The Perfect Badminton Warm Up
A good warm-up could be the difference between you losing and winning a match! In this article, we’re going to give you some tips to make sure you have the best possible on-court warm-up.
An on-court warm-up for badminton should consist of:
- Flat Drives
- Overhead Clears
- Drops
- Lifts
- Smashes
- Defence
- Net Shots
- Reactions
- Cross-court Shots
- Serves
- Return of Serves
We’ll be covering each of these in this article whilst explaining 7 routines you can do for both singles and doubles.
1) Flat Drives
We’d suggest starting with flat drives, as this will help with:
- Getting used to hitting the shuttle and warming up your wrist.
- Getting your timing right, especially if you’re playing in a new venue.
- Getting used to changing your grip.
2) Overhead Clears
After the flat drives, we’d suggest moving onto overhead clears, you probably only need a few of these before you move onto the next shot. This will again help you to get used to timing the shuttle and further warm up your shoulder.
Important Note – We would advise doing a thorough physical warm up before you step on court to do your on-court warm up. Check out our ‘How To Warm Up For Badminton’ article for more information on this.
3) Drops & Lifts
Next up, one player starts by playing drop shots, varying the pace and direction. The other player can practice their lifts, focusing on lift accuracy and most importantly, length! After a few rallies of drops and lifts, swap around so the person who has just lifted now practices their drops, and vice versa.
At this point in the warm-up, you want to get a feeling for the speed of the shuttle, as well as practising other aspects of the game, such as your movement, timing, shot quality and consistency.
💡 Make sure you add in some movement when doing the drops and lifts, so both players are moving forwards and backwards, i.e., the person lifting isn’t just standing right in front of the net, and the person doing drops isn’t just standing on the back line!
4) Smashes
It’s now time to bring in some power, with the smash! You can either:
- Have one player smashing, and the other player lifting straight off the smash (then swap around after a few rallies).
- Have one player smashing and then playing a mid-court layoff (then swap around after a few rallies).
- Both players smash in the same rally, by playing a smash, block, lift and repeat!
💡 For singles players, you might choose to do more of a slice drop instead, and then move forward to the service line to push the net shot, then repeat. Alternatively, you could lift the next shot if you both want to work.
5) Quick Defence
Advanced players will always do some defence to the net, this helps to really get your defence and reactions going! This is an essential part of the warm-up for doubles players, where fast reactions are so important.
6) Net Shots & Reactions
This part involves both players standing near the service line and hitting the shuttle semi-cooperatively to each other, focussing on having fast eyes and fast grip changes. It’s important to also include some net shots here, getting that soft touch ready for your match ahead.
For singles players, you may choose to focus more on just net shots, to get comfortable with the feeling of the shuttle on the strings.
💡 As a general point, we recommend practicing some cross court shots in your warm-up too if you can. It’s very likely you’ll play cross court shots in your match so it can be good to practice these before and gain some confidence in playing them!
7) Serve & Return
It’s essential to practice some serves and return of serves, this will build your confidence in these shots, before you step up to do them in your match!
💡 Even if you’ve been through all these warm-up shots, don’t be afraid to tell your partner or opponent if you still want to practice something (time-permitting, of course!). We each have extra things we like to do before a match from mid-court control to full-court net routines!
Learn More
If you’d like a complete guide on how to warm up for badminton off the court before doing these drills, you can check out our article here.
Or if you’d like to watch our YouTube video on how to do the perfect on-court warm up, you can do so below!