Can Badminton help lose weight?
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Can Badminton help lose weight?

Updated: Jun 13, 2023

Badminton is one of the best sports to lose weight. It helps you lead a fit, healthy, and disease-free lifestyle. But the question is Can Badminton help lose weight?

Let’s find out-


Can Badminton help lose weight

Can Badminton help lose weight


The pressure to lead a successful life is at its peak these days. Everyone is looking to lead their career to the best possible road and continue to grow in order to have a successful life. The need for a prosperous and flourishing lifestyle has increased the working pressure on the people.


People, especially youngsters, who are under constant pressure, are prone to ignore their fitness and health mainly due to the lack of time. Lack of proper exercise and healthy diet has led many people with the problem of obesity and other health related issues.

The demand for gym has never been higher. Almost everyone is focusing on losing some weight due to health-related issues or just to look good. Some people prefer to play some sport to lose weight instead of going to gym for many reasons.

Badminton is one of the best sports to lose weight. Badminton helps in increasing your metabolic rate and strengthen your muscles. Badminton consists of both aerobic and anaerobic exercises which helps you lead a fit, healthy and disease-free lifestyle. Badminton is considered one of the best sports across the globe to lose weight because of the perfect combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercises that provides you the best of both worlds.


How Badminton helps in reducing weight?


Badminton helps in reducing weight by burning calories faster. This happens mainly due to two reasons-



1. Increased Metabolic Rate


Our body performs a lot of functions that are needed to stay alive. These functions help in burning calories even when you are just sitting idle. The rate at which the body burns the calories by performing necessary daily functions to stay alive is known as Basal Metabolic rate or BMR.


When we perform any sort of workout or exercise, our body burns additional calories in relation to the BMR. This is known as Metabolic Equivalent of Task or MET. Even though individuals burn calories to stay alive at the basic level, to lose weight and fat one must burn additional calories through different kinds of exercises.


The BMR of an individual depends on various factors like height, age, sex and weight. As we have already discussed that MET burns calories in relation to BMR. This means if you are performing some sort of exercise and the MET of that particular exercise is 4, the calories burned by performing that exercise will be 4 times of your BMR.


Badminton has a MET of around 3 to 4 for light intensity, 5 to 8 for medium intensity and about 9 to 10 for high intensity matches. This means that the MET or the calories that you will burn depends on the level and intensity of that particular match.


As we can see badminton has a high level of MET specially at medium and high intensity levels. The MET level of Badminton is almost similar to that of Tennis but still has a higher intensity rate from most of the other racket sports, that we will further discuss later on, which makes it the best sport to lose weight.


2. High Intensity & Increased Heart Rate


Badminton is the fastest racket sport in the world. The average top speed that can be experienced in the game is around 265 miles per hour. The average top speed of badminton is much higher than other racket sports like table tennis, baseball, squash, volleyball etc. that reaches only an average top speed of about 33 to 176 miles per hour. Even tennis which is often compared with badminton only reaches a top speed of 163 miles per hour.


Due to the short but quick and intense movements during a badminton match, the heart rate of the player also raises quickly. Increased heart rate means your heart is pumping quickly. When your heart pumps quickly, body burns more calories which results in weight loss and better muscle mass.


On an average, the ideal heart rate for training to lose weight varies about 75% to 85% of maximum expected heart rate. Badminton reportedly can raise the player’s heart rate to about 80% to 85% of their maximum expected heart rate which is quite good for someone who wishes to lose weight. Badminton is the most reliable racket sport in terms of increased heart rate that will help you lose weight. To compare it with other sports, take tennis as an example that only raise player’s heart rate for about 65% to 70% of their maximum expected heart rate.


On an average, if an individual plays Badminton and Tennis for 60 minutes, the actual time spent playing tennis is about 10 minutes whereas time spent playing badminton is about 20 minutes which is significantly higher that tennis. This means that while playing badminton it is possible to burn calories at a remarkable pace.



What are the health benefits of Badminton


Apart from reducing weight, playing badminton can help you gain a lot of other health benefits. These benefits, in long run, will also help you stay fit and healthy and reduce the risk of different kind of diseases. Some of the many advantages of playing badminton are as follow-


1. Increased Stamina


While playing badminton, a player runs all over the court to return the opponent’s shots. In long term, this helps in increasing stamina and power of the individual.


2. Flexibility


In a typical badminton match, a player has to stretch his arms and legs at various positions. The stretching helps in opening of various nerves and muscles of different areas of the body which in turn develops flexibility and endurance.


3. Muscle Strength


Badminton is a game where a player has to move their hands and legs a lot while swinging the racket or running to hit the shuttle. Also, a player has to often hit the shuttle with all their power and strength which requires the whole power of your arm. All of this results in the shaping of muscles and increases the power and muscle strength.


4. Healthy heart


As we have already discussed, while playing badminton the heart rate of an individual is very likely to increase. This means that the functioning of the heart is also increased which improves blood flow throughout the body. All of this improves the health of the heart and lead to a disease-free lifestyle.


Other Related Questions

The answer to some of the other related questions are as follows-



Badminton vs gym for weight loss


Playing Badminton is basically a form of aerobic exercise. These activities increase the heart rate and the amount of oxygen intake which further burns calories and help one lose weight.

Whereas, if you are looking for proper hardcore exercises that burns a massive number of calories, then you should prefer gym.



1 hour of Badminton burns how many calories


A typical hour of playing Badminton could burn around 300 – 500 calories depending upon the style, speed, and movement of the player.



Does Badminton help lose arm fat


While playing Badminton, the arm of the player is taking the most toll of all other body parts because the player is using his arm to revert back his opponents’ shots.

So yes, regularly playing Badminton does help in losing arm fat.



Why Badminton is the best sport


Apart from weight-loss, Badminton does helps in a variety of ways like health benefits, socializing, improved stamina etc. Check out our article about Why Badminton is the best sport to find more such reasons to love this sport.



Can Badminton help lose weight


Yes, Badminton does help in losing weight. The players run around the court which increases their metabolism rate and burn calories, which in turn burns fat.




Conclusion

The conclusion of this article is that Yes, Badminton is does help in losing fat. It is a fantastic sport and involves a great sense of fun, excitement and sportsmanship.

Be sure to check out our articles on Best Badminton Racket for Beginners, Intermediate and Professional Players.





We are happy to share our expertise and knowledge with our viewers and hope that we were able to meet the expectations of providing the accurate information about the topic. Thank You for your time and patience!!

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