Had my first feather shuttle game...

Hello badminton central community once again!

Tis I, the most long winded poster on the forum

I wanted to post about my experience tonight, since starting to play badminton again, after nearly a 2 year hiatus from my most beloved sport.

Today, was my first day back, playing with feather shuttles... I had been doing some simple nylon shuttle rallies with most players since I started playing again.
While it was fun, and both challenging trying to get my shot technique and timing back, I must admit, I have not really been pushed to play at all, and thus have been struggling with my mental game.

Someone on the forum previously posted about keeping focus when playing players of a more recreational nature, as opposed to more competitive level players.
As much as some of you may faulter when playing against the recreational players, I must admit I may be the worst of all.

For example, I hardly move for the shots, maybe take one or two steps, and sometimes end up with the wrong foot in front, and thus not having enough reach to retrieve the shuttle, and also slicing the shuttle to the point on my over head shots so much so, that they hardly reach the opponent's mid court.

A complete lack of focus, can be detrimental to one's game, and I am working on this, so that I can at least maintain some level of composure while playing... I find that I am not making the game fun for the other players when I do this, and this gets me down more.

(I guess that's why I pretty much converted to a singles player before I stopped playing a year and a bit ago now)

Tonight one of my old friends, and I were warming up using a feather shuttle... albeit a beat up feather shuttle just to hit back and forth to work on timing, and technique etc... but it was good enough.

Although he is not able to defeat me if we played a match, he is one of those "crafty old folk" that we had mentioned on the forum previously hahaha.
He made shots during our warm up to get me moving around, and also to help me work on my shots... this served to get me fired up, as I saw I was making some very basic fundamental errors in some of my shots, and thus correcting them.

Next we played a match vs a fairly skilled player, and one mediocre player, and again... moved me around a lot, as my old friend did not have the foot speed to reach a lot of shots from the opponents, so I put forth some more effort to retrieve the shots... the matches were fairly close, as I was not smashing very hard rather focussing on the technique and movement itself, but I was rushing the net, and blocking shots well enough, and placing the shots generally out of reach, of our opponents.

Since coming back and playing, I have found that a lot of players are rather slow, and that if I put forth even the slightest bit of effort on a consistent basis, I will be able to improve my skills drastically, along with increasing the consistency of my shots themselves.

I realized tonight that I can take advantage of the fact that a lot of players, and their shots seem "slower" to me, and use that to my advantage, and just take every game, and every rally I have as apart of my training, to get me back into proper playing form.

The night before, I tried playing with a feather shuttle with a few friends from the forum, to no avail...
No one really seemed like they were trying at all, so it did not fire me up at all.

I find that when I play players of a higher calibur, and know they are not going to have mercy on me, no matter what, it helps me get pumped to play a good match.

Although I still was not playing my best tonight, I am glad that my old friend did what he did during our warm up, as it help me learn a few things, as well as to the other players during our match, for helping me work on my skills some more.

Overall it was a great night tonight!

Does anyone else need this type of motivation to get playing your natural game?

Do you need to get yourself fired up, before you can show some of your true skills to other players??

Just curious how others are when they go out to play with others.
I appreciate any input.

-Kelvin

 

Wow! What a difference a night makes.

From playing a crafty old person, to... dare I say it?

I am still having extreme difficulty coping with the jump from playing a feather shuttle back to nylon, I have poor control over the plastics as they seem to just bounce off my string bed, before I can stroke it... I guess I am just slow in getting back into shape

Also having similar difficulties playing against rec. players vs competitive players... how do most of you keep up your focus???

I find myself just throwing away the games, and points, and that really does not make things fun for anyone.
Have I gone snobby??

Oh well... I really need a good butt whooping by some really good players, maybe that will humble me and bring me off my high horse

Anyhow... that's all of my ramblings for tonight
I guess I will just have to continue practicing my basics, until I feel I am ready to play actual games with people...

-Kelvin