Benefits of playing Badminton

So yesterday I was having a conversation with my fellow player and he asked an interesting question “I have been playing badminton for 2 months now do these efforts will benefit me outside the badminton court?” This question motivated me to write an article about the benefits of playing badminton so that if you ever feel demotivated or if someone asks you is it worth to play badminton you can come back to this article

Playing badminton can be beneficial in various aspect like

• Mental benefits
• Physical benefits
• Health benefits
• Social benefits

Benefits of playing badminton

First, let’s discuss some Physical benefits

Strong legs

Even though badminton demands full-body movement but playing badminton will build tremendous strength in your legs

If you watch any professional player especially the ones who play singles you will see that all these player have massive leg muscles as compared to there upper body

Now you may not be playing professionally but even while playing a simple causal match you will be having a great workout of your legs

Even if you a person who always avoids leg day in the gym playing badminton can help you make your leg workout more fun

Reasons why badminton improves leg strength? During a game, you will be doing lunges, jumps and these are some great movements to build strength

Benefits of strong legs

• Prevents Lower Back pain:- By having strong quads, glutes, hip flexor, hamstrings it helps in building strength in the lower back
• Full toned body:- You may have come across a gym freak you have huge muscles on upper body but has chopstick legs well by playing badminton it will never happen with you

Power over huge muscles

Let’s be honest unless you are preparing for some bodybuilding competition or you have a special place in your heart about building huge muscles it can be hard to commit yourself for building strength in your body

This task can be achieved by playing badminton, it is a perfect sport for you is you want to build power in your body while not gaining too many muscles

You need to understand that there is a difference between power and strength

Strength:- Ability to overcome resistance (when you are lifting heavy weights)

Power:- Ability to exert force in the shortest period of time( In this reps are higher while weight used is lower)

Flexibility and Muscle toning

Flexibility

We already discussed how badminton involves movements like lunges, jumps, etc. to do these things you need to have a good amount of flexibility expecially when you are doing lunges

One of the main factors of improving flexibility is performing full range of motion when your body is warmed up and in badminton, you are constantly changing direction and chasing the shuttle so it will help you in increasing your flexibility

You should not solely rely on playing matches to improve flexibilty but after practice session give sepreate time to flexiblity exercise this will further improve your range of motion and also prevents you from getting injured

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Toned muscles

Do you know that at an average a badminton player burn 400 calories if he weighs around 70 kg in 60 minutes of play

Now if we compare burning this amount of calories to running you have to run at least 4 miles with a pace of 15 minutes per mile

Now if you were to given two choices either to play with your friends and burn these calories or run for one hour straight alone what would you choose?

The amount of calories burnt in badminton helps you to keep your body toned and helps in building muscles like core, butt, thighs, shoulder and what not

It is a great and fun way to keep your body in shape and loss some weight

Mental Benefits

Reaction time

Badminton demands a lot of speedy movements and the time you get to react to your opponent’s shot is relatively less than other sports and it is my personal experience that playing badminton can improve your reaction time

A study published by Ziemowit Bańkosz state that mean reaction time of a badminton player is 0.27s in boys compared to non badminton player which had mean time of 0.30s

Source

It might seem too small difference but those 0.03s is pretty big when we see the actual application of those reaction times

Having a good reaction time will not only help you play better but it is very important in other aspects of life

Benefits of good reaction time

• Good reaction time keeps you safer while driving
• Also, good reaction time can save you from getting beaten up by a person

Coordination among body parts

Playing badminton is like performing belly there are so much technique involved in badminton that if you master even half of them your body coordination will improve tremendously

I have personally experienced this benefit, it’s been 6 years since I started playing badminton and in these years my body coordination has been improving consistently

So back to the story 5 months ago I joined a dance class and my instructor was amazed by my progress until I told him that I am a badminton player

The thing that helped me during those dance session was my badminton practice the body coordination gained during these years made those dance sessions easier for me

So from my personal experience, I can say that playing badminton does improve your coordination

Peace of Mind

Everybody wants to be fully productive when they are doing something but it can be a hard task to achieve especially when your mind is not in a still state

Badminton helps you to achieve that if you are doing it in the right way

Exercise reduces levels of the body’s stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. It also stimulates the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that are the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators.

Source

I realized this benefit in my school I was able to remember a good amount of things in less time compared to the time before I started playing badminton

But a peace full mind is not only useful in remembering useless stuff in school it can also improve your ability to stay calm in a stressful situation which you face during your work hours or in your relationship

Health Benefits of Playing Badminton

Improve the immune System

Immune system refers to the organs and processes that protect the body from infection and other bacteria

I don’t know how to say this so that it will not sound fake but this is the truth, I suffered from the weak immune system until I was 10 year old and till today I don’t know the reason but due to this I used to get common cold very frequently

The amount of medication I got in my childhood made me weaker from the inside but after I started doing exercises I noticed some improvement in my body

It is not just badminton that will improve your immune system but any cardio exercise will do the work

But I was happier playing badminton then doing the same exercise over and over

If you are more into technical science stuff and likes to read long text on researches then there are some studies to support that exercise improve immune system

Strong and healthy heart

The biggest gift you can give to your heart is physical activity

The high levels of cholesterol decrease the size of blood vessels which may lead to a heart attack or a stroke

Playing badminton will help you decrease cholesterol in your body which will have a positive impact on your heart health

Badminton helps you to keep your blood pressure lower (when you are resting) because your heart blood pumping capacity improve during a physical activity your heart is also like a muscle the more you take work from it ( reasonably) the better it becomes in its function

High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease

Badminton is a very physically demanding sport and this improves the ability of your muscles to draw circulating oxygen from the blood. That reduces stress on the heart which is a muscular organ itself and reduce the work of heart to pump more blood to the muscles

And of course, if your weight is under control then it will benefit your heart

Bone density

It is well-known fact that exercise helps in improving bone density but not all exercise/activities provide similar results

Badminton demands a lot of back and forth movement which is a great way to improve muscle strength surrounding the bones and the force of muscle pulling against bone appears to be enough to stimulate bone growth even if the actual stress placed on the bone is moderate

But this does not mean that badminton is the ultimate mountain to improve bone density there are instances where player fractured their bone while playing badminton because they were using poor quality shoes, these are the shoes which I recommend if you want to badminton shoe once and for all

Less risk of diabetes

Badminton players sweat a lot and we know that it is a mechanism of the body to keep the body cool but you may not know that sweat also helps in reduce level of sugar in the body which is one of the reasons why a diabetic patent sweat a lot

Social benefits of playing badminton

Respect the rules

Each sport has some kind of rules which govern that sport and badminton is no different than others

Playing badminton helps you to keep your action in control as you will always be playing badminton according to the rules provided by BWF

This helps in building respect for authority in an individual which can be beneficial especially if you are a working person

Also playing the sport helps you to respect the laws which govern a body, the percentage of people( sportsperson) committing a crime are very low

Increase social skills

Badminton cannot be played alone you will be needing at least one player to play on court and this number increases to 3 if you are playing doubles

So we can say that it is a pretty social game and playing with other people, communicating with them helps in developing social skills

You will make new friends and new friendships mean new connections and a bigger social circle and network, which again can translate to career success later in life.

Communication skills are very important nowadays especially when people have such short attention span and your communication skills will improve as you start interacting with more people which again, can be accomplished by playing badminton

Control on your emotions

In sports, a player either win or loss and badminton teaches a person to control his emotions and learn to accept defeat and always thank your opponent after winning

Especially if you play doubles you will learn how to maintain good teamwork and control your frustration if your partner makes any mistakes which are essential even in during life

Do not blame others for your bad situation

Life is one hell of an emotional roller coaster and playing badminton will provide you some strength to cope up with it

Conclusion

So after reading, you have released that badminton is not just a sport but it can also improve the way you function in the society

Different benefits like emotional balance, heart benefits, bone density and many more, all these benefits will encourage you to play badminton

Also, share this with your friends to help them excel in life

If you know any other benefit of playing badminton which I missed in the post feel free to tell me in the comment section

Thank you for reading…