Started playing in May, i am almost in my mid 30's and weigh around 91KG'. Been playing regularly since i started except for 3 weeks break in August because of underfoot injury/cut. I know there's alot need to be improved to consider my self even at below average player but i want to improve at all levels. I know its hard considering my age 33.5 but i'll try my best to become better. There's are not much drills or training where i play, its usually warmup and start play 3 or 4 games and go home. There's no coaching involve, only coach is your double partner or some better player who is kind enough to tell you something out of kindness. But i am open to suggestions regarding drills and training regimes. I am near camera bulky (& slow ) guy in cargo shorts. It was just 11 point game for the sake of the video and the other guy is much better player than me we played when most of our group members were gone and we both were tired.
The thing sticking out for me is that you have loads of power, but much less control of the game. Your opponent doesn't smash against you so much, and doesn't hit as hard, but you say he is better! There's your clue to what your weakness is. First of all, is your footwork. You look like you have practised some footwork patterns - your feet often move in the right places, but you look almost lazy when you do it because you stand very upright. Try and get lower, like you are almost crouching (your feet will go wider apart). This means you will be able to push off more powerfully and get in a better position. Your stance when you are defending is better than after you hit a smash - use your crouched stance after every shot, not just for defence! Your point at 3:07 is a good example - although you lose the point, your were more controlled. Second, is your anticipation. You appear to go for a big smash often, but have zero follow up. It is not necessarily a mistake to play the big smash, but it is certainly a mistake to expect it to win a point. Try to always recover to a good base position near the centre of the court - too often your opponent returns your stroke and you haven't moved from the corner you played a shot.
@DarkHiatus thanks for taking time and explaining it so well. I actually have been lurking on this forum for couple of months now and going through your videos and your own game analysis that you posted over time and you have improved aalllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooot. So thanks for your time. About the laziness, that is the 1st thing i noticed right after i stopped the recording the watched the video, i was actually surprised that how motionless i was, i used to thought that i was much active than that and moved alot with better footwork than the video but again that was a "THOUGHT", the video is the reality. Footwork with the followup of the shuttle is the 1st thing in my mind at the moment and i am going to try to do better in coming days. @DarkHiatus what do you think about my contact point while clearing and smashing, you had similar problem i think, i am thinking that my contact point is bit low. Also another person noticed that i tend to shake my racked just before hitting the birdie so that's another problem for me. How did you fixed your contact point problem, i mean how do you remember all these things to correct while playing the game. Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it that someone senior and best player is helping me.
Agree. You can reach up higher but since you are not moving efficiently, it is quite difficult for you to practice getting it higher. I didn't notice that as a big problem. Practice drills. Games come later. For five months, that's pretty good. Did you play other sports before? I would say you need to practice rotating your shoulders and body for a shot so like needing to turn your shoulders. Of course, you don't have proper footwork patterns. Also, try to practice side steps to help your speed of movement. Your serve is also illegal - both feet must be on the ground when you hit the shuttle. Grip is a bit too pan handle style when you do overheads and backhand. Need to practice changing it quickly.
Cheung has you sorted already I see! The contact point is not as high as it could be, but from what I've learned over the past year, it is incredibly hard to reach up when you are in an unbalanced position. You will instinctively try to balance yourself before playing a more controlled stroke from a suboptimal contact point rather than play a less controlled, unbalanced stroke from the optimal contact point. Therefore, the answer is not to be unbalanced whilst being able to reach up, which means your footwork must improve. Thanks for your comments on my progress - the things BadmintonCentral tell me are not things that I incorporate and never have to think of again. I have to constantly think of them too, or my bad habits slip back, so welcome to the club! The biggest difference that Cheung says in terms of training is just that. You need to separate training and games. To improve, you need to practise movements and strokes that are weak. By the nature of a game, you do not want to try out weak movements/strokes, therefore you will find improvement whilst playing games much slower than dedicated training. I attribute most of my improvement (90%+) to doing training separate from games - either at home, with a training partner (1 game maximum in a session, rest drills), or with a coach.
Just table tennis but that was 15 years ago, i was in the School and college team. Much skinny back then. For the past 10 years i was doing strength training with weights, lifting on and off.Stopped weight training recently coz of the muscle fatigue and soreness i was having due to badminton and weightlifting. Didn't even know about illegal serve, no one ever told me that. About grip i know, it start off as a normal grip however as the game progresses i go back to little pan handle style grip, i do it without even knowing it, sometimes go few points without even knowing it. I came to know about the correct grip around 3 months ago, before that i was using completely pan handle. Thank you for helping me and taking time to explain it.
So i guess, my utmost priority should be footwork and some agility training. Rest will come later and training and drills are much more effective (as you said 90%) than the games. May i ask how long should i do the drills and what kind of drills and training should i be doing for improving my footwork? like is this a good video and how effective is skipping rope.
Don't think of it as "the rest comes later". Your improvement in footwork will unlock the ability to play better strokes as you improve your footwork, not after its improved - so in some ways it actually all comes together, just by focusing on the weakest aspect! Although your feet are "slow", the agility/fast feet isn't what you need currently (though spending 5-10 minutes on them per session would be a good way to warm up. Start slow and build up speed to warm up gently). To gain the speed and position of movement, it's more critical that you do the footwork patterns slowly. You want to practise moving from base to corner and back to base and feeling perfectly balanced throughout the movement, and in good posture. You want to try and ingrain the pattern in your muscles so that you do the right pattern without thinking. Don't be tempted to do it fast - generally this leads to being too tense and actually makes you slower, even if you feel fast. Again one of those things where the camera doesnt lie! Watch these and practise what he shows. He shows some typical drills you can do too. Initially, I would spend 20-30 minutes on each footwork shown. Do them slowly and really make it look right. Get the camera out and make it match as close as you can. Eventually you can practice multiple footworks in one session. E.g. focus on all back left footworks for 30 mins. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGzcF28CHsXCrrD--bHR4Y47azbBdW6GF
Edited my post to include video link. Practise by imagining you are on a court. Don't practice between front corner and back corner. You need to practise with a central base. If you train yourself from front left to back left for example, your opponent might hit it to back right. You might tell me "but I can practise front left to back right separately!". Your problem is then that you can only move when you know where I am going to hit it. And if you are standing at the front left, I guarantee you that you won't make it to the back if you don't know which side I am going to hit it. Always think of returning to your central base!
OP is also not really swinging, he’s just pulling his arm down. Try not to think of hitting down as forcing the shuttle down, but think of it as giving the shuttle a whip. Like a slap.
Sorry for late replying and thank you for replying and critiquing my play Yes i've been told what you have told me but whenever i do that i stay like that for couple of points, a few minutes but when the game warms up or the rally warms up i switch back to my old style. Its really tough to break off bad habbit.
My coach tells me it takes 3+ weeks of daily practice for you to begin breaking a habit. After 3 weeks of practising a new footwork pattern, or the feeling of a new swing style, you will probably notice you will use it in a game maybe once or twice a full game. If you keep practising it, you'll probably notice you'll start breaking your habit gradually, and you'll start taking up the new technique within 2-3 months. At this point, doing a practice once weekly should suffice, and within 6 months, it'll probably be ingrained. Then you can improve the quality of the new technique e.g. balance, timing, explosivity. Then overall you'll improve and find another bad habit that is holding you back, and so on But first things first - you need to put in the time to get the right movement and feeling in your drills before you'll see anything in a game situation.
Definitely so. We all go through that as adult learners. As @DarkHiatus wrote, it needs plenty of practice. Another specific point for you is that it looks as if you are ten kilos overweight. Try targeting five kilos off in the first instance and doing situps, skipping and some press-ups.
I agree with everyone's footwork comments. Once you improve that, you will improve your shots a lot. And I just wanted to add that starting at 33 isn't a detriment at all. I was 39 when I first picked up a badminton racket, and a non athlete in every sense of the word. I once played a singles game against a female university student and my coach said I could finish when I got ONE point. The game lasted almost 10 minutes. Now, almost 2 years later I regularly beat the same student (though in doubles--I don't train singles) So age isn't stopping you from improving. It might take you longer than some fit 20 year old, but if you are determined, you can still do it.
