The Effectiveness of Weight Training in Improving Students’ Physical Fitness for Badminton

Badminton is a popular sport in Malaysian society. It has a high-intensity match play and important variability in physiological demands. These factors emphasise the importance of both anaerobic and aerobic training while playing badminton. Despite this, primary school students normally undergo more aerobic training rather than anaerobic training, especially weight training with dumbbells. This study aims to explore how weight training can improve performance in badminton. Objectives: This research is to study the effects of weight training incorporated with muscle endurance, cardiovascular as well as speed on badminton players. Methods: This research uses a quantitative approach to test the effectiveness of weight training. This research is one example of experimental research. By employing statistical tools such as descriptive data and T-test, the study will analyse all these statistical data to determine the impact of weight training on various aspects of physical fitness. Results: During the 6-week intervention, significant improvements were observed in the experimental group across all four tests, while the control group showed significant improvement only in agility. For muscle endurance, the experimental group achieved higher significance (p < 0.001) and mean improvement (0.8) than the control group (p = 0.096, mean = 0.5). Cardiovascular endurance, measured by the beep test, has improved more in the experimental group (mean = 0.46, p < 0.001) compared to the control group (mean = 0.26, p = 0.007). Agility improvements show a significant improvement in both groups, with the experimental group showing a larger mean improvement (4.1s) and effect size (d = 1.449). For speed, neither group showed significant improvement, although the experimental group had a slightly larger mean difference (0.7s). These findings suggest the weight training potential to enhance badminton-specific fitness attributes, particularly in agility and endurance. Conclusion: This study highlights the effectiveness of incorporating weight training into badminton training for primary school students. These findings underscore the value of weight training in enhancing badminton-specific fitness, particularly agility and endurance, and suggest further exploration of its long-term benefits.