Knowledge
Badminton warm-up and warm-down(1):Concept introduction
Before playing or practicing badminton, warming up can reduce the risk of sports injury.
Likewise warming down after playing speeds up lactose metabolism, eliminating the feeling of tiredness after the day’s exertion.Warming up and warming down are key steps when playing or practicing badminton.
Warming up and warming down are equally important
As the term suggest, warming up means warming up our body by stretching before we engage in exercise.
The length of muscles changes with different movements so the point of warming up before playing is to let the muscles adjust to the movements that they will be required to do when playing badminton in advance.
More importantly, by warming up the temperature of the muscles, injuries resulting from excessive contraction of muscles when we play can be prevented.
How can aches after an intense game of badminton be avoided? The answer is to always warm-down after exercise.
Stretching is also done during the warm-down and this is mainly intended to make the muscles, tight after exercise, relax.
During intense play muscles contract, shortening the muscle fibers and the tight muscles squeeze numerous blood capillaries, restricting blood flow so people will temporarily feel ischemic muscle pain, and it may also not be easy to discharge the metabolites produced during sport.
This means that suitable stretching pulls the muscles and return them to their pre- exercise length and eases muscle tightness after we play badminton!
We now know the importance of stretching when warming up and warming down. When should the stretching be static and when should it be dynamic?
Static and dynamic stretching should be used at different times: basically static stretching should be done at both the warm-up and warm-down stages.
While dynamic stretching should be done before a formal practice or a game, the aim being to stretch in advance the muscle groups that will be frequently used during a game of badminton, using dynamic stretching to achieve a muscle warming effect.
We recommend that both static and dynamic stretching should be done when warming up to play badminton. After exercise, gentle static stretching is recommended, on the one hand, to slowly bring the heart rate down and, on the other, relax the muscles.
