The Importance of Jogging & Sprinting

The game of Badminton requires lots of physical fitness and speed to endure long rallies and tough matches.

Without the physical fitness, a player will have difficulties to keep up with the long rallies and the fast pace of the game.

So it is crucial to improve one's physical attributes when playing badminton by doing outdoor trainings especially jogging and sprinting besides other exercises like shot's perfection, weight training, drills, jumping and stretching.

If you are still not convinced about the importance of jogging and sprinting to improve your speed and endurance, consider the fact that a badminton match lasts from 20 minutes to 80 minutes without the sufficient time to rest during each rallies. If a player doesn't have the stamina and the endurance that is really required in Badminton, he can lose lots of points due to fatigue.

Jogging can also be considered as part of the warming up sessions for a player's badminton training regime and before a badminton match. It is normally done after the stretching. It helps to condition you to suit the badminton hall's environment because different hall has different types of environment.

It also helps to settle down mentally and reduce the nervousness of the player before the match begins. Top players normally jog around 5 minutes before his match starts in every tournament.

Other than used for the warming up sessions, jogging is also often used as part of the training sessions. The trainees normally do intensive jogging to raise their endurance level so that when they are in the game, they can sustain the tough and physically demanding side of things.

By consistently doing intensive jogging, it helps to strengthen your legs so that you can do more drills that capitalize more on speed such as fast shadow, shuttle control, multi shuttle drills and etc. Without the presence of the strong legs, you won't be able to play a high quality badminton game.

Jogging helps to strengthen the legs by consistently moving in a fast pace. Uphill jogging is one of the most effective exercises to strengthen the leg's strength and endurance level.

Your agility can also be improved. Jogging helps to stabilize the footwork so that players won't stumble all over the court to retrieve their opponent's shots. How often have you been in this situation whereby the shuttle has fallen a fraction out of your reach even though you know it's going to land there? If you had been able to turn or move to the shuttle a bit faster, you could have reached it.

Jogging can be used as an addition to a player agility exercises such as skipping, hopping and etc. I would highly recommend you to jog in small and fast steps. Try to stay on your toes or on the balls of your feet while jogging.

Sprinting in badminton is chiefly done to increase the speed of your court coverage. Many players have difficulty to keep up with the speed of the game due to the lack of speed itself. By having speed, it can create an advantage by enhancing a player's anticipation.

Anticipation is referring to a condition where the shots are unexpectedly taken much earlier. It has a high percentage of finishing the rally. Speed increases the footwork abilities to be able to anticipate shots.

In the modern Badminton games, speed plays a major role to win a game. Why is it so? Because most badminton players in the world goes for speed and power to win the game. Speed and Power was introduced by Rudy Hartono of Indonesia which had won the All England title for the record of 8 times. Without the presence of speed, you will have difficulty to raise your game to another level.

The right way to do the sprinting is to sprint on your toes. It is good for the leg to have lesser contact to the ground so that players can create stronger legs. Usually sprinting is done at the end of the training program so that the trainees can build up their mental strength when they sprint with exhaustion creating the best effect.

The very common method used by top player is sprinting up the hill. Sprinting uphill will strengthen the legs and raise their endurance level because it demands a lot of physical and mental fitness. For the record there are some good example of Top players that often sprints up the hill such as Lin Dan (World Champion 2006), Mohd Hafiz Hashim (2003 all England champion), Lee chong wei (2006 commonwealth games champion) and other players as well.

All these jogging and sprinting methods will definitely improve your game and fitness. Most importantly, it will also bring your game up to the next level.