By Justin Ma, 7x US Junior National Badminton Champion.
Last updated September 1, 2021
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2 min read
Explosive speed and jumping power are extremely important in badminton. With stronger legs and faster jumps, you are able to get around the court quicker and get to the shots faster. When you reach the shots earlier, you can hit stronger and quicker shots to surprise your opponents and win points. In this post, we will look specifically at a few ways that you can improve your vertical jump and in turn, improve your jump smash.
Lunges are a great exercise to improve your explosive speed in badminton. When doing footwork, you generally end up doing a lot of different lunges (side, front, and back). Practicing reverse lunges help you to strengthen your legs and prime your jumping movements in a real badminton game.
There are many different variations of lunges you can do. Add in some weights, knee drive throughs, or different jumps to create a more engaging training routine. You can also do pure jumping lunges!
High knees are another great exercise you should be doing to improve your explosive jump power. Generally, these are pretty simple. To make it a bit harder, bring your knees as high as you can and increase the tempo you perform the exercise at.
Finally, we can also leverage many different types of jumps in different series to work on your actual jumping movement and utilization of the proper muscles.
Some jumps could include:
Take a look at the video above for some more examples or search these terms on YouTube for a more clear example of exactly what you will be doing!
It’s important to set aside time to work on our muscle strength and power as well. We all love playing matches and working on technique, but it is just as important to spend time improving our pure muscle strength.
Try giving a few of these exercises a try next time you are doing a plyometric training session and let me know how it goes! If you are looking for more ways to improve your badminton game, make sure you head over to our YouTube channel for drills and other conditioning exercises. Thanks for stopping by, see you all in the next post!
