What Happens When You Stop Playing Badminton?

Are you struggling to figure out if you should stop playing badminton?

• Maybe you’ve lost motivation for your next round of training.
• Maybe you just don’t feel like you have the time, energy, or drive to keep going.
• Maybe you’ve got injured.
• Or maybe you just don’t progress as fast as you’d like.

I hear you. I’ve been there many times before in my last 18 years of playing badminton – and the last 8 years of playing badminton professionally.

In this blog post, you’ll discover exactly what happens when you stop playing badminton – and whether or not you should stop playing badminton in the first place.

As a quick overview:

So what exactly happens to you when you stop playing badminton?

1. Your shots (and reaction time) get worse

When it happens: After 2-4 weeks of not playing badminton.

Ever heard the saying “use it or lose it”? Well, it applies to your badminton skills as well.

If you stop playing badminton for a few weeks, the first thing you’ll notice is that your shots and reaction time get worse.

• You’ll temporarily lose your ability to hit consistent, good shots.
• You might not hit the shuttlecock correctly since you’re not used to the speed or distance from the racket.
• You might not serve correctly (or out of bounds).
• You might drop regular items (which you were used to catching in-flight, like spiderman).

In short, you get worse reaction times, and as a result, you get worse at badminton.

The good news here is that this is typically quickly regained. You have muscle memory, which means your brain has learned how to activate certain muscles at the right time to play badminton well.

You can imagine this as if you were riding a bicycle.

• If you stop riding a bicycle for a longer period of time, it’ll feel odd.
• However, you’ll still know how to ride a bicycle!

And within a few days of riding a bicycle, you get back to riding it normally. Right?

The same thing happens with your badminton skills. Quick to lose, but quick to regain.

Btw, if you are taking a break from badminton, you can prevent losing all your touch by hitting against a wall at home, practicing your grip in your room, or just bouncing a shuttle on your racket with some free time.

2. Physical Fitness: Weight Gain Or Loss Of Muscles

When it happens: After 1-2 months of not playing badminton.

The second thing that typically happens after not playing badminton for 1-2 months is that you’ll gain weight, lose stamina, or lose muscles.

Badminton is a very physical sport. So if you don’t do any physical activity in the meanwhile, your body will start to break down muscles, reduce your cardio – and put on fat.

You can combat this change with:

• Going to the gym.
• Improving your nutrition.
• And going for regular runs.

However, these things are often not as pleasurable as just playing badminton with friends. Right?

3. Your mental health may get worse

When it happens: After 3-12 months of not playing badminton.

“I need to restart badminton”, Alicia mentioned on a coaching call with me.

“Whenever I don’t play badminton, I feel bad.” – she continued.

Alicia stopped playing badminton 12 months ago. She got injured. The injury was healed after one month, but because she was not used to playing badminton anymore – she never restarted.

As a result, her mental health plummeted. About six months later, she ended up in a full-blown depression.

Please remember that sports, especially badminton, play a large role in your mental health.

Because you need at least one other person to play badminton with, the social aspect is a huge bonus for many people who choose to play badminton.

By taking a break, you might be losing a large social part of your life each week. Additionally, sport and exercise can release endorphins that improve your mood – if you choose to stay at home, you might be missing out on this.

Should You Really Stop Playing Badminton? The Pros And Cons

Having read the physical and mental aspects of your body, you might wonder if stopping to play badminton is really worth it.

Here are the pros and cons of stopping to play badminton:

If we look at the sheer quantity of the pros in comparison to the cons, it’s generally more beneficial to continue playing badminton. Unless you:

• Already found another sport that you love more (otherwise, this is likely an excuse)
• Are injured and can’t be active at all
• Have absolutely no money

So, if you’ve decided to continue playing badminton, here’s what you can do next:

How To Not Quit Playing Badminton [3 Simple Steps]

Becoming a professional player is not easy. In the 10-year process before turning pro, I’ve thought about quitting badminton many times over.

However, I’ve never ended up quitting. Why?

Here are 3 simple steps that helped me:

1. Never skip today

You may feel down today, and you may think about not going to practice.

Find all your willpower, and still go to practice.

if you still need rest the next time – then take a rest. But never, never ever – skip today.

This helps you build discipline and willpower and helps you find out if you actually don’t like badminton – or if you’re just being temporarily lazy.

2. Never skip twice.

Let’s imagine you feel like skipping again the next time you train. Now you can skip, and let your body rest.

But then the week after, you absolutely have to go.

You can skip once, but you should never skip two times in a row.

This helps you maintain the habit and most of your physical conditioning. If you never stop, you never have to restart (which is super painful).

2. Improve.

Oftentimes, we feel like quitting because we’re not making any progress.

As Tony Robbins, the legendary self-improvement expert, once said: “Progress equals happiness.”

So, your urge to quit badminton might actually reveal a suppressed desire to get better at it.

Counterintuitively, the best strategy then might be to train more and learn more about badminton.

In my journey, I’ve often hired coaches to help me get to the next level if I feel I’m starting to lose motivation.

Frequently Answered Questions About What Happens If We Stop Playing Badminton?

I’ve aimed to make this blog post as comprehensive as possible, but there might still be some pressing questions top of mind that I haven’t yet addressed.

Here are additional questions I thought of:

Is badminton hard on your body?

In general, badminton is a very safe sport for both young and older people.

While badminton can be hard on your body sometimes:

• The shoulder, especially, can be vulnerable to overuse.
• Additionally, knee injuries are common, as well as Achilles tendon, elbow, and feet.

It’s, in comparison to other sports, very safe and easy on the body.

• There’s no person-to-person contact, such as in soccer, football (rugby), or martial arts
• The shuttlecock is not as heavy as a tennis ball, so there’s a smaller risk of developing shoulder and elbow pain than tennis.

How do you play badminton after a long break?

Don’t try to go back to where you’ve been before. Instead, have patience.

Slowly ease yourself into it. It’ll take about one to two months for you to be at your previous level again, so please, don’t rush things.

• If you rush things, you may get injured or frustrated.
• Taking thing slowly allows your body to build up musculature and stamina again, making your joints ready for the increased pressure.

So, treat your body properly and have patience.

Can playing badminton cause muscle loss?

Unless you’re a pro-level bodybuilder, you’ll not have muscle loss when playing badminton.

• Just remember to eat sufficient calories.
• And do homeworkouts now and then to additionally stimulate your muscles.

The reason it may seem like you’ve lost muscle mass, is because you might be losing fat (which made your arms and other parts of your body look bigger).

So don’t worry!

For most people, the added stress of playing badminton will build muscles – not remove them.

Is badminton a lifelong sport?

Badminton definitely is a lifelong sport.

• The stress of the joints is low in comparison to other sports.
• It improves your heart health and reduces risks of heart disease, one of the leading killers in the United States.
• It improves bone density due to the higher impacts, reducing risk of osteoporosis.
• It improves reaction times and trains faster musculatures, which prevent fall in old age.
• It’s a social sport, making it easy to build great friendships.
• It’s fun, so it’s easier to stick to badminton long-term.

In short, it meets all the criteria for a lifelong sport.