The Relationship Between Training Load and Perceived Performance in Adolescent Badminton Players
Dominique (Antoine Bailey) Church
21/07/2026
This exploratory study examined how training load, including frequency, duration, and intensity, relates to perceived performance and fatigue in adolescent badminton players. Data were collected over approximately 17 weeks using training logs built with Google Forms. Six adolescent athletes were originally enrolled; one (E.C.) discontinued participation early after logging only four sessions. After a transparent data-cleaning process excluded three additional entries that were incomplete or unverifiable (see Section 3.6), 295 entries remained for pooled analysis, with five participants (n = 9 to 103 entries each) included in the full set of individual-level comparisons. The study analyzed drill type, duration, intensity, self-rated performance, and fatigue using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, drill-level comparisons, participant-level comparisons, within-athlete correlations, and weekly trends.
Results showed a strong relationship between training intensity and fatigue (r = .850, p < .001), meaning that harder sessions usually made athletes feel more tired. This relationship held independently within each of the five participants with sufficient data for individual-level analysis (r = .644 to .929, all p < .01) and barely changed when the two highest-volume contributors were excluded from the sample (r = .836), indicating a genuine cross-athlete pattern rather than one driven by a small number of heavy contributors. There was also a moderate relationship between fatigue and self-rated performance (r = .341, p < .001), suggesting that athletes often rated their performance higher when they also felt more tired, possibly because they associated harder effort with a more productive session.
Drill type also showed a clear pattern. Footwork and agility drills had the highest intensity and fatigue, while singles play had the highest average self-rated performance (M = 8.58), even though it was not the most intense drill category. The overall trends appeared across all six athletes, though individual differences in training load were considerable. Weekly trends showed peaks in intensity and fatigue around weeks 4, 7, 14, and 16, broadly consistent with periods of tournament preparation.
As a single-club study with a small number of participants, one of whom discontinued early, these findings should be interpreted as exploratory and preliminary rather than generalizable to the broader population of adolescent badminton players. Overall, the study suggests that training logs, when carefully screened for data quality, can be a useful and practical way for coaches and athletes to track training load and understand performance in youth badminton programs.