How do you guys warmup? I get very fustrated inside when people try to beat me in warmup. For me warmup is warmup, to lose your joints, strechs your muscle and pefecting your various shots and sharpen your defense. So what I like warmup to be is a sequence of clears, than smashes and defense lifts, than some flat drives, and drops and redrops. I want the warmup to have a good float, it just piss me off when people try to win the rally in warmup, couldn't they wait until the game start? There are only few guys warmup like I do, the rest are seek and destroy kinda warmup. Of course, there are always guys who like show off their mini-jump smashes and that all they do in warmup is jump smashes, they don't care about warming up other skills. Than I get rude and laugth at them when they can't return my smash, and i get very sarcastic and say, yeah, you need to warmup more on your jump smashes.
Clears, drives, smashes, and finally drives. If I am playing singles, then I'll do a few serves to get use to the lines. I think the whole mentallity of seek and destroy is based on intimidation rather warming up.
fg, i know what you are talking about, there are people who will start trying to kill you the moment they step into the court. i sometime ask them if they want to do some warm up first, and most of the time, they are ok with it. however, some are there just to have fun and don't even understand the point of warming up. there is really no need to be rude though. anyway, to answer your first question, here is what i try to do: - first phase of warmup is stretching. focusing on leg and arm muscles, should be around 5 mins or so (or however long it takes me to wait for a court to free up ). this is to loosen up the muscles. - second phase is light shots, consist of very loose and slow drives and light half court clears. goal is to "gain the touch", use your wrist and focus on the feeling of the birdie impacting on the racket. those shots makes you look like a complete beginner. - third phase - drives. - fourth phase - drops, lift and clears. - fifth phase - drop-drop-clear, this is a very simple drill that makes you run back and forth with your partner. loosens up your lower body and also let your mind get used to the motion. also pumps up your heart for the rest of the day. - sixth - a mixture of smashes and drops / defense. as hard as you are comfortable with. - seventh is some half court rallies. obviously, it is tougher if there are time constraints. i hardly get to do the complete set during club play, but i always insist on doing it before a tournament..
When someone does that to me I just push them way off the court with a Super Clear that they can only return midcourt then I just put it away with a Super smash on my own. I'll keep doing this till they do a proper warm up.
Today, I warmed up by stretching and playing in another venue for an hour, then the next hour was travelling to the tournament, the third hour was the actual match. I felt very comfortable having stretched and played some games beforehand. I lost the practice games but hey, that was OK..
This is almost what I prefer as a warmup, except I like to add step six and a half: close net shots with doubles partner on half court - one does only straight drops, the other only cross drops; then after about 10 shots switch. This is probably not possible with any partner, but it really gets your touch shots at the net ready. I also like to jog or do footwork drills off court before I stretch. It makes the large muscles warmer and more flexible so you can stretch better.
I got some pretty good advice that I try to follow from the tennis book Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert (Agassi's coach) that applies equally to badminton as it does to tennis. Before the usual stretching and then rallying, I jog a bit in a square, going forward, then sideways to the left, backwards then sideways right to the starting point. I've found that the backwards and sideways jogging/shuffling helps loosen me up better than just stretching.
i felt intimidated a few times when i was warming up w/people, before a match even when doing clears the other guys would just wan't to blow you off the court .. and weren't really interested in warming up at all .. they just want to show u they got more power than you ..
Not really sure why anybody would want to power smash in a singles warm up. If your opponent is going to do that, why let him smash from your midcourt lift? Get him to smash from your lift to the rear of the court. If he can put the shuttle down from there without you touching it, well, just try to enjoy the game because chances are he's already too strong for you. If you can block the shuttle back, you've scored a psychological point over his smash. Enjoy the game!!
