Yesterday, when a friend was helping me with correcting my clearing form, he said my racket shoulder is too low when I am doing the prep step. He said my racket shoulder should be high (like a perfect T), because this reduces the length of my swing to make it smaller. He said if my racket shoulder is too low, it takes too much time and too big a swing. I am now just watching YouTube videos to confirm but I noticed that in this coach Lee's forehand clear vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlCLy96QCiA , coach Lee's shoulder is also very low. Not to mention he's not really sideways when clearing (Not sure if he's just being lazy or what), but I'm sort of confused. But none the less, I do find that after I keep my racket shoulder higher, my swing was smaller and it felt better. Any clarifications on how high or low the racket shoulder should be for clearing and smashing is appreciated. Thanks!
Your friend is correct - high shoulders e.g. a good upright posture, is very good to maintain at all times. I would not say coach Lees shoulder is particularly low, but it could be higher. A word of caution - do not take ever one of coach lees videos as demonstration of perfect technique. Coaches often exaggerate to demonstrate to students and it is difficult to impart perfect technique in a couple of minutes of video. A better model would be professional players. As an example, mohammad ashan, hendra setiawan, endo and hayakawa, lee chong wei etc all have very upright postures at all times, and do not normally tilt their backs too much. These are good examples of excellent technique, that demonstrate a nice and high racket carriage. Endo and Ahsan in particular have very high racket carriage! Good luck!
Actually both your friend and Coach Lee is right. Let me get this straight. the concept is you keep your arms perpendicular to your body. This is the perfect T your friend meant. Coach Lee is also doing the perfect T. Just that he is bending his trunk backwards so he can use his trunk to create more energy. But due to the angle of the camera, he seems to had drop his shoulder. But if you connect his elbow and shoulders, it is a straight line.
I see. Thanks! Hmm, so I am sort of confused now, because what my friend strictly meant or have I understood was that he wants my shoulder to be upright at all times when I clear. In other words, an upright T. When you bend your trunk, doesn't that upright T rotate down a little as well? I understand that it's important to maintain a balance position (maintaining the perfect T shape), but according to my friend he just wants me to be upright (not bring shoulder down slightly at all as though my back is pinched together). Like he doesn't tell me about bending my trunk down. Today I was trying to see if other players were bending their trunks down and I noticed that for smashing they do ( So I see your point about generating more power) or when they are clearing when the bird has past their body, but with a well timed clear (the bird didn't past their body) they kept their T upright. So did my friend tell me not to bend it down because he doesn't want me to use too much power for clearing or having too big a swing or just that not bending for clear is the proper form? Thanks again for the clarifications.
Well when your technique advances, you will just find out you could actually just use your wrist (i mean it) to send the shuttle back to the baseline. So we start not to use a lot of swing to generate the energy required. That is why we use the "T" stance like your friend said so we can use less swing to intercept the shuttle earlier! We do that is because it reduce the time for your opponent to react. And the higher you take the shuttle, the more variety of choices you can play (clears, drops, smash etc.). For Bending the waist, it is vita in badminton. Most of the energy doesn't comes from theh arm, but the waist. It's common sense, the abdominal muscles is way more stronger than your arms. They are responsible to maintain your body posture everyday! Of course with just a wrist, you can create enough energy, but with the waist, everything shot is also effortless. We use the waist to transfer the energy from the legs. You see, its a body coordination as a whip. Look at the pros on youtube, you can clearly see how the transfer from the leg flows up to the arms, and without the waist, the momentum stops. We use this to increase the speed of every overhead shots. Just see how pros can hit a very fast clear than yours, but never seems to go out. While their drops shots are as fast as our smashes. Just due to their combination of waist and wrist.
