More specifically how much do you play, how many sessions and what kind of training do you do the week before a competitive match? Practice matches? Drills? Fitness? No badminton at all? I had a tournament last week and totally burnt myself out mentally and physically before it. I was so eager to compete and fare well on my first tournament that I played 3 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Did a little 1 hour workout on Tuesday too. Friday was the tournament day and I didn’t really feel competitive once there, barely played my usual game and got unusually tired too fast. Won the first match but from there my performance went downhill. Lost the second match in 3 sets after winning the first set and losing 24-22 on the second set, 21-18 on the third, a match I could have win I believe if I had prepare better or at least differently. I gave up fast too mentally which is not in my personality. I have another tournament next Saturday (and a few more before the Holidays) and wanted to learn from other players on here how do they manage their pre-tournament week and what gave them best results. Thanks for everyone who will take the time to share their experiences.
It was too much training yes, I over estimated my physical abilities. I plan to downsize the volume of my playtime this week with only one session on Monday and half a session on Thursday followed by a full day of rest before the tournament on Saturday. We’ll see, still experimenting and learning about myself. I’m having tournaments almost every week end until mid december so I’ll experiment what works best for me. How about you @Cheung , how do you prepare the week before a tournament?
I don't think you need to cut it down that much. I just keep playing and training as usual. The day before, it's important not to go full out and do two hours of hard games or train because you don't want muscle fatigue, muscle pain, depleted glycogen stores, mental tiredness to affect your game. The day before, I might do an hour with my coach but we adapt the training to be less physical and more on strokes. On the day of the competition, you have to be be careful with your planning. Do you have competitions where many matches are played on one day/weekend? If so, it is vitally important to look at nutrition planning. So l would not be drinking any alcohol the week before, eating a decent amount of carbs in the form of nuts and making sure protein intake is optimal. For breakfast on day of competition, don't over eat. Make sure you have enough nuts, energy bars, bananas, water and protein powder mixes with you during the day. Once you finish one match, you need to start planning for your next match which might only be twenty minutes later. To be honest, if you are fit, then two or three matches in a row might not affect you too much but certainly if you have four or more (like in the UK where people play singles, doubles and mixed in one weekend ), the performance is going to suffer near the end of the day. I agree totally about learning about yourself. What works for me my not work for you and I have been playing competitions for many many years now. On the day of the tournament normally, I would try to spend half an hour after a stretching session with a hitting partner before competition starts to get my feel of the shuttle going, keep the touch shots and activate my leg muscles. Today, I have a tournament and my preparation has been really bad. I am fit but not badminton fit with lack of time on court because of back pain. Luckily, the first opponents don't seem to be too strong so the first match will be my warm up. I also had to go out and entertain relatives visiting us from overseas so nutrition is not what I want it to be. I have protein powder mixed up so I will drink a bit of water before the match starts and straight after, add my whey/glutamine/BCAA mix to water and drink that in preparation for the next match and the match after. I have three portions prepared. I will be at another sportshall first where my daughter is training. I can do my warm up there before leaving to the competition venue. Normally, I will try to get to the competition venue at least 90 minutes beforehand to get into the mood of the venue and reached a relaxed but activated mental state by the time my match comes along. Once, I had a partner rush in exactly on time of registration and straight on court for warm up He had a problem with parking his car (waiting for a parking space which is not easy in Hong Kong) and that meant time was really tight. His mental state was really poor, he didn't play well and we lost a really tight match against the number one seeds. So today, my preparation won't be great but supporting my daughter in her badminton training is important as well.
I always take the day off before a competition as a rest day. In fact, my club kinda keeps tracks of peoples competitions and won't let someone play the day before they compete, even if the person wants to! haha. If I'm super busy with my job or life, and feeling run down, I take 2 rest days off. But I never cancel my training with my coach even if that is the day before. But he knows and he'll train me something good, but not too tiring (like return of serves or defense without a lot of footwork.) I always seem to have the unfortunate luck of being the first 8am game. So I try to get there as early as I can for warm-up but I'm finding many competitions here have some strict rules about how early you can go onto the court. I need a lot of warm up time, but will often only get 5-10 minutes which kinda sucks. So the first game is often a warm-up for me too. The real annoyance comes when my games are scheduled at like 8am and then 2pm. There is no way to stay warmed up in that situation. I do body warm-up before the second game on my own, but that's really the worst kind of schedule for me. But you are asking about the week before right? For me there is a HUGE difference in my playing based on how rested I am. So that's why the rest day is so important for me the day before, and good sleep like 2-3 days before is also key. So I make myself go to bed early and not stay up all night playing watching youtube videos like I normally do. Good luck to her! And to you!
In fact, my preparation for this tournament has been terrible. I took relatives out last night to Oktoberfest which meant ... Alcohol.. . Did not get a good sleep. Woke up late. No breakfast .. Only had a glass of coconut water. I bought some fruits and so ate a couple of banana and apple. Luckily games were not too hard. We had a late lunch in between the last sixteen and quarter final match. So what we did was stretch a bit, go out and had a meal of beef and eggs with some rice (a Chinese dish) and Chinese soup. Go back in for the next match an hour and a half later, register again, take a long time for stretching and try to get some court time to hit shuttles. (also did other things like drinking more water and going to toilet). We chose the beef and egg meal because it lasts longer in the stomach. If we had a sandwich type meal, we might have felt hungry during the match. Our quarter final match lasted over an hour. Three sets We won 21-16 in the third set. Under the circumstances of poor preparation I felt I performed fairly well. Semifinals and final are two weeks later so really, I need to put better preparation in having a decent chance of a medal. This competition is the Hong Kong Masters.
I only play singles as I don’t know how to play doubles well enough yet (I don’t even try but I shall get to it next year if I find a partner) therefore in France, the matches of each category are condensed in one day so I only play on one given day. If you reach the final that can be 6/7/8 matches depending of the number of participants but I don’t have the level to get there yet. Tournaments starts as early as 7.30 am and can last until late evening. Lots of participants and categories. I play in P12 or the lowest level, the highest being N1 which are the elite French players. I need 6 results to make an average and eventually bump category but I won’t reach higher than P10 I believe. Well I can see I have a lot to learn about nutrition. That’s something I’m careful with (lost 5 kg in a year) on a daily basis as I carefully check what I eat in a day and try to balance my diet properly. Yet I don’t really make a special effort like you do to optimize my performances. May be I should take more proteins and carbs (including sugars) the day before and on the competition day. Will do some more research this week end. As for feeling the mood of the venue I totally understand. I did that and needed to do that as I couldn’t imagine myself arriving just in time. However I couldn’t hit any shuttles before the first match and that was not ideal. Pretty awesome to know your daughter and yourself both share the same passion. Good luck to her with her training!
I can take the day off too the day before, kinda, but as far as sleeping time is concerned I cannot get more than 7 hours which is still decent as my wife and I are raising a little toddler of 2 hehe and he is right in sleep regression mode those days but he is an easy little boy though so not a major issue here especially he is still a big sleeper it is more that I usually study until late at night. I hear you regarding warm up time, had none on the last tournament and just used the first match to warm up too.. not ideal but it’s like that for a lot of players I guess and something I need to get used to if I want to perform better on tournament days.
Well that’s some serious results, congrats! Especially considering you were not feeling perfectly prepared. It is odd to play the semi and finals weeks later though. Not sure if I would still be on my momentum if it would happen to me.
I think it's a very individual thing to do how you train before a tournament / match. Some people need 1-2 hours of training the day before and some do not. You shouldn't go to your limits. The best thing is to try different things and then decide for yourself what works best for you. But what is true for everyone, 48 hours before a tournament the nutrition should be right. That makes a lot of difference.
Yes I admit that except for the fact I eat a balanced diet, rather healthy, with low sugar intakes, I do not really try to maximize my physical performances through nutrition, especially on the day where I just had what was available there which was a chicken sandwich. Will prep and bring my own food next Saturday.
Since you play singles, you can alter the Thursday training a bit. Just get a few footwork patterns going, practice netshots and practice serve. Don't go past 8.30pm because you have early starts. The main thing is maintain your feel for the shuttle hitting the racquet on touch shots. However, you should not only play the shot Try to remain a little active in your preparation with split steps and rhythm of movement when doing netshots. Keeping your rhythm is just as important as any other aspect of the game. I remember with my coach, we did do some training on the day before training. We went through some of our regular routines to maintain what I had practiced before. We did some three shot training drills. And once I felt a little tired, we didn't push any further. The training was in the daytime so I had a 24h rest period.
That’s great training advices, thank you. Instead of doing preparation matches I will follow your advices and prepare some light exercices like you suggested. It’s also what I lack as a advanced beginner, shuttle feel/touch and confidence so I like those drills at the net or the ones I can practice my strokes like my sliced drops that I can do pretty well for my level but that I always miss when lacking confidence and playtime. I always feel that if I don’t play for a week I will loose all that I acquired in the past year. Also I will try not to watch too many badminton matches this week as not to give me a badminton overdose like it did two weeks ago... I planned a weekly meal plan based on those sources I will link below for anynone who seek nutrition information for sports. I particularly like the natural energy drink using honey water and I will add chia seeds. Sources: Victor, Legion Athletics - https://legionathletics.com/foods-to-boost-endurance/ - http://www.victorsport.com/badmintonaz/7677/Diet-planning-suggestions-for-athletes-Part1 - http://www.victorsport.com/badmintonaz/7743/Diet-planning-suggestions-for-athletes-Part-2 - http://www.victorsport.com/badmintonaz/8552/A-Good-Partner-for-Badminton-Players-Honey-Water
I personally would not drink this. A. I don't like sweet drinks. B. Not knowing how you mix it up, too sweet could mean an osmotic effect drawing body water into your intestine. C. The other thing is overdoing it might cause an insulin surge.
I will be careful with how much honey I add, may be just a bit to try and on a small quantity, like in a bottle of 50cl to get a few sips here and there along the day. I actually tried it tonight and it was pleasant to drink I will say, yet with the small amount of honey I added (added more chia seeds) it was not really energetic I guess but after reading your points, I’ll stick to that... last thing I want is one of those things you mention happening to me.
Just an ironic update, today is tournament day. Woke up at 6am (2 hours drive to the tournament’s location) to a flat tire... no more tire jack in the trunk to change the spare wheel... I thought I was prepared though. It’s funny how sometime even when we try our best something out of our control will get in the way. Well that’s not that big of a deal to be honnest, just materialistic mishaps. The next tournament I was supposed to do was in Monaco (4hours drive) next Saturday and yesterday they rejected my registration (too many participants). Better luck next time. Time to prepare even better for the next tournaments!
Real bummer... had to call the organizers and withdraw. If it would have been later than 6.30 am I would have ask a neighbor a tire jack but I will not disturb them at this time on a Saturday morning. Thought of getting a cab but the price of services in France is a tad ridiculous. Would have set me back 200 euros just to get there. Well I should have simply go there the day before (or have a tire jack) which is what I will do next time. I guess I’m still learning how to prepare for a tournament hehe. I was well prepared nutrition wise though this time, had some meals prepped for the whole day. But I feel pretty boosted though as I feel like I have a revenge to take on myself. Will approach this week’s practice session with great motivation!
really, it is our fault. You asked us to tell you how to prepare for a tournament and not a single person said "make sure you have a tire jack." Next time I will be sure to mention it if someone asks how best to prepare for a badminton tournament. Anyway, too bad! Hopefully you'll make some big improvements in training this week and beyond and next tournament you will not only get to on time, but you'll play stronger games as well!
Hehe Yes thank you, I will focus on improving my game now. Good luck to you too for the next tournaments.
