By Justin Ma, 7x US Junior National Badminton Champion.
Last updated January 7, 2021
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3 min read
Burpees are an exercise most everyone knows. Many coaches give these out as a punishment for doing something wrong. Most people do not like the exercise at all. However, my suggestion is that you should actively seek out burpees. Try and integrate it into your weekly routine. Find your own way to enjoy the exercise, because burpees are a perfect exercise for badminton players and should be done regularly. In this short post, I’ll show how to do different variations of burpees and how the benefits of burpees translate to badminton.
Burpees are extremely simple to do anywhere. Check out this short video on how to do burpees the right way.
One common variation of this exercise is to hold your body up on the way down and do a complete push-up before going back up. This means, instead of landing straight on the floor on the way down, your arms and shoulders will first brace the initial impact from the landing. Then, you will do a full push-up, perform the jump backwards, and then go back up to finish up the burpee. This variation is shown in video form below!
Burpees are a great way to finish out a workout or training session. Just like badminton in general, burpees have a lot of health and strength benefits that help out with the different movements in badminton.
Burpees help to train your explosive jumping power. With each jump, you are practicing the act of pushing you off the ground and up into the air, bracing yourself for the impact on the way down as well. In badminton, finishing jump smashes require a similar muscle activation to get yourself up into the air and finish the shot.
Similarly, when performing footwork from the middle to any of the corners, often times you will want to explode out to the corner rather than going slowly. These require similar muscle groups to the ones used in burpees. This explosive energy will be trained through burpee exercises.
Long sets of burpees help to train your full body muscle endurance. During long rallies in badminton, your lower body will feel the most impact. Lunging and jumping towards every shot requires a lot of lower body strength. Burpees will help you to keep your legs strong and ready for these longer rallier.
If you are an attacking player, you can also feel your smashes getting weaker as the rally goes on, or the match goes on. Burpees train your upper body endurance as well (particularly if you do the variation with push-ups). These help maintain the strength and speed of your smashes regardless of how long you are playing badminton!
Cardio health is extremely important in badminton. Through every rally, you can feel your heart beating fast and your lungs gasping for air. The more you train your cardio health, potentially through exercises such as running, the easier it will be to control your breathing and handle the pace of the rallies. Burpees are another exercise that you can do to improve your cardio health. Long sets at a pace that allows you to continue without stopping allows you to get the most reward for your cardio and improve your fatigue on the court the most!
Burpees aren’t the most exciting or the most fun exercise, but they are one of the most beneficial for badminton players. Try adding burpees to the end of your training sessions as a finishing exercise and do it until failure. Find a way to bring out this explosive strength from burpees into your smashes and kills. Let me know what you think of them and if you have any other conditioning suggestions!
If you’d like to see more drill highlights, training highlights, or more, please check out my YouTube channel and Instagram Highlight Feed, and feel free to reach out with any questions. See you guys in the next one!
