Raise your racquet hand straight up as high as you can. Stretch it higher even more. With you arm locked straight up, you'll notice you can slide your arm up and down by around 3 inches. You can notice the same thing by shrugging your shoulders up and down. Normally when I smash, I push my shoulders up while the racquet is at the highest point with my arm up, and then pull my shoulder down while the racquet is moving down, creating a whip-like effect. I've noticed that using the whip effect, my lighter racquets are much more powerful at smashes than my heavier racquets. Since i've been injured however, I've been forced to keep the shoulder still during smashes. Under this condition, the heavier racquets produced much faster smashes than the ligher racquets, but still slower than lighter racquets using the shrug-reverseshrug method. I don't remember hearing about this often. Do you guys shrug-reverseshrug when you smash? Do you smash better with heavy or light racquets? ps. I think the muscles i'm talking about are the upper and lower fibers of the trapezius, but I could be way off too.
OK brl I'll respond. I just took a lesson from our Danish guests at the Calgary Winter Club on smashing and he says that the bigger muscles of the abdomen play a much bigger role than the smaller muscles in the arm and wrist in generating power. The smaller muscles give a feeling of power because of the timing with the big muscles makes you FEEL like you are getting power from your wrist, forearm, etc. but in reality the feeling is misleading. It is very tough I would think to do what you say in a game because of the movement required and the perfect position you need to be in to execute the movement of your shoulders and arm. I cold be wrong but that is my thinking. Seeing as nobody has responded maybe my comments will create a little more discussion.
I also discussed with the Dane the power is actually better with the arm slightly bent creating the supination/pronation movement to generate power in a rotation rather than a down the line movement with the arm with the arm fully stretched. The analogy is that your arm is much stronger bent slightly than it is fully stretched because the muscles cannot work when the elbow joint is locked. The shoulder muscles and trunk muscles then must move a relatively stiff arm with weak movement resulting. I realize the arm is not stiff throughout the swing and must start bent but manipulating the arm into a fully stretched position is not very efficient at impact.
Hey eggroll. When I read your post for the first time, for some reason I had the impression that "bigger muscles of the abdomen" mean "spare tire muscles" Gave me quite a chuckle there, you know? When I do smash drills, my coach always tells me to use more hips and shoulders in that I should rotate them more. A lot of power can be generate that way even when I don't exert that much force from my arm. -Rick
I also agree that the legs and the shoulder working together with proper footwork make for the majority of power. I think brl may be looking for that little bit extra and I think maybe at this point the contact of the shuttle and raquet is possibly a big issue for some of us. I know for my level contact is inconsistent. When I get all the factors right I can really pop the shutle. Mostly though I don't make contact pure enough to take advantage of the technique brl is thinking about. Maybe brl is a great player and can stretch the body and the equipment to max out his power. I know most of the time I try to smash from a bad position in doubles and it gets me and my partner into trouble. I find for singles an all out smash is good only when the opponent is in a weakened position. When I play singles I only smash about 70% power to get the weak return so I can put the shuttle on the floor. Easier said than done obviously.
very good topic, especially eggroll comments about abdomen. In Kung Fu (and chinese medicine), abdomen strength and endurance are paramount. It's like having great base position of the court. Abdomen(and back muscles) is also the main transfer agent of power generated by leg and hip. We talk a lot on leg and hip power but under estimate the how abdomen add and transfer/guide it to the upper body. If u look at lin dan, he is not very muscular in arms and calves but look at his racks. In smashes, i employ 2 kinds, full power(cannon) where accuracy is secondary and spot smashing (rifle) where raw power is secondary behind speed of deployment and accuracy. I use the latter method more often as it work for me the best. Full power cost too much energy and most of the time shuttle returned because it wasnt placed at the optimal location.