An opportunity arose on 27^th & 28^th April to join a Strength & conditioning session with Mats Medjevi in Dublin. Strength & Conditioning is one of the essential elements of top badminton performance, and together with quality coaching, practice, diet and competition go to increase our players’ standard of play.

He is working on a training programme with Scott, Sam and Tony for 10 months and our top players have definitely benefitted from his approach.

On 27^th & 28^th, Mats led sessions with 25 Irish coaches and 11 players in which he demonstrated a number of his vast array of exercises.

He stressed his S&C programmes have 3 aims:

1. Increase flexibility
2. Improve warm-up
3. Increase strength

Typically he recommends that his programme is followed 2 times per week in addition to the normal badminton training.

It is important that all of our top players, no matter what age, have access to appropriate information that can be used in their everyday training to improve their fitness and to avoid injury.

Thus Mats will put together specific S&C programmes for each of the following age groups; Under 13, Under 15, Under 17.  Also he will recommend tests that we can use to determine individual players current level and monitor their S&C development. 

The plan is to roll this out to coaches of both Irish and Provincial squads so they can then use the information to develop programmes for their players. It is hoped to have a launch day at either end of June or August when Mats can present these under age programmes to the coaches. It will then be up to all of us to put it into practice.

This is an excellent opportunity to influence the fitness of a wide number of players and bring a structure and fresh ideas into their preparation plans.  Especially as they have been proven to work for badminton players.