Badminton is one of the most brutal sports on the body there is, requiring many different physical aspects – agility, speed, power, endurance, co-ordination. Badminton-specific stretches are really important to:
6 great stretches for badminton are:
Stretching your lower back is really important for 2 reasons. Firstly, a tight back can not only lead to injuries in your back, but also in other areas of your body. Secondly, flexibility in your lower back will enable you to generate the rotation that is needed through your trunk when hitting overhead shots.
This is our recommended lower back stretch for badminton:
To do this stretch, lie on your back and bring one knee up and across your chest. Gently pull your knee towards the floor with your opposite hand. If you want to increase the stretch, look the other way.
In badminton, we are constantly lunging. This creates a lot of force going through your glutes and hips. If you don’t keep your glutes and hips loose then they will become stiffer over time, limiting your movement on-court.
Our recommended glute and hip stretch has 2 levels:
Level 1: Sit down on the floor with one knee in front of you at a right angle, and with the other knee behind also at a right angle. From here, lean directly over your front knee.
Level 1
If you feel a good stretch, then remain in this position. However, if you want to advance then move onto level 2.
Level 2: From the position you were in for Level 1, straighten out your back leg and shift your hips so that they are now facing forwards. Your front leg should no longer be at a right angle. This is known as The Pigeon Stretch!
Level 2 - The Pigeon Stretch
Having loose quads is really important, as having tight quad muscles can lead to sore knees – and there are lots of sore knees in badminton! A loose quad will help to ease the pressure that we continuously put through our knee joints when playing badminton.
For our quad stretch you lie down on the floor and grab your foot, gently pulling it towards your glute.
If you are struggling with this then make it easier by wrapping a towel around your foot:
Hamstrings are key to overall movement efficiency. For badminton, we need both strength and flexibility in our hamstrings – helping us effectively move around the court!
Below is an example of a recommended hamstring stretch:
To actively stretch the hamstring, lie down with one leg in the air, interlocking your fingers together just above your knee. With your knee bent, slowly straighten it and keep repeating this movement.
To increase the stretch, pull your leg towards you more.
Stretching your calf muscles is really important as stiff calves significantly increase the chance of you getting injured!
Our recommended calf stretch involves slowly walking out the calves alternately in ‘Down Dog’ pose:
As well as stretch your calves, you can also strengthen them with the help of our badminton-specific weights programmes:
Get 12 badminton-specific weights programmes designed to help you improve your strength, endurance, speed and explosive power.
We find that after a period off-court, our shoulders are always the first area to tighten up. Also, during a full week of training or competing, we put lots of force through our shoulder – especially when we’re smashing a lot.
If the muscles around your shoulder are stiff, then you won’t be able to generate as much rotation and racket head speed. This will lead to less power in your smash! So it is important to keep all of the muscles around your shoulder loose.
These are our 3 recommended shoulder stretches for badminton, which start in the yoga pose ‘Childs Pose’:
Lat stretch:
In Childs Pose, with your arms out in front of you extend one arm out a little further and lean towards this side and hold.
Lats
Bicep and Pec stretch:
Bring one arm out to the side, turning your hand so that your thumb and index finger are supporting you on the floor. Again, lean into the stretch and you will feel this in your bicep and pec.
Biceps and Pec
Back of Shoulder stretch:
Thread your arm under your body, leaning down into the shoulder to create a stretch around the back of your shoulder. This is the area used in the deceleration of your smash and is very important to keep loose!
Back of the Shoulder
It’s widely researched that to get the benefit out of stretching, you should do each stretch for 30 – 40 seconds.
In total, our recommended stretches will only take around 10 minutes of stretching at the end of a match or training session.
Trust us, it’s definitely worth it!
We suggest that you do these stretches daily. If you are feeling extra stiff in a certain area, then repeat that stretch. This is something we mention in our 15 minute follow-along stretching video:
On top of stretching, we love using a massage device – we have used massage guns for several years, finding them extremely beneficial after a tough session!
