defending a smash

alright to answer your questions, 1st thing though before that you might want to choke up on the racquet when your defending as opposed to holding it down near the end this way you get more control and it can really help. by choke up i mean hold it closer to the cone doesnt have to be on the cone that you hold it though i know some players do just a little higher than holding it at the very bottom of the racquet.

1.) well you should stand about midcourt if not a little bit back from it thats basically kinda how comfortable you are i know at 1st when you start defending against somebody who can hit hard you want to be farther back but in reality their smashes will probally land around mid court. so you should be standing around midcourt if not a little back so that you can recieve them. thats something to work up towards and with confidence and practice you wont have problems returning them from there.

2.) you said you are right handed so you should be standing with your right foot a little bit infront of you left with feet shoulder width apart and knees bent trying to have a low stance. ontop of that you want to make sure that your on the balls of your feet so that you wont be caught flat footed. example incase instead of a smash they are deceptive and hit a drop you would have to be able to move to get it.

reason being that you want to stand almost square to the net and not turn to one side is that you will be able to get everything is way as opposed if you faced one side then you woudl be awsome on the side your facing but would suck defending the side your not. so just make sure to stay almost square with your right (racquet foot) a lil infront of the non racquet foot.

3.) well if your right handed you should be using your right hand...but i think your more so asking forehand or backhand grip like which should be used right? well you should mostly be using backhand since you can go backhand all across your body as opposed to forehand but there will deffinetly be times where you have to use a forehand grip to return a smash so really it just depends where the smash is going that determins which you will use to return it but majority of the time its usually going to be backhand.

4.) yes you should choke up on the racquet like i stated earlier (short grip as you put it) and basically you can practice it many different ways you can get your friend to stand on one side of the net and throw shuttles down and you can practice lifting those to the back of the court so that you can get use to using finger power (your thumb on the backhand grip) and use to lifting on the forehand. you can also to smash defence drills you lift the shuttle and your friend smashes and you lift those to the back of the court they dont have to be smashing all out for that though you can work up towards 100% smashes start at like 50% strength.

5.) body smashes well you have to see them comming and as soon as you do you got to get that racquet infront of your body like out infront so that you can have a chance to lift it to the back of the court else you can always just block the shuttle to the net or even drive it back. this is where when your defending make sure that your racqut isnt just hanging down by the side of your body you have to keep it up and ready to recieve the smash so that you can return it with either a lift, drive or block to the net.

well hope that kinda helped if something was unclear or made no sense what so ever let me know and i shall see what i can do and im sure that many other people here will deffinetly have lots to say on each point about it.