When a badminton court has its full compliment of players for safe practice, and there are still participants left over, how do we keep things interesting for everyone involved? This is a difficult area for a coach, because essentially there are two groups to be controlled (with two separate activities). Does anyone have any tips relating group control to specific coaching practices? What activities can the “passive†pupils perform to ensure that an interest is maintained throughout the session and the main body of the session is not disrupted? Aleik.
-Give them some excerciss to do that dont require encroachement on to the other courts (coordination excercises/flexibility excercises etc...) -get them to watch the other players (focus on one player) and describe their fauls and how they can improve them. -tell them to write down their faults that they know about, and what they are doing to improve them. By that time (5-10 mins) it should be time to change the excercise/ change the peolple round.These are ongoing excercises so can be done everytime you have a session.
what is the active group doing? is it a one shuttle drlll or multi-shuttle one? for the multi-shuttle, you can rotate the inactive group so they stick around and pick up the birdies. alternative would be to make the activity so tiring the inactive group will be sitting around catching up their breath....
A simple option, that works quite well with children, is to choose a practice that can involve more people for at least one court. For example, suppose you have 3 courts and 30 students. This is not a good situation, but it does happen! You can expect to fill 2 of the courts with good practices for 8-12 people. That leaves 1 court and 18-22 people to occupy. These remaining people can do some kind of team game, such as continuous clears (in two teams on each side or in one team running all around the court). Similar games can be played with netshots, or you could even advance to a "lift, clear, drop" routine (take care that you have good control of the group, of course!). It's not ideal, because obviously the players don't get to hit as many shots. But some participation is better than none. The trick to doing this really well is to work out how to swap players between the two types of practice.
The BAofE coaches teach to fit 6 on a court with good exercises however if your involved in coaching get them involved in the other players development it will keep them interested involved and kitt the group together and if its a team get them more together
Kwun, This is what I had in mind for drives. Each pair could have a drive rally down the line (FH/BH), and the two players off-court could pick up shuttles that land in the rear-court as quickly as possible (like a footwork exercise). The sides work as teams, and the player off-court writes down how many have landed in the RC, i.e. how many drives their side has missed. Then the sides rotate clockwise so that each player plays someone else every time, and everyone get to play the FH and the BN drive. Gollum, I am all for having quality practices, but as each pupil probablyu pays the same for a session, perhaps it's more appropriate and also simpler for the coach if the group is split equally and each court has the same standard exercise? Aleik.
