What Equipment Is Needed for Badminton?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dave Zarco with USA Badminton and I'm here at Don Shula's Athletic Club in Miami Lakes, Florida. Let's talk about what equipment is needed for badminton. First you'll obviously need a racquet. Second you'll need a shuttlecock, that's the object that you're striking, it's also known as the birdie. And then obviously you have to have a net that you play where you're hitting the shots over, the shot must go over the net. Then a good pair of badminton shoes wouldn't hurt either. And you would wear what you would wear for tennis, nice comfortable shirt, comfortable shorts. Other than that, anything else like wristbands or if you want to wear sweatpants that's fine too, but most of the equipment that you're going to need for badminton will be the racquet, the shuttlecock and the net and the poles to hold the net up. Now other than that, you just need another partner to hit with. Now one of the reasons that badminton is so popular is a term called instant mediocrity. You can immediately go out there, pick up a racquet and you can start to have a rally with someone of the same level, skill level, and you get a great workout and you're able to go from offensive to defensive within the span of one shot. You don't need to really take that many lessons to learn how to play badminton, you just need to have hand eye coordination and to develop the hand eye coordination, it's not that hard either, you start by balancing the shuttle on the racquet and if you can do it at least 10 times in a row, you should be able to hit that shuttle after while and have a good long rally. One of the other reasons that badminton is so popular, there's a lot of chess involved even at the lower levels, even the C and D levels. Whereas you can make a drop shot in badminton where you cannot do it in other sports."