This is not about racquets!!

Previously we've mentioned about rhythm being very important in movement around the court.

Centre of gravity and balance are also very important for efficient movement.

I guess there is no easy way to develop the proper feeling of the body's centre of gravity and balance. It's just a matter of training.

Relaxation is different. Many of us will place a lot of emphasis on POWER. Thus a lot of strength is put into the shot. In fact, looking at the top players, they all seem pretty relaxed. The more relaxed ones seem to have more efficient movement.
How can one develop this relaxed, yet fast, movement? (And stay balanced!)


[I guess this is similar to the philosphy of some martial arts. Being relaxed allows for faster acceleration in movement. Strangely enough, many years ago, some rumours(not very serious) mentioned that the Chinese players might use "internal energy" and martial arts to move around the court. That was why they were so fast!
I never took that rumour seriously.]

I remember having asked my coach then if there were any relationship about badminton training (the way strength is used) and martial arts. He replied that at some time during the research for badminton movements in the 60's martial arts movements and training were observed. I remembered one of the forms he mentioned was the Monkey fighting style.

One day back in the early 80's, during a training session a guy came in. He greeted my coach and then we cleared the court so they could play singles. Oh what a spectacle that was. My only regret is that I did not have a video recorder at that time. The footwork and strokes they played were incredible. Standing on toes straight in one moment going low on the next and going for the stroke. Everything done so fast and smoothly. Every strike resembled a fire cracker exploding and yet they were so relaxed when hitting. Never saw such a high level game so close. According to them is the dissociation of the movements of your body that transfers the power efficiently.

By the way, the visitor was Chan TianCheung a top Chinese badminton player back in the mid 60's and 70's. To his record he had beaten Erland Kops the famous Danish player in Denmark in 1966.

Great topic, guys. These fluent flow of movement around the courts is one part of badminton that i enjoy the most watching. Rarely taught right except to dedicated and lucky players from dedicated old masters. I witnessed only one such player from canada but he was immigrated from china sometime in 1989. This fellow i would refer him as ww, was only 5'6" to 5'7" but can he move. I was told he was #1 single provincial junior champion but i've forgot from which chinese province. He took #1 position easily after arriving canada. Watching him i get dizzy, he move to fast on the court to make up for his "shortness" handicap. He doesnt train hard after 1991 because the cdn national champion came to him so easy. I think cb also seen him played too.

Viver, i don't want to be disrespectful to chan tiancheung, but i'm guessing that danish players from the late 80's to 90's would be better than those in the 60's and 70's.

Hey cooler,
I think that the person you are refering to is Wang Wen. He is one of the badminton coaches here where I live (Alberta, Canada). He is from a different badminton club though but I have seen him when I do visit the other clubs to play tournaments occasionaly (he doens't play, just coach)

I was also told by a great many others that he used to be super super good. Very acrobatic as one lady told me. She said that he broke his right arm during a play once and used his left hand and beat the other guy!.. Hm..don't know if that was true but sounds very cool.

Wang Wen doesn't play anymore though and I wish i could have seen him play.

Fyi, i think that my coach (also immigrated from China) used to coach Wang Wen..I'm no 100% sure but maybe i'll ask my coach again.

Erland Kops I believe was the all england champion at that time. I remember reading somewhere that Erland Kops did not take the game seriously at the start because the Chinese were unknown at that time. His opinion of course changed after the friendly games.

The more recent Danish players should be better than those from the 70's or 80's as the former had the advantage of learning from the latter experiences. Nowadays they are much quicker and smoother on the courts.

Wow! this is world wide web, how come so many contributors are from Calgary, Alberta. Weird.

Now Vince! im not from cowtown ;-)

Edmonton, Alberta

Jaysee, I use ww as i initially thought it was not right naming name without permission and wang wen is not a public figure. Well, it's no big deal, i think.
ww coaches at royal genora of edmonton. I had a chat with him once during the 1992 canadian open invitational party. He was studying at that time.

I didnt see that broken arm come back game but i do believe the story because he is like a acrobat/gymnast. I did see ww made a diving safe and did a wheelcart rotation to get back on his feet and continue. Just amazing to watch. His style, flow, and strokes are so clean and text book classic.

why calgary? because it's canada national power and olympic training center and HQ of yonex canada. I believe edmonton have lots of good players too, maybe even better than calgary. Reason: there are more badminton players in edmonton because calgary school board charges high rate for school gym rental and edmonton charges next to nothing (that was a while ago, rates might be higher in edmonton now but i dont know)

Jaysee. I believe your coach is Mr. F, right?

thanks viver. My interest in badminton is not too long ago and i have not seen nor have a reference point of how good danish players were back in the 60s and 70s.

Hey cooler!

Heh.. i didn't know that it was bad to post the name of someone who's not a public figure. That's quite interesting...

Ne ways..no my coach isn't Mr. F
I live in edmonton but don't play at the royal glenora (where the really good club players go)
My coaches name is...well ..his last name is Ma and everyone calls him Coach Ma. But as i said..im not 100% sure that he coached Ww.

Jaysee, it not bad, just not respectful.
Well, great players have many coaches in their career, coach Ma could be one of them. All i know is that i heard it from my associate is that Mr.F. had taught ww at one time, during ww beginner days.

You guys sure like to gossip!

Quote "According to them is the dissociation of the movements of your body that transfers the power efficiently."

Viver, would you like to elaborate?

"Use the force, Luke."

(sorry, couldn't resist... :)

But I am no closer to the truth, Obi Wan Kwun!

Seriously, I am surprised at the lack of opinions on this.

Here is my 2 cents, a bit off topic, I am no pros but did watch a lot of professional matches and try to put the science behind it. I admit that the world-class players are fast but they are not much faster than anyone of us unless you are handicap. When you watch world-class player move so well around the court and you try to emulate them but you can't because all we see is movement, some of us fail to see the other 2 important ingredients and this 2 ingredients is quality (smart shot) of your shot and your positioning (split step) on court. If you return the shuttle badly all the time, I don't care if you have the footwork of Sun Jun, I still could make you run like a dog. You need good quality shot to buy some time so you can position yourself accordingly base on where you placed the shuttle. And don't underestimate how important positioning is; if you position yourself well, you are only one step or 2 away from the next shot. I am really surprise there is no discussion on various different positioning (split-step/ready position). The place I play, 75% of the regular players use the same ready position no mater if they clear or drop. And one person ask me the proper step from ready position to his back left corner and he wants a simple answer but there is no simple answer because the proper step is different from one ready position to the next. Of course this is just my opinion, it does not base on fact, so don't flame me, B----.

From my understanding, dissociation is dividing your body into different areas, not regarding it as 1 unit. From this perspective, taking a lunge to the net as an example: when in ready position you are alert but relaxed; when you prepare to propel yourself forward you lower your center of gravity, and your legs muscles are prepared to propel you forward. The remainder of your body is relaxed until you finish the legs work. When the racquet foot stops your whole body, the working muscles shift to your upper body to straigthen your torso, while your arms are still in a relaxed state. When hitting the bird, your arms will relax and your legs will start working again and the remainder of your body should be relaxed.
In this way, the body is divided into different segments and called into action when necessary. I do not know if this is clear enough since English is not my first language. I'd like to hear your comments on my thoughts.

I agree on both these points i.e. quality of shot and positioning.

Are people not really that much different in terms of acceleration? What I find strange is that for one particular corner in the forecourt, my movement is very difficult, yet for the other side, it isn't a big problem. In fact, my muscle got strained a little trying to accelerate to the problem corner whilst yet trying to maintain relaxation. (This was in a training session). And I am starting from the same body position in order to prepare for moving either one side or the other..

What body position? legs parallel to the net or parpendicular to the net, with racket leg near the net? If your anticipation is bad, you have to rush to the shot otherwise you might not get it, so it almost impossible to relax. IMO when you relax, you do not move as quick as when your muscle is tense and pump up. When you watch Ye, she is very relax but not very fast like Gong. She could afford to stay relax because she has incredible anticipation, her weight is already shifted to the correct corner or side before her opponent hit the shuttle. Relax your muscle and mind does not make you move quicker but it should help you anticipate the shot better IMO.

Legs are not quite parallel. I'm right handed so my right foot is slightly closer to the net.

Yes, it may be anticipation that is a problem but I really try to concentrate on where the shuttle is going. Perhaps, it is a case of playing more and more since anticipation improves with more play.

Last night, I did the exercise of running to the four corners and hitting the shuttle on of the back corners. After 5 to 8 shots, my movement goes more and more erratic and it becomes really difficult to move around.

Hi Cheung,

I don't know your badminton level, far as I know, you might kick my ass if we ever play but here is my theory.

Playing more game might help you improve your anticipation, but if does, the improvement is very marginal. The problem might be somewhere else, it likes trouble-shooting electronic product. Your problem with your anticipation might lies somewhere else. This might sound like a broken record, could the problem be poor shot, not clearing deep enought to the long single service line, not droping tight enought to the net, and not position yourself efficietly?

I see some people practice doing shadow drills from ready position to four corners at the place I play and they don't improve because either their footwork is wrong or/and they don't know there is other various ready position. Practise one ready position to four corners is not enought, you have to practise other ready position to four corners as well. I have 3 ready positions: one ready position is legs are wide and parallel to the net, another ready position is legs perpendicular to the net with racquet foot near the net, and the third ready position is legs also perpendicular to the net except racquet legs is away from the net. If you have quality shot and correct ready position with proper footwork, anticipation comes very naturally, it did for me. Again this is just my theory, and does not base on facts.

Why do you need 3 ready positions? Could you please elaborate?

Does running the 4 corners involves going back to your base? Why you consider your movements erratic? Are you not using consistent footwork when moving?

Two ready positions are good enough, the third ready position (legs perpendicular to the net with racquet leg away from net) is good if you get caught near the net on the left hand side. If you ever watch the world class player like Sun Jun, there is various ready positions. When the top player serve long, they do a split-step (a little jump) with legs wide, parallel to the net to guard agaist down the line smash and crosscourt. The advantage of this parallel ready position is quick for moving side to side. And when the pros serve short, they don't need to guard agaist smash down the line or crosscourt, so the ready position is legs perpendicular to the net. The advantage of this ready position is quicker to move back and fore covering the drop or quick drive or clear. Depending where you hit the shuttle, you have to decide which ready position is best suit for incoming attack. ie. When you serve long agaist a good accurate smasher, it pointless to have a ready position with the your legs perpendicular to the net because there no way you can guard agaist down the line smash or croscourt. Of course I am talking about single, I am clueless in double.

Very good explanation and thanks. These ready positions are what you mentioned about antecipation. The racquet foot usually points to where the player actually expects the reply to be.
I got confused by the term ready.

To me, the "ready position" is where you stand and how you stand as your opponent strike the shuttle. It is impossible to compete in high level badminton if you have the same ready position for every volley. There is a ready position when you clear and there is a ready position when you drop, it two different stance. It hard to explain in word, and picture is worth a thousands words, so the best way to understand is to watch some single badminton match, don't watch the game in general but pay attention on the footwork and you will see what I am talking about.

Understand the foot positioning etc.. I believe this is not the problem.

However, as you say, the problem may be in poor shot execution. For some reason, my shots aren't going far back enough for the four corner exercise. Especially tricky is the forehand front corner lift to the opposite deep corner.

But I still lack the basic acceleration. Maybe when I play, it's always in the evening and not mentally fresh enough.

OK, you said that you have different "ready" positions depending where you stand and how you stand as your opponent strike the shuttle. And I say you have a certain "ready" position during the game because you are antecipating the intention of your opponent. For example, if you are positioned close to in the net you would not put your racquet foot in front (or closer to the net) if you are expecting a push/lift to the back of the court.

Cheung,
Just guessing... Suppose you have the correct footwork and land correctly and if you could not accelerate "well"... The thing is you need very good ankles (to start with) and good body coordination to get from the baseline to forecourt. Can you, during practice, and at your pace use only 2 steps to go from backhand baseline side to your forecourt forehand side?

In that case, you should call sega and ask sonic the hedghog where he purchases his shoe. And I need one too. ;).

Funny you should mention Sonic. When I was walking outside earlier, I wondered if playing video games would help my reactions. Maybe that dancing game will help my balance and coordination as well as having some fun.

Wow, lemme just think this through.....










OK, I'm back from my dissociative experience.
The answer is no. Two steps??
After landing, this first movement is a skip and then after that I need to take two full steps. Being only 5'8" means that even this is a stretch.

Sometimes I play an ex-province player (China) who used to play for HK. He beats me silly. The most I got in one game is 7 points and I think he was only at 60%. There's been a couple of times I got beat to love game.
This is why I think I am slow. In fact, I have only played singles with one other person this year. That's Ricky's coach. They were close games but he might be being nice to me!

Chinese provincial level players can play anywhere in the world and some I think are playing for other national teams. Taking 7 points from him it's great. When I played against my coach I could at most get 2 points from him. And from his unforced errors.
Going back to the footwork... it is true that after landing the 1st move is usually the hop. I think now is the coordination thing. When landing from the hop you should try to gather the momentum and spring yourself forward. Good coordination with both legs is a must and I believe you should be able to do it if you focus a little bit more on the coordination of your legs. As you mentioned already you have the right concepts.
I used to coach before and 1 kid I remember in particular, he was at that time 16 years old and not more than 170 cm in height, was able to cover the court diagonally in 2 steps from backhand baseline to forecourt forehand side without the hop. From the forehand side to forecourt backhand he needed an extra 1/2 step.

i dont know if badminton help my video games or vice versa..

Vince, I agree with you that relaxation helps anticipation. I also believe that relaxation helps you move more efficiently(saving energy) but not necessarily quicker. I also agree that the muscle needs to be pumped up in order to achieve maximum quickness. The key here is the transition from your relaxed state to the intense state. If one can limit the transition time to minimal, then the combination of great aniticipation and super quickness can be achieved.

And that is the most difficult of it. Either I am too relax or too tense, it hard to have a good balance and the flow of it. I watch alots of Gong Z matches, she hardly pauses, she always flows from one corner to another corner, she have a nice rhythm.

Viver,

This is really interesting stuff. Obviously you have got to a higher plane of "karma"!

I don't get this feeling in my play..............yet?
Let me give you some background into my badminton.
After over ten years of playing doubles, for some strange reason, I want to play singles again. Never learnt proper footwork in the past.

Now playing singles for about four months and getting down to learning some proper footwork.

The four corner exercise was very difficult, even though I was still returning to base. (just to answer your other question)

Something very interesting has happened this week.
1) During my training, apparently I wasn't really thinking too much about my subsequent shots. Sure I was running but not anticipating the reply from my shot to the opponent and as a result, reaction movement felt slow and my shot making was going awry. (Note, I think I am anticipating but not really). I was told to play deep and..............to have patience. (Note, I think I'm playing it deep but in reality not deep enough.) No need to play pressure shots all the time. If the opponent plays a good shot, just play as best a shot possible to the back of the court and wait patiently (v.imp), thus being relaxed, and start working things round again. I think my previous anxiety to get to the shot is partly due to my personality. I can be very intense and while for some people it is good, for myself, it seems partly detrimental (unable to relax, trying to put pressure on opponent in wrong situation, get tired earlier and worse shot making, consistency off).

2) Felt faster in training. There is something in this body movement acceleration. Perhaps now I suddenly get the feeling for sudden acceleration because everything is easier. Perhaps it is partly this dissociation theory. Before I was trying to concentrate on everything from feet to body to shot making and not doing very well. This time, first I thought about feet, then centre of balance, then shuttle, arm, arm to shuttle i.e. trying to correct things one at a time rather than impatiently try make everything right on the first attempt (which was due to my impatience and mental intensity).

3) Play singles today. Hey, it goes pretty well. I concentrate on punching the shuttle right to the back corners really trying to accelerate the racquet head through the shuttle (as mentioned before, poor shot execution may be a problem). Get back to position, try to anticipate the next shot. Half short lifts I try to angle down sharply (not blast the shuttle into the next planet). Always aiming for the sudden quick acceleration. Good clears, just hit it back again. Slightly short clears, I got the option of drop, smash or clear. If my opponent plays a good winning shot, just think to myself "Position OK? Centre of balance OK? Previous shot poor execution? " and not put myself under self-pressure like before. As a result, consistency improves and confidence improves. So what if I lost the previous rally? No problem just go on to the next one and not make the same mistake. BTW I won with both my opponents exhausted. I'm a bit tired but certainly not like their condition.

During this game today, my racquet feels beautiful in my hands. So much like an extension of hand. The strings feel great. OK make some mistakes but overall the racquet feels superb. It's the cab20(CN) with BG 85 at 25 lbs.

My original thread was posted 2 weeks ago in some frustration. Why the improvement should come now in the last two days and not before, well............ everybody's learning curve is different. Hopefully, two weeks later the improvement will continue. Thinking back, I still got played some quite good matches before the training. It will be interesting to see if tournament match play has improved. There's still a heck of a lot to learn.

Obviously posting up a question and replies here has benefits. But unfortunately has some limitations. Many thanks for the help given, it has been very educational. I shall think about the "dissociation" again. Wish we could all meet up and have games together.

viver, i think u would make a good coach. You r able to breakdown a complex badminton stroke or movement into its component. So, if a student is doing a stroke or movement wrong, identifying which component he/she failing would speed up the learning process. My advice to other is, finding a good coach is more benefitical than finding a good player and watching him/her play.

Cheung,
The "masters" dictated and I just followed their instructions. I am glad you found the "dissociation" theory useful. It worked for me then and also with the kids I worked with. Now I have 1 more hopefully "convert" in this theory.

Actually, as you may know already, dissociation is present in almost every stroke/footwork in badminton. You can improve your level by paying more attention to your fitness (your legs in particular) and overall body coordination. Often the lack of accelaration (when fitness is not the cause) or slower reaction is due to innapropriate coordination between legs and body movements. It was also the purpose of asking you about going back to the base. If you practice the 4 corners by always going back to the base you are not training for the requirements of the game. Often during the game you will not have chance to start from your base. You have to reach any point of the court from where you returned the shot.

From your posts I imagine you a very good level badminton player. I can see that you are a better player than myself and happy to share this with you and everybody who is interested in it. If someday I have a chance to go to Hong Kong I'll be glad to play with you. But just go by about your 60%, it should be enough to beat with me. Honest!

Thanks cooler. I do not know if I would be a good coach but I am interested in coaching badminton specially for kids. Some day when I have a little bit of time I may give it a try.

About the skills I have to thank my coach who taught me everything I know in badminton. In this aspect I consider myself very lucky as I was able to learn with some of the best in this sport.

Can this help in improving balance (center of gravity) and momemtum? Your suggestion will be appreciated.

Shadow practice with tape recorder. Record number 1.2.3.4 to represent four corners of the court, each 2 seconds apart. Numbers should be in random so anticipation is out of question. Play your tape and do four corner shadow practice on sound. When you hear 4 move from center position to back hand corner and play a shot then come back to center before you hear another number. This way you could train your body/mind to move different directions at different times in very short notice.

Goal is to be near or at center receiving position before you hear next number. I just started doing this exercise. I will let you know if there is any improvement in my balance and game. First day was little clumsy at the beginning before I get some rhythm. Most of the time I find myself at one corner when the next number is played that is too late and defeat the purpose. But with some efforts I did managed some rallies with ideal timing. It may take a month or so before I could expect some results. Meantime if someone has any suggestions please post here.

I know that doing drills and playing lot of single games improve your balance but unfortunately all other option requires time, money and favors. This is the only exercise I could come up with where I do not need anyone's time except mine.