Bodyweight training for strength is not inferior to the gym as many people would think. Any bodyweight exercise can be modified to increase it’s intensity and to challenge your body in new and different ways from that of the gym. In fact, for many young players and even seasoned pros, bodyweight training should be (and is!) a staple of any badminton player’s fitness routine.
In a previous article, we discussed what strength was and what benefits it has for badminton. In this article, we will go through a few bodyweight exercises that can be performed to increase our strength and performance on the court.
I mentioned before it’s important to understand how to perform these exercises safely. I will try to explain them as best as I can, but you should always seek professional advice if you have any doubts about how to perform any exercise. This is to prevent injury.
Bodyweight Exercises For Badminton
The exercises below require only your bodyweight or very minimal equipment. They are suitable for those new to weight training, those who perhaps are coming back to training after an injury, or those who may not have access to a gym. It’s important to learn the form for these exercises as they will carry through to the variations which include weights.
Lower Body
The lower body contributes to speed around the court. It helps you drive off from the split step and increases your ability to cover the court efficiently.
The legs are the foundation of any shot in badminton.
Image: Marvin Seidel Instagram
Body Weight Squat
- Stand upright with your feet shoulder width apart.
- Tense your abdominals.
- Keeping your back straight, bend your knees until you are as low as you can go.
- Use your hands for balance as you come down if needed.
- Push with your legs until you are back to the starting point.
This might be a very easy exercise for many people. If you do not find it particularly challenging, have a go at the pistol squat below.
Pistol Squat
- Stand with your legs together.
- Put your arms out in front of you for balance.
- Tense your abs.
- Place one foot in front of you and lift it slightly off the floor.
- Keeping this leg off of the floor and your back straight, bend the other so you are in the squat position.
- Push back up until you are in the starting position.
- The non-working leg remains off the floor for the whole motion.
- Repeat for the other leg
These can be performed on the floor, or on a raised platform as above. A problem you might face straight away is finding your balance. If this is the case you can use an object such as a chair to help. This helps you to focus on your legs as opposed to your balance.
As you become stronger, you should aim to perform these unaided. Maintaining balance makes the exercise more challenging.
When performing a normal squat, the weaker leg is compensated for by the stronger one. However, with the Pistol Squat, each leg works individually. This is great to correct imbalances. You will probably find that your non-dominant leg is weaker initially but over time this gap will narrow.
Lunges
- Stand with legs together
- Place hands on hips (or raise them straight up to make it a little harder).
- Tense Abdominals.
- With one leg, step forward and bend the knee into a 90-degree position.
- The rear foot remains in position, with the leg also bending in unison with the front one.
- The rear knee should be very close or slightly touch the ground.
- Push back with the front leg into the starting position
- Repeat with the other leg.
The lunge is one of the most common actions performed in badminton. Therefore, this is one of the most applicable exercises you can perform off the court. I prefer to step forwards and backwards in the lunge as this is the action we perform on the court.
You might find that when stepping forward with your racket leg, there’s more flexibility than with your non-racket leg. This is because we always lunge with our racket leg in front in badminton. Over time, we want to work on this flexibility through stretches which will be discussed in a later article.
Upper Body
All badminton shots use various muscles in the upper body to transfer and generate power.
Press Up
- Get yourself in a plank position, either on your fists or palms.
- Tense Abdominals.
- Lower your body by bending your elbows, trying to keep them close to your body, rather than flaring outwards. Your back should be straight.
- Make sure you get as close to the floor as possible.
- Push away from the floor back into the starting position.
- If you can’t perform a push up without face planting the floor, try the same movement but on your knees instead. That way you are not supporting your whole body weight, only the upper body.
The press-up is a great upper body exercise. Performing the push up with flat hands can be
If you have hard floors and this is too painful, you could also invest in some push-up bars, which put the wrists in the same position, without you bruising your knuckles on the floor! They are pretty cheap, the above being £6.00 (about $8 USD).
Pull Ups
- Reach up and grab the bar. The grip should be wider than your shoulders but comfortable.
- Tense abdominals.
- Lift your legs off the floor or platform you used to reach the bar. You can tuck them behind you, put them in front of you or just let them hang.
- Try not to swing forward.
- From this hanging position, pull yourself up so that the bar meets your chest.
- Lower yourself in a controlled manner back to a hanging position and repeat. Do not lower yourself halfway, which will be tempting! Make sure you perform the full range of the movement.
- Do not swing your body to give you momentum to rise up. If you do this, you’re not developing your strength and you’re likely to injure yourself.
This exercise is tough. Many people find that they can’t do one at all. If this is the case, you can get a chair and rest one foot on it. This helps to reduce some of the weight of your body enabling you perform the exercise.
Another option is resistance bands, which support your weight when performing the exercise.
Core
You might have noticed in every description of how to perform the above exercises, I said tense your abdominals. This is because it’s extremely important to help maintain form and protect your spine. It also ensures your body is in a strong position to perform the exercises by focusing the energy on that exercise. As I mentioned, a strong core helps in the transfer of energy.
Although the other exercises incorporate the abs, it is not the primary focus of any of the other exercises. The core should be worked at the end of your work out. You do not want them to be tired when performing other exercises.
Planks
- Take the position as shown in the video above. You can rest on your elbows or your hands (as in a press up position).
- Tense the abs, your butt and quads. This will help keep your back straight.
- Now hold this position for as long as possible.
Planks are an isometric exercise. This basically means you will be holding your abs in a contracted state for a period of time. This is great for injury prevention and to develop balance. If you’ve never done this before, you will find that you will start shaking like jelly.
The press up variation (on your hands) is harder. Aim to progress to this position if you feel that forearm version isn’t providing much of a challenge.
Russian Twists
- Sit in an upright position on the floor with your legs extended.
- Clasp your hands together. Sometimes holding an object or small weight can add to the difficulty.
- Raise your legs off the floor and use your core to balance your upright position.
- Twist your body and touch the floor either side of you with your clasped hands.
The twisting motion involved in this exercise also occurs during play. Players are constantly twisting an turning their bodies, rotating into shots such as the smash.
Bodyweight Training For Badminton – Other Observations
You might find the lower body exercises much easier than the upper body exercise. This is likely to be because your legs are constantly working. They support your body weight every day and if you only play badminton as your only form of exercise it’s likely that it’s the only part of your body that gets a significant workout. Unless you make a conscious effort to train your upper body it just is never going to be as strong relative to your legs.
If you find any of these exercises very difficult, There are many ways to make them easier. I suggested a few above, but don’t be afraid to search around google for some more advice!
There are literally thousands of exercises, each with a hundred variations. I can’t go through them all but I hope the above at least gave you some ideas on exercises you can do to improve your strength.
Next Time…
In the next article, we will go through some exercises which include the use of weight lifting equipment to further develop our strength.
Please consider subscribing to my blog for more great badminton content and make sure to follow me on Instagram and Facebook for other posts and updates!
If you want 15% off Alien Pro’s awesome looking badminton grips – click here and use the code “shuttlesmash” at check out! It will help support this website and enable me to provide you with more badminton content!
Recent Comments