Badminton is one of the most entertaining and fun sports to play with friends. But is badminton easy to play, or is it too hard after all? Well, let’s discuss it in this article.
Without any fluff in the introduction, let me give you the answer right away.
Badminton is not a hard sport to play. Even though playing professional badminton is physically demanding, you can play badminton pretty easily if you’re playing it for fun. All you need is a friend, two rackets, a shuttlecock, a net, and a badminton court.
But if you’re considering it seriously, either for taking as a profession, or playing it for fitness purposes, there are some other things that you need to understand before choosing badminton. Make sure you stick around.
Let’s dive right in and discuss the topic in detail.
Is Badminton Hard To Play?
Let’s see whether badminton is hard to play based on various factors. The most important one is physical fitness. Does badminton require good physical fitness? Is badminton a physically demanding sport? Well, the great thing about badminton is that you can play the game on different levels.
If you’re a physically fit person with good stamina, you can play badminton in the normal way, just like how the professional players play the game.
In that way, you might need to cover a lot of areas of the court with fast movements and shots. This requires good physical fitness and stamina. If you’re physically weak, and you play against a player with high stamina and fitness, chances are you’ll lose the game for sure.
Hence, if you want to play professional badminton or the highest level of the game, you need to be pretty good with stamina and fitness.
However, if you’re playing the game for fun with your friend who isn’t interested to move around the court a lot, then you can play with him. Both players can stand still and hit the shuttle back and forth and play badminton for fun. That’s the beauty of this game. You can adjust the game according to your fitness level (only if the opponent is also like you).
How Far Do You Run In A Badminton Game?
A typical badminton game lasts about 40-50 minutes. According to various researches, the average distance covered by a badminton player in a singles game is 3.5 to 4 miles, whereas the average distance covered by a doubles player is 1.5 to 2 miles.
As you can see from this fact, badminton players do cover a lot of areas while playing the game.
When we compare badminton with other sports such as tennis, even though the duration of a badminton match is less than half the time of a normal tennis match, the distance covered in badminton is twice the distance covered in tennis. Also, badminton players hit twice the amount of shots hit in a tennis match.
Some people have a doubt about the learning curve in badminton. How long does it take to learn badminton? Well, the game doesn’t require much learning. It is a very simple game with uncomplicated rules. You can understand how to play the game within minutes.
How To Play Badminton?
In this sport, two players can compete against each other or two pairs of players who challenge each other; the couples at a time can be formed by two players of the same sex or mixed man and woman in pairs as well as the opponents.
This sport is practiced in a specific playing field and then observing the rules which have been decided and established by the World Federation.
Each player or pair of players must take their place in the half field assigned to them on one side of the net that cuts the rectangular field, a field delimited by lines.
We must first keep in mind these main game rules:
- The server and the receiver must stay in the diagonally opposite service fields without touching the lines that delimit them.
- The whole shuttlecock must be under the waist of the servant at the moment of impact with the racket (The line around the body at the height of the lowest part of the last rib of the servant).
- The shaft of the servant’s racket must face downwards upon impact with the shuttlecock.
- The server and the receiver must stay in the diagonally opposite service fields without touching the lines that delimit them.
The aim of the game is to hit a shuttlecock with a racket that must pass over the net so that the opponent cannot send it back before it can touch the ground, also making sure that it does not touch the ground outside the limits of the field.
Each time this happens, the player or pair earns one game point. The first player or pair who reaches 21 points wins a set.
If both have 20 points in a draw, then the game continues until there are two points ahead of the opponent.
If the score is 29 even, the athlete with the 30th point wins the game.
An entire Badminton match can consist of an odd number of sets that will be decided in advance, although normally there are always 3 sets, we could find 5, 7, 9 among friends. We can decide the number we want, as long as it is an odd number. In professional badminton, 3 sets are played normally.
The winner of the match will be the one who wins more than half of the sets. So if there are 3 sets, we win if we win 2 sets; if there are 5 sets, we win with 3 sets awarded; in the case of 7 sets, we have to win 4 and so on.
Types of Shots Used In Badminton
As in other similar games, such as tennis, here too, we can use different types of shots to get the point.
The most important are:
- “Clear“, which consists of a single stroke of the shuttlecock and is used to send it to the back of the court in such a way as to obtain an opponent’s retreat as much as possible; Clear can be defensive or offensive. More precisely, we would call it offensive, if the trajectory is rather tense and consequently fast, while it will be defensive if the trajectory is high and consequently slow.
- “Drop“, is the shot that tries to send the shuttlecock as close as possible to the net, using little force in the shot from the back of the field, also, in this case, it can be offensive or defensive. In the “defensive”, the trajectory is slow and falls very close to the net. Instead, in the “offensive”, the trajectory is tense and faster, and the flywheel falls a little farther than the net.
- “Smash“, it’s the shot that is performed almost exclusively with a jump; this is certainly the fastest shot of this sport where the shuttlecock can reach even the 300 Km per hour speed.
- “Lift“: The player to beat from the baseline uses what is called the “Lift”, also here it differs in offensive and defensive. The lift is, therefore, the technique with which the flywheel rises which in the “defensive” will be high and seems like “a bell trajectory” while in the “offensive” the shot will be tense and fast to give the opponent less and less time to return to the center of the field.
- “Cut“, also called “Spin Drop” is a shot that starts from under the net and tries as much as possible to send the short and low shuttle to the other side, it is so-called because, through a certain movement, the shuttlecock turns on itself while making its trajectory.
- “Kill“: this shot constitutes the net closure, comparable to the smash.
There are many others, and mostly they are variants that modify the playing style and the technique of the athlete.
This sport of unparalleled fun embodies the characteristics of many other sports such as tennis, volleyball, etc.
It is a real footwork game since the speed of the movements is fundamental; knowing how to best use your legs by covering all corners of the pitch with little energy wage helps the athlete to be a true and skilled player.
It’s a sport suitable for anyone, in fact, anybody. It does not only require physical power, but agility, cunning and quick reflexes are necessary. All these characteristics can also be acquired over time by practicing this sport, especially from an early age.
Being a varied and complete sport, it guarantees the athlete benefits on joint mobility, coordination, dexterity, reflexes and helps to release stress. This discipline helps in communication and collaboration as well.
Final Thoughts
Badminton is not a complicated sport. It is rather a very simple sport which can be played for fun by anybody within any age group. However, if you’re taking the game seriously, you need to be pretty good with fitness (both physical and mental) and stamina. If you have the toughness, you’ll definitely level up your game.
I hope this article was helpful. If it was, do share it so that others can find it as well.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy the game!
