Good if you don't like running part 2

Hoi Guus, Thanks for sharing this statistic info on my last article, I have also done some of this work in the past and it will tell you something about why rallys get won or lost and about how long the shuttle was in the air. But it tells you nothing about the intensity of the work while the shuttle was in the air. Just like with all kind of other training I have been looking at physical training and I always ask myself is it true, are the criteria right and most of all are the conclusions right. This way of looking at the rallys can give you a lot of information but you can hardly use it to make conclusions about how to do physical training for badminton players right and that was what I was looking for. So a couple of years ago I started looking of what is really happening in the rallys we are playing, while most coaches are looking at the time of the rally my focus was on time in relation to intensity within the rally. This has given a totally different picture and naturally also a complete other conclusion in the end, and that is what I use now in our coach education in both Denmark and Vietnam.

The thing that cost energy is not the walking we do on court it is when we from split-step have to move fast into a corner and even more if we have to change direction. Even in very long rally between 12 and 30 sec there are only a couple of times where this is really happening and you will find almost no rallys where the intensity with in the rally will be between 80 and 100%, so I have set my limit at 5 sec. But I can tell you right away that 3 sec is more realistic, I have picked 5 sec for a very practical reason, it makes better training in a badminton hall, 5 sec is what most players can run at top speed over 5 courts and with this length of time you can have most players working at the same time when you place them in a line of boy, girl, boy, girl.

I started to look this way at rallys when we were making some revolutionary changes in footwork training, this changes had everything to do with the way top players are moving on court. You can not really copy this way of moving 100% but it is something most coaches are doing and it is also where we make the big mistake in footwork training. I have already made detailed articles about this so I don’t want to go very deep into that now but if you like to know more about it have a look at articles like “Slowdown for more speed” and “good players don’t run” or “ the chain of events” .

This changed way of looking and working with footwork also made me look in another way to rallys played. It is not important how long the rally last but it is important how long and how high the intensity is within the rally. And based on that you can stop most running trainings we are doing today, and rethink the way we are looking at physical training. One of the coaches in our education program showed me a running test they did in the talent center in Spain, it was a 30+ year old beep test where you have to make a distance with in the two beeps, I believe everybody knows this test and I hope even more that most of you also think that it is totally useless for badminton. It tells you nothing at all about how a player will do on court the only thing you can use it for is a very very general look at the physical condition of the players. The best example I can give is from many years ago when I was doing my Elite coach education and we were working with the U21 talent team of Denmark. Jens Eriksen was about the be kicked out of this group because he could not do a cooper running test, all the coaches agree to let him go but I did not and that did not make me popular in the group of coaches. Time has proven me right Jens Eriksen become the number one on the World ranking list in Men double and the first Danish player to get a medal at the Olympics (needless to say that none of the other coaches can/want to remember they wanted to kick him out of the talent team). I was not a top elite coach then, I just did not see the point in running training, this stupid tests and the conclutions they made out of it.

I will post some videos again very soon where I show the right way to do physical training for badminton players, yesterday I told already how to do it outside, and I will give a short description about how you can do it in the hall. I do the training with a timer and every now and then I will take one or two sec. On or off the running time and I also play a little with the resting time. In general it is build up around the 5 sec work and 7 sec rest, the 5 sec work is a little too long and the 7 sec rest is too short but this way I hope to build up faster recovery time with the players and it has shown in the past that this theory works fine. You put the player on one line at the start of court 1 and let them run as fast as they can towards court 5, the focus is on a very fast start haswell has a very fast stop (don’t run out). After the fast stop turn around and wait for the next beep to run back, has alternative I also use a whistle and when I blow it the have to return extremely fast back to where they came from, or do a split-step and do two steps to the right or left. There are many ways to do this training so don’t only copy my way but try to make new exercises.