court to train in this way? Nonetheless, six specific exercises are aiming to help you improve your footwork and also your endurance/stamina. These are great exercises and includes not only single person exercises but also ones that can be done with a partner. However, you might need to be of a similar standard for “Tag”, which essentially involved trying to outpace the other person on the court.
Off-court footwork involves another six exercises. Some of those mentioned are sprint training and skipping. Both of which are very basic but amazing additions to any badminton players training schedule. These exercises focus on anaerobic fitness and provide some guidance as to how you can approach the exercises to push yourself. For me, you can mix up the exercises suggested.
But the most useful suggestion the book makes in my opinion is high-intensity interval training. You can obviously choose which exercises you want to perform, but the book provides a great starting point with 11 exercises in 11 minutes. The book provides badminton specific bodyweight HIIT exercises to develop power and endurance. And by the way, if you think 11 minutes of exercise doesn’t sound hard, try Tabata and you’ll be begging for 11 minutes.
Summary
While the vast number of exercises provides a lot of choices. But having 90-odd pages of illustrations of a man lifting weights just doesn’t provide enough information as to how to perform the exercises safely. Or indeed which exercises you should choose.
It’s likely that if you are a regular gym-goer, you will be doing many of these exercises already and therefore 80% of the book doesn’t really add much value to what you’re already doing. However, as a beginner, you would need to figure out for yourself how to perform many of these exercises from other sources as the correct form is critical so as not to injure yourself.
Having fewer but effective exercises (with bodyweight/band variations) would have been a better choice. For example, the best exercise for the chest is the bench press. Two or three other accessory lifts alongside this would be more than enough. Variation is important. However, it would be helpful to know which exercises are more effective so you can base your training around those.
As for the cardio section, there isn’t much in here that people don’t already know. The explanation of how you perform the exercise as well as tracking your progress is useful. However, some of the suggestions do seem a little harsh. For example, running on a treadmill 7.5K at a beginner level in half an hour and then suggesting that it be done on a slight incline. Run Repeat in a significantly large scale study in association with the IAAF the average 5K time is 30-45 minutes depending on variables such as gender, age etc. So even on a treadmill, this seems a bit out of reach for many beginners.
Final Verdict
This Ebook is perhaps a good starting point for those who are looking to develop a basic training plan and gain ideas about what exercises they can include. However, this book does not provide the answers on how to train or which exercises you should be doing specifically. It also doesn’t provide a focus. You have to determine what you are going to do. The on-court and off-court footwork is perhaps the best addition to this book in terms of ideas for training specifically for badminton fitness.
Having a choice is great but as amateur badminton players, effective training is about doing what is most beneficial. And half the exercises on here, while effective for muscle development, are not always cost-effective in terms of use of your training time. Making them less badminton specific and more filler for the book.
I hope you find this review helpful! If you would like to purchase the book. Check out Everything Badminton’s Store and don’t forget to check out their blog too at everything-badminton.com
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