Help me :) MY OWN GAME TAPE REVIEWS!

Hey JukUx,

I only watched your first Mixed and Mens Doubles games and I have a few points I would like to point out. In terms of tactics when playing, you should be more on the offense. I noticed with your smashes, you hit the shuttlecock when it is above you, close to getting past your head. In general, you want to hit the shot at 11 o'clock in front of you to maximize the angle.

If you are returning the serve, especially in mixed doubles, the main places you should hit when the male is serving are the backhand side of the guy once he moves back-court, net-shot to the opposite corner of the woman or a mid-range push to the far-side where the male server just served. In hitting the shuttle to the guy's backhand, you are exploiting a general weakness to players, the backhand simply. Depending on the height of your return to his backhand, he may have to backhand lift, clear or play an off-guard drop by which your female partner should receive. The point of hitting a net shot to the opposite corner of the woman, where the man just served would be to make the woman move the longest distance that she should generally be covering. This gives you more time to recover and due to possible movement pressure, the woman may make a weak reply. In pushing the shuttlecock to mid-court far-side where the server just served would be to make the guy have to move back to where he served. Generally after the serve, the man will move back to cover the back court. In this case, he would have to move diagonally forward to the right and seeing as the shot is naturally going down, it becomes very hard to return it unless you have very good reaction time.

When clearing, you should make sure they go really high and full court if you are playing defensively to get out of a jam. You cleared it a lot in the mixed doubles game but the problem was the depth and height. Both opponents were relatively tall and had no problem intercepting the clears. The male opponent smashed it numerous times resulting in the lost points.

During gameplay even if you are not the one hitting the bird, you still have to be ready! There were times when the mixed opponents were only hitting it to your partner and you were standing there. If they switched up the play, you could be caught off-guard. In doubles, when your partner was at the back and smashing while the opponents lifted, you were mid-to-front court with your racquet down. If you don't have your racquet up, you will not be as ready to intercept shots from a weak defense.

One thing I noticed about your doubles play is you clear it too much! When you were in the front or even midcourt, you chose to lift a lot. If you are at the net, your job is to play shots to set up an attacking winner for your back-court partner or to play the net kill. What I mean by setting up attacking winner shots are shots that force the opponent to lift. This could be a net shot, a drive to the back court or an attempted net kill. In doing so, you lessen the chance of being attacked and can control the game better.

A really important step that stepped up my game was what is called the split step. This is where you do a slight hop to charge your thighs to pounce for the next shot. As you do your hop, you come down to ground balancing on the balls of your feet and depending on your opponent's shot, you move to where the shuttlecock will be.

Here is a video of Canadian player Nyl Yakura doing split steps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg8Am7i7ieU&feature=related

His split-step is very easy to pick out if you know what you are looking for. Watch for the slight hop inbetween shots.

To finish off, you seem to have negative body gestures at points when your partner or you missed a shot. I understand how you feel as I have been there but when you get negative, your efficiency goes down the drain. You really do have to move on. Just shrug the mistake off and work towards making the next one count and the one after that and so forth. Keep a positive mindset.

Good luck with getting better!

 

During times where you are not ready, you still had chances to place the drop instead of lifting. There were times in your doubles games where you were right up at the net and could have easily played the net shot but opted for the lift.

As for split step, it really does help in doubles. This all comes down to reaction again, the faster you have to react to a bird, the better chance you have at playing an intimidating shot.

Another thing I noticed, when you are playing front, stay front! That is unless you feel your partner may not be able to handle the pressure or, depending on the situation, your partner plays a clear. You tend to look back at your partner to see if he can make the shot and look back. This takes focus off of your opponents next move and you may be caught off guard. In one instance, you moved back to a side-to-side formation after your partner played a drop. The point would have been lost if the opponent did not play an error. What I am trying to say is STAY UP AND LOOK FORWARD!

Bringing this point up again, practice your smashes. If you get better angle, they will influence your game in a positive way. When you seemed to smash, your opponents returned them with a drive a lot of the time which is hard to recover from.

 

check your profle

 

I watched a few of your videos and I'm confused by what you want in terms of a critique. Are you asking just as an individual level or are you asking from a doubles analysis?

(I will try not to be redundant from what Joster has already posted.)
One thing I did notice is that you don't have communication with your partner. It's one thing to say good shot or aim at this person, but it's something else to say okay let's go for these shots and watch out for these. Furthermore this communication goes beyond just as simple pre-game conversation. During the game, if you do not have a coach or another player to do this for you, you have to observe what shots are going through and what shots are not. Once you've recognize let's say that one of the other players are having difficulty returning shots to his tight backhand, you have to try to end points there.

I cannot hear what you are saying to your partner between points but I am inferring this claim based on the fact that you do not seem to have a really direction to where you are hitting, more often than not it seems you are trying to just put it to a corner rather than thinking shot by shot. The evidence is very clear when that happens, your opponents do not seem to have much difficulty reaching your birds.

The absence of signals is very evident. When you lift, you prepare for a smash. In this case both you and your partner should be ready and drop into a defensive position. When one of you lifts, the other is totally lost because they had no idea you were going to lift and then are put into an awkward position.

Your formation is also quiet poor in terms of movement. There are frequent holes that pop up that make you work harder than you need to. Doubles and mixed isn't just something you can walk onto a court to figure out, it is more of an art than in singles. Sure individual skill is important in doubles, but I've seen many smarter teams take out teams that were individually much more skilled just because they LISTENED TO ADVICE. I stress the last point because I coach high school juniors and seniors, when they listen they play awesome. When they start to just hit and try to out muscle the opponents they suck. You need to learn how to play with someone and not just which birds are mine. You need to always be at the right place at the right time and you also need to know how to create openings and how to break formations.

Lastly your concerns, it's a habit. You've developed habits and that's how you play. It's comfortable since you've played like that for so long. Furthermore, without a game plan it's hard to go to the shots you want since you're hitting with reflex for you, it seems like your reflex is to life, therefore no net play.

 

btw didn't bother to edit it

 

Hi,

firstly, good on you for posting a video of yourself playing. Most people are too shy

I was hoping you could help ME look for things. I noticed a lot of things I thought could be improved when watching SOME of your videos - I watched clips from them all, but don't have time to watch them all. What would be good, is if you could highlight any areas of concern that you have, and point me to which video you want analysis on.

What I will say is: in your mens doubles - you play far too many cross court shots, especially around the net. If you want to play the net, DO NOT HIT CROSS COURT. Why? This gives your opponent an EASY opportunity to lift the shuttle or push the shuttle past you. I am of course exaggerating: there are many times a good cross court shot around the net can be good, but in every one of those situations, there is probably an equivalently good straight/centre shot as well. If you want me to comment MORE on this, then ask, but if not I will not spend any more time on it.

I will now comment on your FIRST mixed doubles game. I know you have said you were struggling with feathers, but I want to tell you that you lost that game by GIVING it away. You could have won. I don't think I saw you hit a single attack clear to pressure the other guys movement, and when you could have hit a nice straight lift or drive, you went for a lift down the centre of the court - putting your partner in real trouble. I also did not see you hit any straight drop shots to bring the guy forwards, again exposing his movement. Once again, I don't want to say too much without going into much more depth, and will only do this on your request. But suffice to say, you were beaten because they tactically played a very standard mixed doubles game, and you did not use a tactical shot selection to your advantage.

I hope you get lots of useful comments from people. Pay particular regard to your shot selection - you look as if you are playing the same shots over and over again, rather than thinking about what to do. I could well be wrong but consider: do you have options when you prepare to hit a shuttle?

Matt

p.s. I did not intend this post to sound so negative.You have a lot of good things happening on court for you too!

 

In the videos of you playing, you smash with the bird too far behind you or right in front of you. It would be better to see videos of your smashing in order to help you with that. You said in the videos that taught you to smash by holding the time they changed your form? I doubt any decent video would change the form so drastically, possibly an interpretation of what you thought was right. With that being said, without any training, I can understand.

Try a video like this, it is a basic smash tutorial although the video does not show any actual smashing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNVC5PVJyPQ

As for playing well in recreational games, I can definitely see why. When you play in your first few tournaments, you tend to get possibly anxious? I felt the adrenaline when I played but you have to take a deep breath, stay calm. Seeing as you play recreational games in a place that you are comfortable with, your mentality shifts to a more positive-one and I can see your point.

 

I have studied anger managment from a sports psychological perspective before and there are many facts that contribute towards it. A method that I found works, and also works for school grades, is to focus on what you did well and forget the bad things. If you screw up keep in mind that you need to pay more attention to this particular stroke but forget how you missed. What I mean by that is consider it a matter of fact that you missed a shot and no more.

As for coaching I suggest Albert since I think every other person in the badminton world of Toronto knows of him and he's not hard to find.

Furthermore I was wondering if you play singles naturally or do you play doubles. Doubles there are things you should do even if you don't trust you partner. For example at times I may be looking forward but my left hand is on the back of my head. This is more of a joke to my partner but if I don't trust him I would still do my share which is look away. What you should tell your partner is that the person in the back directs traffic. Being the only one that can see the whole court should be able to make better decisions with more information. In that case if he lifts or if you life from the back, you have to call it. If the person in the front lifts than both of you will know instantly. But if the person in the rear lifts, you might not realize it until too late.

A drill I normally do with my kids is that they start in the front back and I'll feed into the back and tell me to vocalize to their partner. They will shift accordingly and if they lift from anywhere they will drop back and get ready for a smash. This drill can go on for a long while since the purpose is to work possitions and not winning points. So hit with half power, granted the bird should still go to the ends when you clear. But when I hit with half power on my smashes I have yet to see it being returned when they both drop back to side-by-side to defend properly.

 

i think you should prepare more on your ready position: knees bent, feet on your toes, and racket up and in front of you. whether you're in front of the net and attacking or side by side defending the ready position is very important because it really makes you physically and mentally ready to move forward and intercept the shot instead of waiting for the shuttle and passively respond. in doubles the play is a lot faster and the split second it takes for you to lift your racket from low to head position the bird is already in front of you and for you to swing your racket effectively is already too late.

looking back is a problem for safety and speed reasons. if your partner mishits, you can be injured (i've seen it happen). and you do lose speed. say you look back, your partner smashes, by the time you face forward and is ready the opponent has already replied with a counter drive back (which you should've focussed on intercepting) or a block/net shot. if your opponent clears to your partner, instead of looking back, you should take up the front, slightly to the side of your partner, and expect your partner to attack (smash or drop). always pull up your racket to head level so you are ready to intercept any drives or blocks because if your racket is below the net, by the time your raise your racket the drive back has already passed you. if your partner is in the backcourt returning a clear, he should always attack unless he's out of position or your opponent is really out of position and hitting an attacking clear is the best shot. otherwise clearing back is just death.

one special time where looking back is ok is maybe you think the clear is long. then looking back and help out your partner by yelling "watch" or "out" or something. but if it's not long, you should always face forward again BEFORE your partner hits the shuttle.

if you don't trust your partner, then mentally you should tell yourself you can only take care of your shots, and whether you look back or not he's gona hit the shots to his best ability and you can only help him better by facing forward and cutting off any crosscourt drives that might give your partner problems.

 

when you smash its too far back, your non-racket arm is too far out - it should be brought into the body. your non racket shoulder is too low - you are probably trying torotate in the wrong direction - this is why your racket knee jumps up on smash.

your drop shots are all from your shoulder - your elbow is at constant angle and there seems to be no pronation at all during the shot.

 

As most of the things to do with shot mechanics have already been covered, I won't waste your time re-iterating what others have already told you.

I would however, like to give an analysis of your mixed doubles performance. From a tactical perspective, you weren't awful in the first game but the good tactical decisions seemed to melt away until the third match, where all tactical reasoning seemed to escape you. The return of serve is incredibly important if you are to be successful in mixed doubles in the first match, it wasn't executed brilliantly but it was much better than the third. It is generally a really bad idea in any form of doubles to hit a lift return because it means you're just giving the opponents the attack. As you are probably aware, once your opponents start attacking, it is very difficult, regardless of how good you are, to get the attack back. This is especially true in doubles where there isn't usually as much open court space to play a counter-attacking shot in to. The serve is a shot that you can't really do that much with; you're confined to a small area and can't hit the shuttle downwards. Yes, some people have very effective serves but chances are, you should be making a positive return from most serves. That is either developing an attacking opportunity straight off or at very worst, hitting a neutral shot and trying to construct an attack in the coming shots.

Something that doesn't seem to have been picked up on yet is your lazy attitude on court. Your racket was by your side far too often. Mixed is a fast game and you need to be ready. Having your racket in a higher carry makes sense, you won't be moving your racket as far so you'll be able to react to faster shots and hit smashes with less time. Your footwork is really scrappy as well; you need to be lower. This will make you more explosive and more stable so you'll move around the court quicker. It's a good idea to look at some footwork videos so you get an idea of what the movements to various areas of the court should be like.

When your partner is receiving serve, you need to be a lot tighter in. I think the same goes for when she's serving too. You'll still have plenty of time to get back if the shuttle is lifted but between you, you'll have much better coverage of the "corridor of uncertainty" - the area out wide on both sides and between you and your partner. This is the area that it is particularly effective to push the shuttle in to when receiving serve. At the moment, if your opponents were executing this return well, you would be losing a lot of points straight from their service return.

Be more confident when receiving serve, go in tighter to the short service line. You should still be able to cover any flick serves and you'll put a lot more pressure on the opponents' serves. If you bury the first serve, you're already inside their heads and they'll worry when the serve to you again. They'll serve even worse and the cycle continues. Also, it is very common after having a serve crushed by someone standing close in to flick the second one. You know it's likely that it's coming so you'll be prepared to put the flick serve away too.

Sorry if you feel that I've completely ripped in to you, it wasn't really that bad and there are a lot of positives you can take away from those matches. Definitely work on being more committed and less lazy, communicate with your partner and don't be afraid to get tighter in. Work on the service return and after those things, you'll certainly be a much stronger player both individually and with your partner.

 

Let's think about the short serve first. You should aim to be lunging forwards to return this, taking it early and above the height of the net if possible. The two main options once you are there are the net shot and pushes/drives. Also, I should point out that if the serve is weak, you must try to kill it. Just a quick tapping motion will suffice to get the shuttle down with reasonable pace. Aim it in to the open space or at the lady's feet or racket side hip.

The net shot is a good choice if you know that the opposing female is weak at the net and likely to lift. Aim out to the cornerse of the forecourt and try to make her move. It must be tight or else, it will be killed. The net shot is not a good choice if your opponent is good at the net. If she is, she'll take you on and draw you in. This is bad because your partner will be pushed to the back. As you have already told me that she is lacking in attacking firepower, this is not an ideal situation at all.

The pushes and drives can be placed to many areas of the court but there are a few that you should look for if you want them to be successful. The short push to draw the opposing female off center and open up space can be useful but it isn't the most positive shot you can play - that is, there are shot choices that apply more pressure. One such choice is a firm push or a drive to the rear court and the man's backhand corner. This will put him under pressure and open up space to hit in to. Secondly, as you have also observed, hitting in to the "corridor of uncertainty" is a great idea. If you play a push out wide and just behind the front player, just in front of the back one, you can create confusion and cause one of them to play a difficult shot.

You partner should be cutting off most cross-court drive type shots. She should be ready to move and intercept them. They're going cross-court so there should be plenty of time. If you're struggling to get to the clears, I really think an improvement in your footwork would be helpful. Get lower, use a split step and take fewer steps to move to where you're going. There are some good guides and videos on footwork on the internet.

You don't need a massive amount of power in your shots to be a successful badminton player. If it really is a problem though, your partner should try to improve her shot technique. Hitting reasonably hard is pretty effortless if you have good technique. Link her to the Badminton England tutorial on the smash (find it on YouTube) and see if that helps. For now, she should aim to play in to space and use good tactical awareness to develop openings. If she is trapped at the back, she should definitely look for an open space to hit in to and give herself some time to get forward. Having a strong hit isn't a bad thing and it will definitely help her in situations like this. If things get really bad and she's getting overwhelmed, she should hit a high clear. This will give your opponents a chance to smash but you'll have time to get ready and if she was really struggling, you probably would have lost the point anyway so you've increased your chances by a small ammount (to be honest, it's still unlikely you'll get that point though).

I hope that has helped. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.