i think im like bluejeff.. my level of play depends on the weather... Anyways. I went to the courts today to play and all my shots sucked... my smashes went straight like a drive, my clears were weak and my drops kept hitting the net... but last week, my shots were powerful and "solid." I really dont understand how, within a weak, i could lose most of my skills... I feel really awful.. Well, i think its because i didnt warm up with clears long enough... what do you think?
I think you had a bad night Sometimes you just play badly. Unless you are training every day, you can't expect to be on form all the time. Even the professionals have their bad days.
- practice is one way to improve consistency. pro players spend hours and hours each day practicing the most fundamental of shots. i remember watching this video long ago of Gong Zhichao (Sydney Olympics WS Gold) doing only net drop, the feeder has this huge basket of birdies and all Gong did was to do a straight netdrop, hundreds and thousands of times. - you need to know and understand each stroke. if one day you step into court, and realize one of your shots are off, you need to know how the correct stroke looks like and try to adjust - consistency is also a mental state, i find that thinking about playing badminton outside of the court helps. try replay each stroke in your head over and over again. watching badminton videos also help. there are tons of them to be downloaded in emule. i am a very inconsistent player. but over the years while observing my performance, i noticed there are a few things that i can do to increase my consistency. this is a personal observation so it may not apply to you. - my footwork is a major source of inconsistency. if i have a bad day with bad footwork, the rest of my game gets affected. i noticed that there are a few simple routines that helps me remember how to do the proper footwork and maintain my rhythm. - warming up outside of court. swing a few times on the sideline without the birdie - during warm up, hit slow shots. don't try to clear base->base yet, just hit half court and relax. don't try to hit hard smash, do soft smash, let your body tune into the rhythm slowly. - this probably won't apply to you, but as i use cab racket with a small sweet spot, i find that if i use a more forgiving iso racket for the first two game, it is easier for me to tune my timing and find the sweetspot. then later on i move to the cab racket which i prefer.
Sometimes when I have a bad day and play badminton, I would be inconsistent. Try to be happy that day.
