Smash defense

The things you're going to need for a rock-solid anti-smashing wall, in order of importance:
1. Correct form.
2. Wrist speed.
3. Stance/'bounciness'.

I'll explain them one by one.
1. You want to be striking the bird out in front of you, reasonably far away from your body. It is preferable to use a flick of the wrist to return the bird rather than a full arm motion. As far as grip goes, your typical V-grip works for the forehand, and your thumb will move up on the backhand. Hold your racquet out in front of you in the ready position. For forehand, cock your wrist so that you are aiming (comfortably) at a point on the floor reasonably close to parallel (if that makes sense). Your wrist should be relaxed in getting to this position, but once cocked, should exhibit tension which is used to generate the 'snap' to return the bird. Your racquet face should be rather parallel to the net, and your elbow will move inward slightly. For the backhand, it's much the same but opposite... pronate your hand so your palm is facing you, and your elbow should move outward from your body slightly. The key is to avoid large arm motions as this compromises speed. Though large motions can enhance power, speed, deception, and accuracy of your return are generally more important than how hard you can hit it. Working on this includes a good measure of being smashed at by a friend, as well as light wallpractice with attention to form.
2. To generate wrist speed, the best thing that can be prescribed is wallpractice... and oodles of it. As hard and fast as you can possibly go.
3. Your stance should be a ready position, which in doubles is favouring the backhand. Your knees should be bent and you should be light on your feet, very bouncy. Your feet should move and take small steps as you hit the return. Take care not to wait for the smash too far in the backcourt, as this will make you very succeptable to getting caught by a dropshot.

Hope that helped!

 

hm well, im still pretty inexperienced but what I usually do when I see that i've made a bad hit and the person is about to smash is kinda jump to the middle of the court and kinda lower my racquet a little. Then usually im able to get the smash through reflex or predicting where the bird will fly since there isnt really anytime to think ;p. I don't know if this is a good way to defend against smashes or not but it seems to work for me... I do backhand most of the time since it has wider range of movement. I'm working on returning forehand though.

As for training, what I usually do is lift to the person you train with and they smash me while I return it as another liflt and just continously smash, lift, smash, lift. If you practice with someone who needs to work on their smash then you guys are basically training together and while his smash gets better, you also progress returning his smash which is steadily getting faster/better.

 

Position yourself on the behind the middle to back third of the big rectangle.

 

1) bend ur body lower
2) racket lower (by a bit..)
3) train ur reaction speed ( ask people to blast shuttles towards u at a REASONABLE range. it really helps !)

 

Unfortunately, just practice. But if you do a lot of wallpractice, and frequently, you'll find that after awhile you don't even need to look at the bird... you will zone out and stare straight ahead and still be hitting well. Once you get a lot of practice at smash returns, they are much teh same... that way you use your peripheral vision and instinct to make the return, while observing the oponent to see where best to hit it!

 

Here's the progression I use:

1. Have your partner point to the smash targets around your body (hips, shoulders, wide, forward drop) and you figure out how to move to get your racquet on those spots. Discuss anything you're not sure of. This makes sure that you know how you want to move your racquet around when you defend. Generally you'll want to aim for minimal movement as this minimizes the time taken to prepare for and recover from the shot.

2. The second drill involves the partner throwing birds (multi-shuttle) to those targets on the body while you hit them back over the net. Usually the partner will stand just in front of the net on the same side as you. This drill works on raw reaction quickness (since the distance the bird travels is so small) and getting your racquet on the bird.

3. The third drill has the partner on the opposite side of the net, hitting pushes down at those same targets. Now you get to focus on the quality of your shot - ie how tight it is to the net.