Posted on September 30, 2010 by James
Badminton is a very fitness demanding sport. There are a great deal of attributes a person needs in order to become successful. The main fitness components are agility, speed, muscular endurance, muscular power and cardio-respiratory endurance. Good hand eye co-ordination is a must in this sport, in order to become successful. Agility is the ability to change the position of the body and the direction of the body quickly and accurately.
This is probably the most vital component in badminton because you need to be able to move around the court so you can return the shuttle. This component can be improved by doing skill drills. For example, you could line up five shuttles, and then carry them over 5 metres to another line individually. This type of exercise will improve your agility, and can also replace a warm-up drill. Speed is the rate of movement of the body, limb or external object. This links together with agility as you require moving quickly and precisely to the shuttle at all times. The best way to improve speed is to do short sprints. This won’t however return instant results, but because the badminton court isn’t very big, you will eventually get faster. Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements against a load for an extended period of time. This is required in badminton mainly by the raquet hand, using the biceps, triceps and the forearm muscles, as they are used repeatedly throughout the match. To improve this component for badminton, weights of low size should be done with a high level of repetitions. Muscular power is an explosive muscular force that can be used quickly. This component is important to badminton as you use your muscles in your legs and arms throughout the match. You use your legs running to the shuttle and jumping and your arms when you play each shot. Your arms need very good muscular power when playing the overhead smash, as