Shadow badminton?

[jack29g]

hi everyone i'm new, i'm 13 and play for my school. I've seen alot of threads mentioning shadow badminton, what does this mean and how do you do it. Also i was wondering if there are any training activities that i can do that don't require a court or other player. All suggestions greatly apprciated. Thanks.

[toddster]

hi everyone i'm new, i'm 13 and play for my school. I've seen alot of threads mentioning shadow badminton, what does this mean and how do you do it. Also i was wondering if there are any training activities that i can do that don't require a court or other player. All suggestions greatly apprciated. Thanks.

I believe what most people are referring to is when you are on a court all by yourself and you are practicing your footwork and strokes. What you are doing is that you are pretending that someone hit a drop shot to your forehand side, and you are using your footwork and pretending to return the shot that your opponent hit. Then continue working on each possible shots your opponent could hit.

I believe this is a good way to work on your footwork and practice controlling your body inertia. Whe you are by your self, I have found that hitting against a wall is a good way to work on my drives and defense. So far I have not been able to beat the wall.

Other than the technical skills of hitting and footwork, badminton players always need to improve their physical conditioning. That includes Cardiovasicular, Muscular strength, and Flexibility, i.e. Running, weight training, and stretching. I think there are some good threads on this site that discusses physical training.

I hope this helps
Toddster

[Slanter]

Just a couple of things:

If you were asking what shadow is, then it is possible you have not had that much coaching. The primary reason for performing shadow badminton is to develop quick, balanced, efficient footwork. Before starting to incorporate shadow into your training you must get a coach to show you how to move properly, better still get a video lesson. If you are not practicing correct footwork you will groove any faults and find it very difficult to change them later on.

As well as helping with footwork shadow helps with fitness and leg stregth. You can vary the pace of your movements around the court. If you run as fast as you can with large leaps and lunges this will work on your plyometric strength, but don't do it for longer than about twenty seconds and take a long rest afterwards. If you want to work on perfecting technique you should perform very slow shadow.

The second thing is hitting against the wall. This is potentially a great way of developing your racquet speed, good for defence, and the strength of your tap action. It is also good for people who take large swings at the shuttle when they should be taking small ones, as a large swing will not allow you to keep the shuttle going.

However, a trap that is easy to fall into when hitting against the wall is looking in the wrong place. You should be looking at the shuttle at all times - watch it hit the strings every shot. When hitting against the wall it is very easy to look at the wall and use judgement and peripheral vision to hit the shuttle. This is about the worst habit you could develop. Take a look around at the less able players you know - how many of them defend a smash by watching the shuttle onto the strings. There is a reason why they don't get many smashes back.

[acwong]

Hey can you explain a bit more on this? Do u mean I should track the bird all the time? from the string bed to the wall back to the string bed....etc?

However, a trap that is easy to fall into when hitting against the wall is looking in the wrong place. You should be looking at the shuttle at all times - watch it hit the strings every shot. When hitting against the wall it is very easy to look at the wall and use judgement and peripheral vision to hit the shuttle. This is about the worst habit you could develop. Take a look around at the less able players you know - how many of them defend a smash by watching the shuttle onto the strings. There is a reason why they don't get many smashes back.

[Eurasian =--(O)]

shadow badminton is great for smoothness and recovery time. a lot of the ppl on the national training center do shadow with wieght vests.