How do you play your cross-court net shots? Once again, I'm exposed to 2 seemingly orthrogonal approaches: 1. Use wrist action Put it simply, this involes mainly cocking and uncocking of wrist to cut/hit the bird. Arm movement is minimum. Initial preperation is same as straight netshot. 2. Use elbow In this approach, the wrist is almost like it is locked in space during execution (while the preparation phase is much like a straight net shot). Perhaps a better phrase to use is to "pivot around the wrist". The elbow is brought closer to the body and dropped down. Shoulder of the racket hand also moves closer to the racket. This way, the racket is swung vertically up from the side. I know my descriptions may be somewhat flawed, but I hope you got the picture. At any way, advocates of both approaches claim that the respective approach is deceptive. Advocates for #2 claims further that use of wrist should be minimized as small muscle groups tend to be imprecise (and thus not very consistent). However, I find #2 involes a lot of body movement that may prove detrimental to the rally's continuity (particularly recovery). What do you think?
#1 is more accurate - wrist movement and it takes a lot of practice and some deception to make it a perfect cross-court net shot.
Well, I think I misunderstood. You probably meant stroke from the net to the back of the court. So do not put attention to my previous posting. I meant stroke just over the net.
Curious though, I always use #1, but my coach told me to use #2 instead. I used both, but I prefer #1 more, so I use #1. Don't mean to disobey my coach, but I always think that I should use whatever produce good results.
It depends on your body position that will govern which is optimum, however approach 3 as suggested by trapped-never is the way I learned. Finger control is finer than wrist, wrist is finer than elbow, elbow is finer than shoulder. The difficulty is then to develop strength and dexteritiy in the fingers to control the racquet and shuttle.
I'm aware of finger control/power when you play attacking net tape down shots. But this is the first time I hear about using fingers to play cross-court net shots. Can anyone of you in the know shed some more lights here? How do you execute it? How does that different from wrist based actions?
Raymond, that is a very difficult question to answer in writing. It really needs a demonstration. I think your original descriptions were not too far off the mark with the elbow pulling in more for a forehand shot and wrist/fingers for the backhand shot.
Actually my original post somehow had neglected the forehand. Essentially, the preparation should look like a straight drop in both forehand and backhand. The elbow is supposed to be bended. In the forehand case, the elbow is raised, as opposed to be dropped (as in backhand case). I find forehand to be more tricky than backhand with this elbow (or shall I say arm method). On another note, justification of the elbow/arm method is that wrist is less reliable in making precision shots. I suppose muscles controlling fingers would be even smaller. Thus, by the same logic, it would be even less reliable??
Sorry, I couldn't work out what you meant by raising the elbow for forehand crosscourt. What I do know for forehand is that it is not only wrist/finger movement. In preparation, the hand has to fully uncock (held only in fingers). When the movement is started, the hand uncocks slightly, the arm is brought in across the body with the elbow pulled in. I seen Taufik do this. So, not very much movement of wrist/fingers. This will be for shots taken up near the top of the net. It is difficult to explain just with text.
This goes to show that there are many ways to acheive the same objective. Each player has their own preferences and all can produce similar results. Each technique relies on the entire situation, (ie. body position, position at the net, pace of shuttle, timing, etc) which may affect the success of the shot. Coaches will teach their preferences. Students will play with their own preferences.
Whatever way you find useful, it would need a feeder and at least a couple of thousand attempts with shuttles to start to get a feel for the cross court net shot. Then another few thousand attempts to refine the shot.....
Hi all, Depending on what game your playing, cross-court net shots shouldn't be used often, but only when the opponent is not there. In doubles, keep cross-courts to a minimul. Yes it looks very nice if it works out, but as soon as it raises a fraction too high, the attacking pair will kill it off. In singles, as i said, only play it when the opponent is not there. If you do, chances are you are REALLY exsposed in the rear court area. Matt
