here is a motion sequence of Zhou Mi executing a base to forehand rear court footwork + a overhead shot. the sequence consists of 3 main sections: the first 12 frames is moving from base to forehand corner. the next 12 frames is the execution of the forehand overhead. the last 4 frames is the landing. to analyze the first 12, we noticed that: frame 1 : Zhou had her body facing the opponent frame 2-3 : when she predicts that Gong will return a high clear, she first rotate her body and plant right foot frame 4-8 : shuffle back first step frame 9-12 : shuffle back second step, bring her arms/racket up and aim to the incoming shuttle. the next 12 frames, zhou executes a forehand overhead smash. frame 13 : the absolutely most important part to notice is how she plants her rear (racket) foot firmly on the ground, this changes her momentum and initiates the jump and body rotation. without this, nothing will work. frame 14-16 : up she going in the air, by bringing her non-racket foot up, she initiates her body rotation. frame 17-18 : during the rotation, she brings her racket behind her and her racket elbow forward. frame 19-21 : after recoiling her racket behind her, she springs it to the front and starts the power stroke. with her body up in the air and fully extended, she is contacting the shuttle at the highest point possible. she assert power in her forearm and power stroke comes from the rotation of the wrist. frame 22-24 : after the contact, her body continues to rotate for the follow-thru. the last 4 frame is the landing. notice her upperbody is leaning forward following the momentum of the upper body rotation, ready to move forward to intercept any weak return from her smash. i doubt many people can execute such a sequence with as much speed, grace and power as Zhou Mi.
Interesting motion sequence of Zhou Mi. Diagonal movement backwards using side step is the standard to be reached when taking a high shuttle. Notice she is right underneath the shuttle for the smash. That allows her to do the body rotation better. I'd just comment her final position is not as nice as perhaps it could be. Two reasons for this. 1)Maybe it's because she's putting everything into the shuttle to try and get an outright winner. 2) If there does happen to be a weak return to the net, she is near the midcourt area and won't have too much court to cover.
thanks kwun for bringing this analysis. Each step is very well described. In my view, the step which is more important is explained in frames 14-till last. One single action, you have to jump with your non-racket foot forward, swing your racket into action and bring racket foot forward for landing. I feel this step really difficult to master. She must have done a lot lot of practice. Lately I also started realising that whenever I move in my forhand side (be it front or rear court), I tend to lock my legs by crossing my legs. And eventually it shortens my movement. This analysis is gonna help me too. But the explosiveness and excecution will come with extreme practice.
If we want to reach the rear court quickly, for example after playing net shot, the opponent lob the shuttle far back which one should we do, running backward or side step backward(lunging backward) ? and I still confuse when to run when to lunge.
Badmad, you don't need extreme practice at the beginning for this training. Use a shadow routine: just start in the middle of the court, do the side steps to the forehand corner, then do a clear with the body rotation. Then step to the middle of the court again. Then repeat the movement. Our juniors in HK , who go to organised sessions, do this all the time at the beginning of training session (alternating the corners). i.e. they don't even hit a shuttle at the beginning of the session.
Correct Mag! The defensive backhand lift from Gong was weak to start with; thus, enabling Zhou to take a full swing at it.
Don't forget to study the sequence of Zhou Mi's non-playing left hand. Without it, her smash would be "inefficient".
also notice how she uses her full body to gain power. she is completely arched out at frame 17 and then by rebounding like a bent ruler, she is taking advantage of her whole body as a counterweight to focus her power on the shuttle.
Very nice frame analysis.... what program did u use to capture the frames? maybe we can do analysis on other footworks as well.. Zhou Mi's footwork is queit basic.. we can see how she plan her foot.. how she direct her hand before the shots.. the follow thru..
i used the movie creater that was bundled with windows xp. it has a frame capture feature. i have the video on my minidv camcorder so i am able to get pretty clear frames. after capture, i use a unix program call ImageMagick, it can assemble the pictures into one montage like what you saw. i think it is great stuff to learn from the pros. in this clip, yeah, the lift is short, but it is still a very simple and nice footwork/smash combination to learn from.
D**n it kwun, you had just raised the standard for what a guy suppose to know about electronics. It use to be knowing how to set and program a VCR was more than enough to impress our peers and look what had you done now :crying:
Forgot to add, if you want to travel further out to the rear right hand corner, make up the extra distance with an extra sidestep. Some people will try to make up the distance by using only one side step but making it extra big. This does not work so well and may make you lose balance.
I am confused what's the difference between, "an extra sidestep", and "one side step but making it extra big?"
Wow Hi everyone, I am new. I just can't stop wowing at the amount of information I can find on this website, and Kwun I think you really did a great job in making the montage!! I stopped playing for a while now, but recently just started back, and reading all the articles on thie website sure got me fire up on all cylinders! Thank you!
thanks! analysing the pro's technique is a great way to learn. hope you get can into speed soon. i will try to do more of these motion sequence in the future. maybe with all the comments from everybody, each one can be grown into an article in the front page.
It is good to analyze Zhou Mi's style and learn from it but as Cheung subtly pointed in one of the above posts, Zhou Mi has a tall man's footwork. In the sense, since she is tall and can reach various areas of the court in one larger than normal (for her) step. If a person of a shorter and more average stature tries this, he/she will have to make that one step very long and in essense can lose balance. Better use two small but quick steps to reach far corners. And 'multi-hop' or if possible 'walk' back to base. I have a question about her landing though. Shouldn't one land facing the net straight on after the smash. The person who taught me always insisted I land facing the net and it was more natural for me to land at an angle or sometimes normal to the net.
