Showing Up Ready

Showing up ready to train is a big deal when it comes to having meaningful practices. Being ready involves a few different aspects. The physical aspect, are you there with all the equipment you need, on time, with your body ready to put the work in? And the mental side, are you there focused and mentally prepared for the adversity that is training?

Here are some tips I have found helpful for getting ready to train.

PHYSICAL

Don’t eat a heavy meal before training. This may seem like old hat, but showing up to training feeling the weariness of post meal nap syndrome is not ideal for training.
Show up five to ten minutes early. You need to be on court the time that training starts, not show up at the time. The minute training starts you want to be making progress. Be ready and warmed up!
Make sure you bring a water bottle. Walking to the water fountain may not seem like it takes that long, but the truth is that time adds up, and every step away from the court is an opportunity to lose focus and for your mind to wander. Stay close, be efficient, and stay focused!

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MENTAL

Keep the goals close. If your goal is to medal at provincial championships, keep that in mind throughout practice, remind yourself why you are practicing, and why you need to be doing everything perfectly.
Focus on what you can change. All sports are a battle with adversity. It is important to focus on the aspects of that adversity that you can affect. Your attitude, your effort, your play, control, focus ect. And not to get bogged down by the external things like poor shuttlecock quality, lighting, drafts, sick stomachs, or even training partners who aren’t as good or as focused as you are. Make sure you hold yourself to the standard you want to create, and let the rest go.
Stress creates growth – embrace obstacles. Bright lights in the background? Just another opportunity to practice for the unknown obstacles at a tournament. Didn’t get the meal you wanted before practice? Training for those delayed games where you are standing in for hours waiting for your match to be called while they fix a broken court, or wait for the roof to quit leaking. (both have happened to me at international events).

At the end of the day how we show up to practice/tournaments/off court trainings will dictate how the practice goes, and how we progress and improve.

I hope my tips were helpful. Comment and let me know of other things you do to make the most of practices!

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Keeping Things Simple

Building on the last few blog posts about training. I would like to move forward to the next topic – keeping training simple. This goes hand in hand with my past posts about focus and intentionality. It is another piece of the puzzle that I have been working on recently.

Keeping training simple has a few different aspects, and a lot of benefits. It is easy to waste a lot of time on the non essentials. I have found that in trying to fix everything at once I inevitably fix nothing. This means that the first step towards simplifying training is creating tangible and focused improvement goals. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say I need to fix my backhand side defense. Working with my coach I realize I have two major issues that are hindering all the rest. The first is a lack of strength in my left leg when I get low. The second is a technical issue of my contact with the shuttlecock. There could be lots of other things in my game that need fixed. Maybe I need a harder a smash, and need to come to the net faster. Those are things that will be addressed in “general training” all that time you spend on court doing various drills. But looking at my matches, perhaps I am rarely able to get into a position to smash and follow to the net quickly because I end up making errors on my backhand defense. To balance my game out I will spend a significant amount of time on my backhand defense.

Following the example above I would need to keep practices focused on one of two things, my leg strength, or my technical issues with my BH defense. I could separate these into two separate training sessions. Perhaps at home I could do pause lateral lunges and RLE split squats to build some leg strength. On the court I would break my practice into a very few drills to work on my BH defense.

I kept one goal at a time – BH defense. Then I broke that goal into two main parts, and separated them into different practices. I would follow that up and keep the number of exercises to a minimum as well. Pick the most efficient ways to improve and stick to those. Make sure the quality is really high and you are staying mentally focused. Time and energy are both limited. Make the best use of both and stay focused on the goal you set for yourself.

How do you keep your practices focused on specific goals? Let me know in the comments!

Onward and upward!

Kevin

A Home Badminton Session

I wrote out this short simple footwork session for a few of my students, but realized it may be helpful to others as well. I encourage you to try it and let me know how it goes!

First off, why footwork?

Footwork is a few different things, but in large part it is a skill. Something that needs practiced and perfected. There is a physical and fitness element to it, as in all sports, but it is foremost a skill. The timing, rhythm, foot position, hip position etc are all critically important.

Whenever you do footwork you should give yourself specific skills to work on. For me during my footwork today I was working on the timing and push off my left foot. Watching my hip position and the timing of bringing my racket foot in towards the split step.

Footwork Session

Warm Up – 2 rounds

10/side low lunge with reach

25 low squats

50 jumping jacks

Footwork 30 seconds rest between each set 20 sets of 20 corners

5 sets of 20 front 4 defense corners

5 sets of 20 late back court to late front court

5 sets 20 2 corner defense

5 sets of 20 defense and back court

3 rounds fitness

5 Pushups

10 supermans

10/side bird dogs

10/side banded fire hydrant

50 skipping rope or pogo hops

10/side lateral lunges

Core 3 rounds

15 hollow rocks

25 Russian twists

20 plank shoulder touches

20 superman planks

You may notice that all the footwork for this session is defense position footwork. That was done on purpose as the goal was timing the push and finding that hip position in defense. I did my session in the grass. But you can do it in your garage, basement, living room, driveway, anywhere you can find space!

Don’t forget to stay low and push with the non racket foot, don’t pull with the racket foot!

If you have questions please comment below. Or tell me how your training is going during this period of physical isolation!

Onward and upward

Team Spirit – Help Others Help You

You won’t improve alone. You need people to help you, and you need them to improve too.

The last few posts I have talked a lot about personal development. I want to take that a step farther and talk about team development, and why I think we all need a team with us, and behind us.

You can do a lot of work on your own. If you are really smart, you can do quite a large portion of work by yourself. In the gym, outside, even footwork. It is hard to go beyond just putting in work if you don’t have people behind you.

Having people behind you can look vastly different depending on your level, and your access to professional advice. As a junior athlete, and my first few years out of juniors I did not have a consistent coach that I worked with. From a very young age I made it a habit of connecting with coaches and athletes wherever I went. The majority of my years as a junior athlete I created all my own training plans and led my own practices. This meant that I relied heavily on the advice of other coaches and athletes. I would ask a load of questions every tournament. Talk to athletes, ask how they trained, and what they thought my biggest weaknesses were. I asked coaches how to improve and what I should fix before the next tournament. I created a network of people who helped me.

As I have improved and moved into international competition I found that I need a lot more input and the improvements were much smaller and more precise. Both on and off court. I am very thankful I found professionals to help guide my improvement. That is a story for another blog post. I began working with Gao badminton for my on court and Jeff at Sweaty Training for my off court training. Now I have people behind me, supporting me. But that is only half the story. The title includes the word “Team” and that is the critical next step.

You need good teammates to help you train – and you need them to be improving with you.

On court especially you need to have good people to train with, and compete with. You need people who will push you, feed you quality drills, and keep you accountable for always doing your best.

Having good teammates means being a good teammate, and fostering the kind of culture you want to train in. You want someone to feed you good drills, stay focused, and keep the quality high? Then make sure you aren’t slacking when it is your turn to feed. Do you want constructive criticism, and positive engagement? Make sure you are being constructive and positive.

Being the teammate you want to have around has other positive side effects. If you are focused during your time feeding drills you will find yourself improving more. You will also have teammates who are improving and helping push you more and more.

Improvement is multifaceted. There are a lot of things you do on your own, but there are also things you need other people for. It is important for me to be the kind of teammate I want around. It helps everyone, which in turn helps me.

Onward and upward folks!

Let me know what you think, and your own ideas for train in the comments.

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The Right Headspace – Being Focused

It is time to put your ex’s texts and your poor grades on the back burner and put some work in.

Life is a confusing mess, full of things that require our attention and our loyalty. Take that from the kid who has played tournaments during moves, breakups, friend’s illnesses, family sickness, loss of friends, and pretty much anything else that could confuse or distract from performance.

All of those things in life are important, and worthy of your time, consideration, and energy. Sport is different though, it can’t be split up or divided. It cannot share headspace, and it requires attention to detail. This means several things to me. I can use sport to give myself a break from the confusion of whatever is happening outside. But I also can use it to train myself to focus on one thing at a time. The truth is that most things in life shouldn’t share headspace. Learning to focus on one thing at a time is an invaluable skill. Performance always requires undivided attention, sports included. The problem is, performance isn’t always our number one concern – it becomes such when we partake in things like sports, test taking, or flying helicopters.

Focusing at tournaments starts with focus at training. You need practice focusing intently. You also gain a lot more from training when you are focused well. We need to learn how to focus well!

I have been competing for a lot of years, been reading books on sports psychology for almost as many years, and I have a few tricks that work for me. However, like all things you will need to find what works for you. I am no sports psychologist, and while I have worked with a few, the following is simply an explanation of what works for me – don’t just mimic me, find your own set of tools!

Put the phone away! The first, and simplest thing I do before practice and before competition is put my phone away at least half an hour before I get on court. If it is a tournament often putting the phone away first thing in the morning helps me stay focused on competing.

Visualize. It is often the unknown that scares us. Visualizing helps run through every scenario. Have you ever been in a situation on court where you just lost three straight points and your tactics aren’t working? I have. The easiest solution is to run through the different possibilities before the match and contemplate how you will respond. That way whatever happens you have already been there. You aren’t unprepared and taken by surprise. You are mentally prepared and focused. You have been there before, and played it through,

Find something concrete to focus on. Don’t let the what-if’s get you off your game. Find something concrete to focus on. This plays out in several different ways for me. I often use my racket grip as my focal point. I feel it, and concentrate on its texture and position in my hand, as well as the tension in my hand. This helps me remain calm and in the moment. I also give myself specifics to focus on in the rally. Have I been giving away the net? Hanging back too far? Then I give myself the goal of taking control of the net and getting there early. Your mind can’t wander if it is working hard on something!

Breathing. There are lots of different breath protocols for efficient energy use, focus, remaining calm, getting pumped up, ect. But there are a few very simple things I try to focus on. Nasal breathing – between rallies using nasal breathing helps keep me calm while helping drop my heart rate. Hard exhales– get rid of that carbon dioxide! There are lots of other breathing techniques, but those two things help me the most.

Stay focused, stay in the moment!

Hopefully this was insightful and interesting. Have your own techniques for staying focused? Share them in the comments!

Onward and upward!

99B98833-0731-49AC-8C6C-9D1255103C19 — Photo by Orlando Athayde

Training With Purpose

Training With Purpose: get the most out of your training.

I recently read a tweet thread about the difference between training and what they called fitnessing. The idea was that training has distinct goals and progressions, while simply fitnessing is just putting effort out without a goal. While this is very true with fitness training, the idea follows through all of training.

Do you know what your goals are? Do you know the purpose behind each drill? Is everything you are doing progressing and pushing you towards your end goals? Showing up and putting work into training mindlessly will soon leave you stagnant and without improvement. That is not what any athlete wants. However it is easy to get into a routine of just showing up and putting the work in and not being mindful of progressions and purpose in each drill.

These can be tough questions to answer. I have a few things I have learned over the years that help me stay focused on the right things and progressing in the ways I need to be.

First, listen to your coach. As simple as that sounds it is actually really important. A good coach will have purpose and progressions built into every workout and every practice, but often the athlete doesn’t pay enough attention to the coach and just does the drills put before them without paying attention to the specific purpose of the drill. Listen to your coach and if you don’t understand the exact purpose of a drill then ask!

Once you talked to your coach, listened to the purpose, it is your turn to make sure the planned purpose plays out. Make sure your focus and effort follows the specific purpose. If you are doing max effort sprints with a full rest, make sure you are both putting max effort in and taking your full rest. If you are doing an on court front court endurance isolation make sure you are focused on consistency and endurance and not hitting tight or fancy shots. Keep your focus on the purpose!

Know your end goals. It is hard to train without knowing the end goal is. End goal is a broad term. It can mean both the end goal of a specific drill or exercise, or it could be your long term improvement goals. We talked last post about processing and thinking over those goals. Now it is time to keep them in mind while you work. This means taking responsibility for your own training. If you are working with a coach make sure you are talking to them. Don’t blindly show up at training – know your weaknesses and strengths, and work together with your coach to know what those are and what you will do to train them. Knowing these things does several things. It helps you understand each practice better and focus your efforts and understand the plan your coach has. It also allows you to visualize and spend your own time working ahead. In times such as the current self isolation it allows you to keep training and making improvements even when you can’t see your coach daily.

Make sure you are working towards your goal every day! You have talked with your coach, outlined your goals, and processed your trainings through training journals ect. Now it is time to make sure every day you do one thing to push ahead. I have found it much easier to follow my plan and work forward when I have the goal of doing one thing every day. Not everything every day, just one thing. I know that personally I need to get stronger, and increase my endurance, but I also need better defense. I don’t try to do both things, I focus on one. This session is strength and power. Next session is defense. Keep it precise and focused. Keep it consistent. Do something everyday!

I hope you found this helpful. Lets keep at it folks! Onward and upward!

If you have any ideas or questions for future posts or youtube videos comment and let me know!

Thanks!

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Training As a Lifestyle

Training As a Lifestyle – the basics of living and training well

Last week we talked about training during tough times. Today we will follow that up and talk about training as a lifestyle. If training is part of your lifestyle it will be much easier to continue during tough times. I will also go over some key things that help me in my training lifestyle.

ATTITUDE / PERSPECTIVE

Every day is a chance to make progress. A little progress. A little step forward. This perspective and attitude is key to being positive and taking the opportunities that come your way. If you are daily seeking out ways to make small improvements you are well on your way to making training a lifestyle.

GET ENOUGH REST

No amount of training is can help you improve if you are constantly tired. For a couple reasons. First your training intensity and quality will go down due to physical and mental fatigue. Secondly, your body needs rest in order to recover and rebuild stronger. Getting enough rest is often a hard discipline to master. It may mean leaving places early to make sure you get to bed on time, or it may mean skipping on that last game of call of duty. But in the long run getting enough rest is important for improving and also for injury prevention. I have found this to be a struggle, but a worthwhile effort in making those small daily improvements.

EAT HEALTHY

I have found that I can make big gains in performance with some daily discipline. I started small. Skipped the soda, drink water. Skip the chips at dinner. These easy steps will help keep your body healthy. You can increase performance during training by being careful how close to training you eat and what you eat. Don’t eat within two hours of training, and drink enough water. Of course you can get far more detailed and be more and more careful. But the three big things are:

Skip the sugar and junk food – soda, chips cookies ect.
Drink lots of water. More than you think you need too!
Eat enough protein and enough veggies.

TAKE TIME TO PROCESS

Training takes a lot of physical effort, but also a lot of emotional effort. Often times I have found myself in a rut with training and life. Taking time to process what is happening is really important. Processing includes tracking whats happening in training and life. Keep a calendar or training journal and write down when you train and what you do. I am very visual so I find a calendar is really helpful. At times I noticed that my strength training was lacking despite feeling like I was at the gym all the time. Other times I looked at the calendar and noticed I hadn’t had a rest day in over a month. Those trends take time and energy to notice but are key to continuing improvement.

The other side of processing is going through training and life thoughts. Perhaps you feel discouraged because of lack of progress in a certain area, but after taking time to process you realize that you are spending too much time in a certain area of training or life. I have often found when I take a step back to look over things that my discouragement is unfounded. Other times I have looked at things and realized that changing a small part of my training such as my warm up would effect my whole session in a positive way. Take time to track and process your training! Don’t walk blindly forward, take the steps to be intentional!

Thanks for reading, I hope you found it helpful!

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Training in Tough Times

Hi Everyone!

Considering how many of us are stuck at home I have decided to write a short series of posts about what I have learned about training. This will in no way be a comprehensive list, but hopefully it helps add some clarity and purpose to training, for myself and for those who need it.

I will hopefully post a few home workouts that I am doing, and some more specifics about badminton training. You can follow more of that journey on my youtube.

First off I am very blessed at the moment to still be able to train once a day at Sweaty Training. The rest of my training I am doing at home.

Let’s talk about training in tough times. Tough times can be several different things. Tough because of circumstances – being self isolated at home due to a virus for example. Tough mentally – uncertainty due to lack of competitions. Taking hard losses recently. Even seeing the end of the season can make it hard to train like you need to.

Before we go too much farther we should define what good training looks like. Good training, or training well is training with purpose, effort, consistency, and intentionality. It means following your programs day in and day out, putting in max effort when you need to, and resting when you need to. It means showing up to training with purpose and goals in mind. I will talk more about each of those things in the following posts. But for now that is our definition of good training.

Tough times.

I would consider the current world situation a tough time for all athletes and all people. There is a lot of uncertainty about the future. People are separated physically from their support groups. And access to the regular training environments are limited.

How do we train with purpose when there is uncertainty about every part of life, including upcoming competitions?

The answer I have come to is insanely simple. Our weaknesses are still there, no matter what is coming, and those need work. As athletes our bread and butter, our strengths, are still there, we need to keep them sharp. So the answer is, our purpose hasn’t changed. Uncertainty doesn’t change our immediate goals of improvement. If anything uncertainty allows us to narrow our vision to the very next step. To the next 1% of improvement to be made. Don’t look too far ahead. Look at your program, the next steps that need taken, and get to work. Wether we get to compete in four weeks or fourteen the days between still need to be stepping stones towards improvement.

We know what needs done, and we know where to put our focus so that we can stay motivated on the next steps. That leads to the next question.

How do we train intentionally and with focus with limited access to equipment?

This will vary with every person and every situation. The core of the answer remains the same – willpower and creativity.

Willpower.

We have all heard the saying, “Where there is a will there is a way.” While an overstatement perhaps, it remains a strong sentiment that I hold to. Things are not impossible, but they may need rearranged or rethought through. For example. If you are trying to increase max strength with nothing but body weight you may find a lot of limitations. But if you are trying to increase strength to gain speed then you will find work arounds to still increase performance.

Creativity.

Willpower requires creativity to be successful. It may require more research and problem solving to make use of your willpower, but eventually you can find different ways of doing things. The biggest part of this that I have found helpful is to look at what other experts are doing, or even ask for personal help from experts. There are often ways of doing things that are either less convenient or efficient to do the same thing you did at the gym. Just because it’s not used daily doesn’t make it not effective! To sum it up – seek out advice and look at problems from different angles. Use that willpower to keep looking for answers!

To sum it up: Use uncertainty to refocus on the next step towards improvement. Be determined and creative in finding solutions to take the next step.

Tough times call for tough people, and that’s what sports is all about right? Training is becoming a tough person. Competition is just being the tougher person.

Cheers everyone, stay safe, determined, and creative.

Kevin Barkman

Covid-19 and The Life of An Athlete

It has been awhile since my last update. A lot has happened, to me, but also in the world at large.

I am currently in Manitoba where I can train at Sweaty Training with a lot of precautions (only one person in the gym at a time, everything cleaned every sessions ect).

My big event, the Yonex Canadian International Challenge which was going to happen the end of this month has been postponed indefinitely. As have many other events. I am really disappointed to not be competing of course. But I believe God does not do anything without purpose. I am taking this time to improve my fitness and hopefully create some online content that is useful for upcoming athletes. I know that my fitness and past injuries have been holding me back a lot. So this time is a great opportunity to improve myself. I will attempt to share this journey of fitness and self isolation with everyone, and hopefully others can learn alongside me as well!

I appreciate everyone who has been supporting me through this time. Obviously the loss of work is tough for everyone, including myself.

I pray all of you stay safe. These are tough times, but as we all know, tough times show the real us, and help define our future selves. Let’s make the most of this unique struggle/opportunity and keep pressing on as individuals, as communities, and as a world as a whole!

Onward and upward folks. Heads up, hands washed, and smiles on.

Kevin

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2019 BWF US International Challenge

HI Everyone!

Merry Christmas! I am home visiting family for Christmas and enjoying it greatly!

California was great despite some tough losses. I learned a lot and showed I can compete with the best. It is time for some rest for Christmas and then putting in the hard work before nationals!

I moved up in ranking in Mens Singles from 368 to 305 which is a good move up!

If you want to watch my matches or even some of the other great matches of the tournament check out my Youtube Channel

For more results and scores check out the Tournament Software

If you would like to support my journey in badminton – my ability to coach and lead the next generation, and my pursuit of competing at the best level you can donate at the following links: GoFundMe Buy Me a Coffee.

Thank you for all your support!

Tag: life

Showing Up Ready

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Keeping Things Simple

A Home Badminton Session

Team Spirit – Help Others Help You

The Right Headspace – Being Focused

Training With Purpose

Training As a Lifestyle

Training in Tough Times

Covid-19 and The Life of An Athlete

2019 BWF US International Challenge

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