first of all i'll say that its often hard to find someone dedicated enough to practice outside of the clubs and doubles play. most ppl dont really want to invest any time to work on specifics even tho its probably the fastest way to improve. when you guys go with someone to practice drills what do you normally work on... what specific drills do you do and how do you breakup the time spent on each thing? i would do these but i want some suggestions start with working on net drops drives back court drops smash drop clear the clear playing half court singles playing full court singles just rallying and work on moving opponent
Warm up first, then go with clears Drop pracitce ( one person at the net to clear the drop while the other fellow drops and moves infront to receive a net drop and met drops it back after which the bird is cleared to base ) Smash practice ( same thing as drop but smashes instead ) Serves and fast returns Drives And then game time
We start off by having a big bag of used feather shuttles (contains around 200-300 shuttles) After warm ups, mostly three corner exercise. That is one guy stands at one fore corner hitting the shuttle to three corner of the other side (usually back corners and a straight net shot). The guy on the other side has to hit every shot to that corner. We'll alternate every five minutes and swop three times. This exercise needs new shuttles Then we repeat that but swop to the other front corner. That will take up one hour. If we are not feeling so energetic, we'll probably play drives - one stands near the net driving the shuttle to the defender. We'll alternate after perhaps 50 shuttles (which means maybe 200-300 shots). and carry on for 30 mins. If we are really unfit, half of our session may be taken up parctising spinning netshots. One guy just throws the shuttle to the other who tries to do the tumbling netshot. The one who throws the shuttles has a whole row of shuttles (around 12 to 20) stacked up along one arm so that he can just keep throwing. Each person will do 3 sets of perhaps 80-100 shuttles, and then we will go to the other forecourt corner to repeat the same. To be honest, I tend to like to practice the 3 corner exercise (good for singles training - consistency, footwork, fitness and shot choice selection) and the netshots. The other one I like is the netshots because that really trains you to have a good 'feel' of the shuttle with delicate shots. For routine overhead shots, I prefer to practices netshots. One guy serves, and the other just practices hitting a drop to one corner of the court. The trick is to practice keeping the footwork and body rotation just the same as a clear/smash whilst getting the shuttle over. We may do 100-200 or more of the same shot in one set. Usually, we'll practice for about an hour.
I tend to like footwork and consistency drills. things like: Player P (moving)- drop, net, drop, net..... Feeder F (at net) - net , lift , net , lift...... F - lift, block, lift, block... P - smash, net , smash, net.... F - lift, net, lift, block, lift, drop.... P - drop, net , smash, net, clear, net... or 3 or 4 corner routines. F stays near net at 1 side and plays shots to any of 3/4 corners. P has to play all shots back to F a variation on this is where F rotates around the 4 corners and P plays 10 shots to each corner (1 set of 40 shots, rest, repeat....) Instead of 10 to each corner you can choose whatever number you like
