Hi, id like to have any suggestions about my playing. This vid is half-court singles. Im in white shirt with my opponent as young half of my age; im 32. Next im planning to upload fullcourt single. Thank you for your time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGjq5XPKrH0
This is obviously a relaxed practice routine however it is clear to see that your hittting technique and movement style are basically pretty good and that you've had some coaching in the past. I would prefer to see a little more readiness and quicker reactions when you're waiting for your opponents replies. In particular, your racket preparation is a little late. Try to hold your racket up ready for net returns so that you can take the shuttle higher up the net and impart more spin. For overheads again your racket preparation is late, try to get your racket into the ready position as you're moving to the shuttle, this will mean the racket is ready, you have a slight pause before swinging through, giving you control, consistancy and deception.
Nice smashes - I really liked the second smash that you hit in that video. Perhaps some people's would be more consistent but consistency doesn't seem like a huge issue for you because you probably wouldn't be hitting that many consecutive smashes in a game situation anyway. The one comment I would make about your smash is that sometimes (not that often) you seemed to to hit somewhere in-between a normal smash and a jump smash. You seemed to be getting the worst of both worlds in a lot of cases to me. It may just have been because you were drilling and wanted to keep the drill going but if you would normally do that in a game, I'd advise you to be more decisive about the shot you're playing. If you're going to go for a jump smash in a game, you need to be sure of hitting an outright winner or getting a really weak reply. If you're going to go for that approach, make a dynamic jump then bury it. Don't try to hit it too hard though, you'll probably just slow your smash down. A relaxed arm and using all of your body are much more effective ways to hit fast smashes than simply tensing up and trying to smack the shuttle because that just doesn't work. If you're going to hit a smash without a jump, make a kick-through but try to get your feet back on the court quickly so you can recover sooner and play a better next shot. The other comment I would make is that sometimes, you don't seem to get properly behind the shuttle, I think you just stand half a step too far in court or contact the shuttle a bit late but you end up with a flatter smash that will usually be quite easy to deal with because a flatter smash gives your opponent more options and more time to deal with. Other than these two points though your smash is looking really good. Any chance of some full game footage? How serious was this game? You both seem like capable players but at times, it didn't seem that serious. It's obvious that you both play to a decent standard but the net shots in that game, on the whole, seemed quite loose. Whilst some were tight, a lot floated quite a long way above the net and I think that in a serious game, these would get picked on quite a bit. Another aspect of your net game that I would perhaps change is the way you play your spinning net shots. Whilst spinning net shots are great sometimes, I saw you hit one a couple from quite a long way from the net, spinning net shots simply aren't as effective from way back there and should really be reserved for when you're closer to the net. Just a flat net shot or net push from their would have sufficed and probably gone over. I also think that you could cut the racket movement on your spinning net shot down a bit. You might find that a smaller wrist movement is both more effective and more consistent. Granted, you might not but just give it a go so you can find out either way. You seemed to snatch at your smash a little bit. Whilst everyone wants to hit a hard smash, I think you just tried to overhit yours at points. In the space of about two and a half minutes, I saw at least two relatively routine smashes fine the net. I think your main problem is that you don't extend your arm that far on the smash - reach up more and hit with fuller extension for more power, consistency and a better angle. Like my advice to the person above, just relax, loosen up, don't try to hit it too hard and then watch the shuttle go through the floor. You get much better consistency, power and accuracy when you're brave enough to loosen up and fully extend. One really good thing I noticed was the depth on your high serve - you forced your opponent right to the back of the court. I think the high serve is an underused tactic in singles at most levels of the game so it was nice to see you implement it so well. Serving well is the key to a strong all-round game, you won't get very far without a good, solid serve so you should take confidence from this. A full court game would be nice to watch - I wonder how different your gameplan and shots would be...................
I will put one up eventually, I promise. I've only just got back to badminton after being out for nearly 6 weeks with a badly sprained ankle (went over on it in a spectacular fashion whilst playing squash) so no-one really wants to see me playing at the moment. I played a local tournament last Sunday and played horribly, losing all of my singles round robin matches to people who I probably should have beaten, throwing away solid leads in all four matches. Doubles was slightly better but I certainly didn't play as well as I know I can. At that tournament it felt like I'd simply forgotten how to win. I feel like I'm starting to find some rhythm again now and actually played reasonably well on Saturday. I'm looking forward to playing tomorrow and seeing if things can improve further. Next Sunday I'm playing another local tournament in Derby so let's see how things go. At the moment, I'm just focussing on getting my game back to where it should be and then I'll focus on some more development stuff. I was planning on recording a video long before I was injured but you need permission to film in the sports centre that I play at. To add to this problem, there's really too much distance between the back wall and the courts to make the "stick a cameraphone in your bag and record method" work well and give any meaningful results. I enquired about the process for obtaining permission to film via email and face to face but the email got no response and the staff I asked were next to useless so progress kind of came to a standstill and I suppose you could say I gave up. Perhaps I should try again to get permission to film or find somewhere that doesn't require it. Just let me find my game a bit first. *looks* It's in here somewhere, I'm sure of it .
Oh, the sticking a camera phone in your bag method is reserved for me ! I think you need permission for where I play, but my method of recording appears to be working for now. Although sometimes you don't get the best of angles as you probaly saw in my last video your lucky, there is regular tournaments where you are, here there is a tournament once a month, and they tend to be straight knockouts.:crying: only got the one tournament left this season and then I there is the whole summer to train and re examine my game.
hi dan! thanks for the good constructive observations been waiting like ages for some comments! nobody else going to say anything?? yeh it wasnt a full blown jump smash drill, more of a relaxed smashing practice, was trying more to hit down the line more than anything. but yeh i do notice i tend to arch my back and use my wrist to flick the direction of the shuttle down in some situations rather than properly get behind a shuttle. just lazyness i think......bad habits! but yeh the quality of the smashes were certainly fairly inconsistent in terms of the steepness and angle. i quite like my box jump technique out wide, but id been told by both my coaches at uni i probably had good enough technique and fitness to been a bit more pro active and 'arc step' out wide so that i can fully rotate through my hips and kick through. just got a new kodak zx1, to go with my friends new sony bloggie, so will upload some new drills and maybe a couple singles matches aswell. we are mainly doubles players so sometimes the singles can be a bit disjointed. see what happens eh?
sorry, havent really had time to comment, due to exams etc. And its a bit late to comment just now, but watch this space .from first viewing, it all looks good, but maybe post something with more movement, or a competitive match, if thats possible, i know this was just a drill, but its nice to see other shots, and how you play in competitive situations, i will have another video soonish, of me in a competition.
I'm pretty sure every sports centre has the rule for no filming but that is meant for filming other people without their permission, it would seem pretty stupid them not allowing you to film yourself as long as no one else is filmed in the back ground. and how come everyone elses sports centres are so strict on rules i could do what i want at all 4 of the centres i play at
Thank you very much for feedbacks. FYI i have never been coached before. I played mainly socially and just the last 3 years i entered some tournaments. Ive won some of competitions; all in doubles but sucked in singles. Most of the time we play just doubles bc no much courts in local community center. About racket-up, i didnt realize till i read some post in this thread and seeing myself playing. Thank you for pointing that. I will try not to drop down everytime after shot by saying to myself racket-up and relax. About slicing shuttle maybe because im playing pingpong sometimes during work after lunch. Actually i dont like tabletennis. Its just for fun and socializing. Next time i will try to apply spin net shots only when the shuttle very near to the net. My smash with wrist snap actually id like to emulate ZJH. Of course sometimes i apply full armswing smash. Its just with full swing sometimes need more recovery time and when opponent just blocked it to the open space i have much difficulties to reach. Next video about fullcourt singles is still processing. Once again thank you guys!
Im in black shirt against my friend (24) who coached in Indonesia. He is much better than me. I just notice that the court is really slippery. Perhaps im always playing there, so i do not realize that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1EWwvd3Azw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8op-3cbq1o I think i still have many works to do to increase my speed and shot consistency (reducing unforced errors). Please kindly your advices. Thankyou!!
I was on Christmas/New Years vacation in the Philippines for about 3 1/2 weeks, and I told my cousin to record me playing. This is just me messing around so don't expect anything spectacular for me Oh well, 9 minutes to kill someones time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm-NgPoec08 Sorry if the audio gets cut off, my camera is retarded and does it that whenever I record something...
Oops sorry, I'm the one in the white shirt & red shorts. And yes it's outside! It actually used to be a basketball court I wish I could've found a gym in Manila but I'm so busy in those 3 1/2 weeks I was there.
I'm struggling to believe that you've never been coached, you look like you're far too good to have never had at least some form of formal training. I suppose that can only be a credit to you but if money and finances permit, I think it'd be a great idea for you to find a coach or club to play with to develop your skills even further. I think it certainly looked like you were putting in a decent effort and you actually represented yourself quite well on court. If you hadn't told me that the guy on the other side of the net was much better than you, I would have probably said it looked like you were relatively close in terms of level - I wasn't keeping track of the score, just looking at your strokes. I absolutely loved the service return at around 0:53 if it was in (it was a little hard to tell from the video). It's great to see someone picking on the short serve like that. Whilst the short serve can be a good way to start the rally without giving away the attack, you often do still give away the attack if your opponent returns like you did at 0:53. I thought it was great vision and If I were right handed, I would have probably played the same shot - as I'm left handed, my response to that serve would probably have been a bit different. Have you thought about playing a quicker drop shot instead of the slow drops that you appear to be playing? At 1:05, I would have played a faster drop shot with a trajectory more like that of a slow smash. It would give your opponent less time to get there and if he did, he would have been faced with a much more difficult shot to get tight. The way you played it seemed to allow him to get back in to the rally with a rather good net shot. Linking to that, when you lifted in that same rally, you just seemed to run away. Try to just calmly retreat to a good defensive base and try to return the forthcoming smash or drop shot. Instead of just running backwards like you did, it's probably better to take a more direct route to your defensive base because you'll get there quicker and it will take less energy. For more information on the different types of drop shot, I recommend you take a look at BadmintonBible. At around 2:10, I noticed another dodgy drop shot. In addition to playing a slow drop, you didn't seem to use a kick-through. Returning to base before playing the next shot should come fluidly after the end of the shot instead of playing the shot then returning to base. At 3:22 that was a great little touch to return serve for a winner. A backhand kill can be a difficult shot to get to come off well so I think you made the right choice by doing the next best thing with that shot. Actually, throughout the whole game, on the whole, you returned serve (especially shot serves) really well. I suppose that really, I saw hints at you favouring doubles throughout your video. That's not to say that you're awful at singles, because you aren't. In fact, you're far from awful and with a bit more consistency and perhaps a little work on your choice of shots, you could be a really good player. You displayed typical doubles player attributes with a very aggressive return of the short serve (which I think is a brilliant thing to do) and your good flat shots (drives, pushes) and how you look to play them against smashes to get the offence back as you would in doubles (smash blocks to the net in doubles generally get put away by the front man of the attacking pair). In this video, I saw a much more deft touch at the net from you, to be honest, I thought that the net game was one of your biggest assets in this video. My one comment about your net game is to remember the "racket up" thing you read that I advised someone else to do. You just seem to drop your racket a bit too much and you could probably improve your net game further if you kept your racket a bit higher. Sometimes, after smashing I saw you rushing the net with little control or aim. I would just take your time to see where the shuttle is going so your opponent doesn't have an easy escape route with a flatter, faster lift like your opponent played a couple of times. Just as a final comment, as good as your net shots were in this game, I just thought you overused the straight net shot and some opponents would have been able to capitalise on that. Overall though, I thought you played really well and I definitely saw an improvement as opposed to the half court game you posted. I still think that whilst using the wrist is good, your overhead strokes would benefit from a bit more of a swing action but if you saw a coach or asked an experienced player, I think this could be sorted quickly. Still, I think when executed properly, you could probably hit a clear or a smash using mainly wrist and your fingers to generate power so if you're comfortable with that technique, a better path to go down might be to rework it to make it more effective. Are you familiar with the "finger power" thread on here or the "finger power" technique in general? Note: That was just an analysis from the first video, I'll see if I have anything to add after watching the second. Oh and once again, sorry for the essay.
Nice return of serve at 0:15; I consider the return to be one of the most important aspects of doubles play so it's good to see some of BCF's doubles players returning serve so well. My one negative comment for you (and I'm wary of giving these because it was clearly a social game in a great atmosphere) is that after lifting, you and your partner didn't really prepare that well to defend, often staying in the front/back formation when to defend, it generally helps if you're side by side because there isn't much someone at the net can do against most good smashes. I suppose you're already aware of this and in a more competitive environment would put more in to defending. In truth, I'm not sure I want to scrutinise your game too much really and I don't think that's why you uploaded it, considering that it was in a social environment and clearly just for fun. This is no reflection on what I think of you and if you would like more comments, I will gladly provide them but it just seems a bit wrong to me to get hooked up on analysing a game that was purely for enjoyment. Badminton should always be fun to play and especially in situations like the game in that video, it's important not to get away from that. Whilst you're clearly a good player, we all play differently in games that are purely for social purposes and it was just nice to see four people really enjoying their badminton in an unusual but brilliant place for it. fuyu21010, I'll probably take a look at your second video tomorrow if I don't do it later tonight.
Thank you for the kind words Dan. I thing after going over my video, I did notice my serve is kinda awkward and a bit too high to my liking. Next week when I start badminton again, I'm going to try serving a bit lower on the waist.
hey! finally got a full game...but not quite figured out the camera angle yet....may put the camera on the balcony next time..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L72aQGlufes just a friendly game is not greatly competitive i guess. still some good rallys in there see what u think
