aligned with the physical examination and MRI scans, showing that the focal tenderness of the proximal patellar tendon was dimin-ished. The player's agility performance was increased by 5.6%, from a travelling distance of 57.9 m (or 19 cones) to 61.2 m (or 20 cones).
The conditioning programme improved the cardiopulmonary fitness of the player after performing the relatively high physically demanding agility test, but not the relatively low physically demanding standard step test (Table 2). After the conditioning programme, the player had a similar heart rate immediately after the completion of the agility test (time at 0 s before training¼155 bpm and after training¼156 bpm). However, when
comparing the absolute difference between the heart rates at 0 s and 60 s (i.e., agility-recovery heart rate), the agility-recovery heart rate increased from 15 bpm (fair level) to 32 bpm (excellent level), suggesting that the cardiopulmonary system for the relatively high physically demanding task was enhanced by the conditioning programme. Upon implementation of the conditioning pro-gramme, the player had a faster recovery of heart rate shortly after performing the physically demanding agility test (Fig. 2). The Astrand and Rhyming Step test showed no difference in step-recovery heart rate between the pre (126 bpm) and post (126 bpm) administration of the conditioning programme, sug-gesting that the current conditioning programme did not influence the cardiopulmonary system for a relatively low physically demanding task.
The athlete was able to return to badminton practice training almost immediately, and participated in the World Championship about three and half weeks after the stepwise conditioning programme.