best on court - review

[mojopin]

www.bestoncourt.com

Ill begin by saying that I only bought 6 videos (1 euro each) so this review might not be totally represntative as there are over 100 videos by my estimation.

If you want to save yourself a read
-overpriced
-fairly poor
-irritating technical issues

- The idea of peter Gade or Engholm coaching was appealing but sadly there is minimal coaching. I just picked up the gade videos and its essentially him performing shot routine for about 2 mintues with 3 key points on the side written down. no comment from player or coach. no discussion, no actual coaching at all. very disappointed.

To make it more annoying, is that flash player has a big old loading icon right in the middle of the screen half the time which cant be removed.and it always seems to be right on the players racket:mad:

the slow motion sequences could have been the saving grace except they used a standard camera so slowed down everything is crammed full of motion blur. so its not much use.

the exercises part is a bit rubbish too, who wants to pay 1 euro to see somebody skipping or jumping over hurdles or cones? Its not a huge secret type of training , so i cant really justify that price.

The full package costs 110 euro, and in my opinion, thats absolultly ridiculous as your getting essentially an inferior, streamed coaching dvd, without coaching.

on the plus side, it has gade, and i think hes awesome.
And the smash foot work video ,while not that useful for "elite" players as it says, does show his smash and it sounds awesome.


P.s i just tried to rewatch it and the whole site is acting up and tells me the stream isnt found. Well... i feel like i jsut wasted 6 euro.

[Gollum]

I had a look too (I bought a few videos), and came away with much the same reaction. :(

As so often happens with coaching videos, these have very little instructional content. If you're hoping for something like Lee Jae Bok's detailed videos (ibbs.tv), which sadly have disappeared off the face of the planet, you'll be sorely disappointed.

It's really a big library of practice routines, and not coaching. Each video is accompanied by a (very) small amount of instructional text, but mainly you're just watching other people practise stuff.

Personally, I think this is more useful to coaches than players. I might consider it an investment for my coaching, as it's interesting to see some practices used by experienced coaches in Denmark. As a coach, I might be able to justify splashing out on the expensive "master" subscription, although I'll probably wait and see how much content they put out.

I disliked being forced to use Internet Explorer, and installing an ActiveX module (essentially, a mini-program) to make their security system work. They didn't spell out what this program does on my computer, and as a rule I avoid such items like the plague.

I also had problems getting the videos to stream. At first they worked okay, but then the streaming got hopelessly slow (and this with their lowest resolution video, on a decent broadband connection). Then they stopped working altogether ("stream not found").

I expect that some of these issues, such as the streaming problems, will be fixed over time. The site is brand new, so there are bound to be a few glitches.


Summary

It's nice to see these expert coaches making their practices available on the web, and I wish them well in their enterprise. Best of luck, guys. :)

However, from what I've seen, the actual coaching content is almost non-existent. As it stands, I can't see this being useful to players, but it might be interesting for coaches.

[stumblingfeet]

That's disappointing to hear. I haven't purchased any videos yet, partly because I've been having having issues with their ActiveX object. It seems to crash my web browser.

As for the content, how does it compare to the videos that were previously posted on youtube? In terms of length, information, video quality, etc? I thought that those were some of the most useful badminton videos on youtube in terms of generating ideas for drills and badminton instruction.

[mojopin]

As for the content, how does it compare to the videos that were previously posted on youtube? In terms of length, information, video quality, etc? I thought that those were some of the most useful badminton videos on youtube in terms of generating ideas for drills and badminton instruction.

which videos are you talking about exactly?

[Gollum]

As for the content, how does it compare to the videos that were previously posted on youtube? In terms of length, information, video quality, etc? I thought that those were some of the most useful badminton videos on youtube in terms of generating ideas for drills and badminton instruction.

I think that in this respect -- generating ideas for drills -- it's pretty good. That's why I feel it's much more useful to coaches than players. I haven't yet come away with any "wow, what a great idea" moments, but I suspect I would get a few if I watched all the videos.

From the sample I've seen, the content is a bit better than those Youtube videos. One improvement is that some videos show the practice from more than one camera angle, and some also use slow-motion. There is only a small amount of explanation -- totally inadequate for players, in my view -- but these explanations seem slightly better than the notes on the Youtube videos.

As I say, I think this could be a useful resource for coaches. I'm probably going to grab a master subscription eventually. However, I don't especially recommend it to players -- except maybe to watch a few clips of Gade being his usual awe-inspiring self. ;)

The streaming problems appear to have been mostly fixed now. Maybe it was just a spike of demand.