Hi I'm a beginner to badminton and have just play for a year. I'm having trouble with anticipating the shuttle trajactory, not before the opponent hit it, but after. Normally, experienced players know where the shuttle is going when they see it's early path after it leaves the string bed. Are there any trick to do that? Everytime I tried to do this I failed. Now I'm always chasing the shuttle and end up getting it late. Any suggestion? Thanks.
Just watch the shuttle and learn. There are no tricks, there is no anticipation - you just need to play more!
Since you are a beginner, it does make sense u fail most of the time. It does not require a trick to anticipate. Play more and 1 day you'll start anticipate it. Once you can already anticipate those shuttles, you know you are not a beginner anymore.
it helps if your legs are ready, don't stand straight up unless it's between points, keep your knees bent a bit at all times while anticipating a shot, so that when you need to move/chase, your legs are already bent and you can use it as sort of a spring to "launch" you toward your destination to intercept the shuttle. but as the other posters have responded, you really just gotta learn the flight of the shuttle so that you can recognize where it's going to land, and how fast, and that can only be done with hours of playing and watching the shuttle.
I learned how to "anticipate" where the shuttle drops through experience and later enhanced it with common physics. As I know after you hit it you are either forcing it up, forward, side2side, and/or down. I can simulate what will happen using physics and experience. In a nutshell, shuttles travel in a parabola motion (please destroy me with high level physics), because it loses horizontal speed due to air resistance and accelerates down to the ground due to gravity. Points to look for: -Racket position -Sound The position of where the person hits can tell you where the shuttle is going if its facing up chances are it's a clear or drop. If the racket hits downwards it could be a smash or drop. Notice how I am saying a clear or a drop to tell the difference between a clear or drop you can use sound as reference. The impact of racket to shuttle makes a sound and depending on what shot they hit it will make different sounds soft/loud. I am not a pro but at a higher level say advanced level I would say they are able to predict where the shot will go the moment the racket touches the shuttle. For intermediates who mispredict they will normally wait say a few miliseconds to know where the shuttle is going. My suggestion for you to learn how shuttles flow is simply through watching people hit shuttles, and use your head to think where the shuttle will go and then practice playing with the same opponent. Another way that works if you plan to stay rather casual is to learn your opponent's body language, however would be a bad habit to have. All players have a body language for when they perform a shot, especially beginners. However, at higher levels people have less body language shown for differing shots.
