This is very good. I alluded to these tactics of shot placement a while ago by hitting shots that make the opponent change direction. I agree a lot is experience and training. I was told in a coaching course that you can effect more change with the same amount of training time compressed into a more frequent but shorter duration than spreading out. for example twice or three times a week for 4 months rather than once a week over the course of a year.
So you're playing virtually no games of singles apart from when you actually play in a tournament. Considering this, you are playing very well indeed. However, the absence of regular sparring / match practice is going to hold you back a lot, perfecting your technique with a coach will only get you so far. By not playing regular practice matches some benefits you are missing out on: - how to construct rallies and win points; - problem solving on court and cognitive development to overcome obstacles and uncomfortable situations you don't experience when doing drills or playing MD/XD - having your weaknesses exposed, which you can identify and then go away and work on - becoming comfortable in a match situation and developing consistency in your play when under pressure (in your matches both you and your opponents hit it out far too much or into the net) - the ability to deal with all types of opponent you come across whether they are conventional, unconventional, a defender, attacker etc What you need is at least one regular sparing partner, but ideally a range of them. About two to three years ago I set up a facebook group of players in my area interested in playing singles after chatting to a few at a local tournament. I booked a court, posted the venue, time etc and invariably at least 3 to 4 would come to play each time. Perhaps at your tournaments you could ask local players if they would be interested in joining such a group. I've now got over 30 members in my group, we have a core of regulars and some who come and play occasionally.
Tournament this weekend where I feel like I played much better (still losing as usual). Focus points were: - clear/lift all the way to back, even if it feels out (as long as they keep hitting them, they're in) - keep the rallies going - take service early I did not think about racquet carriage or technique on this one. Just on general strategy and I feel I was thinking less and felt more fluid. I did lapse into trying to smash too much at the start of the second game (as the long serves were landing shorter than double line), but with my opponents strong defence, I went back to rally play after about 2-7. A significant finding I made was that this opponents defence was rock solid if I did not previously move him to a back corner. It shows me how much I am playing my strongest stroke against my opponents strength, rather than choosing a medium difficulty stroke against my opponents weakness. Didn't have much time during the game to digest that finding though. After 2 years or so of collecting footage, I plan to take the longest points of each match and hopefully it'll be clear my rallies are getting longer and my improvement will stand out - this thread will provide the ultimate "how-to" accompanying it! Comments on things to now work on would be appreciated. The one thing I've noticed is my forehand jump out I am still scissoring backward too much (cramping my stroke and making recovery harder). I am playing in yellow/blue:
General points. - Still trying for the smash off the opponent's clear and running backwards at the same time though a bit less than before. - Your smash will have to prioritise steepness - practice - Limited shot choice makes the opponent's court smaller so that he doesn't have to work very hard. Very obvious in backhand forecourt area where you never play a straight netshot nor a straight lift. In the forecourt forehand area, I think I saw two straight netshots. - Practice - At your level, playing those fast drives is a bit suicidal. The shuttle comes back in less time and you do not have the court sense, footwork and speed of change of grip position to cope with the return. - more singles practice and learn to only use judiciously. I think this opponent is a lot better than you.
Hehe, lack of straight lift/net on BH forecourt means the only stroke I must be playing is the crosscourt lift because I barely play the crosscourt net! Sounds about right but not as obvious until you mention it. Fair about drives - it's something my coach said I could experiment with, but I'm far too slow. Opponent made it through 2 more rounds before being knocked out in the QFs, so quite a bit stronger than me. I'm happy about my performance compared to the last tournament even though the scoreline was worse.
And you have every right to be pleased with yourself. What I've just seen looked a lot better than your previous clips - especially in game 1. You looked more self confident, less rushed and more controlled. To focus on only a few things at the same time definitely helped you to just play the game. I love how you attacked the short serves this time! Your opponent was better than you, hands down. But on the plus side, I think you made him work a lot harder than he had expected before the match. Especially first half of game 1, you scored some nice points and forced him to take some risks. Having my focus on serves currently, I highly enjoy that you even tried to throw in some high forehand serves in game 2. And even better - they seem to have a good length and your forehand service action looks a lot better than your opponent's. It didn't turn out to become a game changer, but still it was worth trying. To end with a negative point: I still think that your contact point on overhead shots is too low.
Here we go then - a full match statistics report for the Essex 2018 MS2 above. I've had it in mind to try this before just to see if I can extract anything that isn't obvious from the videos . Key: For ABCD, AB is either BackHand (BH) or ForeHand (FH), CD is either ForeCourt (FC), MidCourt (MC), or RearCourt (RC). The rows labelled on the left are where I took the stroke and the columns along the top are where I played the stroke. Column/row totals are on the bottom/right respectively. Key findings: With 17:7 BHFC to RC and 13:7 FHFC to RC, I heavily favour crosscourt lifts. Should these be closer to 50/50, or even more straight than cross? I play significantly more along my opponents BHFC-FHRC diagonal than the other diagonal. My opponent has surprisingly even figures for the four corners! I play way more shots to midcourt (I've counted smashes to midcourt) than my opponent (55 vs. 33). No wonder I am more tired as I barely play drop shots or clears from the RC (19 drops, 35 smashes, 21 clears). The key thing that isn't shown in the stats but is clear from reviewing the video whilst constructing the table is that I almost never clear when I have the choice to smash. Although the stats show I do clear a moderate amount, it is almost always when I don't have the option to smash . Both interesting and dismaying to see how predictable I am! I'll have to analyse a few pros videos sometime and relay the results - any ideas on improving the matrix are welcome.
I think a general idea you should have in singles is that you should only smash when you have set up the point, such that the smash is either a straight winner or it puts the opponent under alot of pressure. Don't smash if you're off balance or late to the shuttle, especially when your smashes aren't very strong and therefore it puts yourself under a lot of pressure since the shuttle comes back very quick from a smash. If you play more combinations of drops and clears you can tire your opponent out alot more.
That's a pretty impressive matrix you have there! I haven't quite seen anyone mine data from a badminton match to this degree before Since you assembled and arranged the data, you know how to interpret your chart, but it's a bit hard for me to read and make sense of in this format. I think a secondary graph that maps the data to the badminton court would make it easier to digest, at least for me. You can always play with the data or change what you want to represent, but visualizing it on a court should make it easier to "see".
I think the issue with analyzing shot making like this is that you have no idea what type of shot was played, and the quality of the shot. You need to make a second matrix which shows the number of attacking shots and defensive shots from each zone. If you're on top in a match, you will have alot more attacking shots than defensive shots. Don't forget that if you took a net roll very high and early, then it's an attacking shot, similarly if you hit a flat lift that put your opponent under pressure, that's also an attacking shot. If the second matrix shows that most of your net shots are defensive, then it's no wonder that you're constantly lifting diagonally (I would say a high diagonal lift is the best defensive shot as it gives you the most amount of time to return to base for the next shot).
If you try breaking down the stats even more, there is a risk of too few shots to make a meaningful conclusion. I think the original stats are very good already at this stage of badminton standard.
I initially had the idea to actually just make a 3D model with rough path trajectories overlaid on a court as I have access to 3D AutoCAD. Picture says a thousand words after all! I'm not clever enough to get a read off of video automatically, so it would be hand drawn. Probably double the time it would take for the matrix, but it would be interesting if not useful Agree with this - the zeroes carry more weight at a higher level and I'd thought of further breakdown as for example, FHRC to BHFC could be either a jumping reverse sliced drop taken high or a deep lunge taken behind me. Overall I think it was more just to keep the rough idea of where I play my strokes - it's equally useful if I play a variety of strokes whether I'm in attack or defence. The midcourt strokes are predominantly smash defence/attack. Forecourt are mostly serve returns - there's little difference if this is taken high or low in terms of variety I think. Rearcourt is the most varied as full court clears taken defensively are difficult, especially crosscourt.
One of the findings that I'm not sure is true but is suggested is that I almost always smash when I have a strong position, but clear when my position is weaker. The typical rally suggested is therefore a net shot (lift), smash (block), net (flat lift), weak clear/smash (kill/block) In this typical sequence, I tend to smash on a strong position, and eventually get manoeuvred into a position where they can flat lift/drive/push past me after I've rushed forward for a block. Then on my opponents strong lift, I tend to play clears. Lesson is that I need to be more willing to play clears/drops when I have a strong position, as I have less tendency to smash when my position is really weak (but then often give a short clear instead).
Very impressive data collection there. And as much as I am into numbers, statistics and all that stuff, there is always a certain danger that they lead you to the wrong conclusions. Even more so, when there is no clear indication what numbers can be considered as good/ideal and which really show a weakness. So in this case - is it really true that an even distribution of all corners to all corners should be the desired goal? I would say that it's not and that most players will show certain preferences if you take such a deep look into their game. And normally, the preferences should vary depending on the opponent's tactics, strength and weaknesses. For example: One opponent is very strong around the net with a weak backhand, while another one has a killer round-the-head shot. So you would try to push the first one away from the net (meaning more lifts from the net, preferably to the backhand corner), whereas it's that exact area that you would avoid with the second one. I fully agree that you should have enough variation in your normal game that you don't get completely predictable. But this could also mean that you have one or two preferred corners and a third one that you can mix in from time to time to surprise your opponents. For example, the standard shot from the deep forehand corner can be a straight drop or straight clear. It won't be long until your opponent will move his base position a bit to the left after he hit a shot to your forehand backcourt. But since you've mixed drop and clear, he will have to consider both options and hence won't move directly towards the net to kill your drop shot immediately. If you mix in a cross court drop (even a slow one) or a cross court punch clear when you are in a good position you can really get him into trouble and cause some insecurity for the next rallies. And there is one thing that you have to avoid: To think about these numbers and statistics during an actual match. You have now seen which shots you don't play often and which are currently obviously not part of your auto-mode game. So do some drills to practise exactly these shots over the next weeks and at some point in time, you will start doing them automatically in a match. In your case, this would be straight lifts from your backhand forecort and all sorts of cross court shots (clear, drop and stick smash) from your round the head position. Both should be standard shots that you just need to have in your arsenal to make your opponents' court as big as possible.
That's right. I'm a control player and I play singles where I probably don't hit 10 smashes in a whole match. I'm slowly increasing my attack though since the control game is way too tiring (both for me and my opponent) and I've found to be unnecessary when I have the opportunity to smash. The main reason I played like this before was because whenever I smashed, I felt like I got myself into a defensive situation more often than not. This was a sure indication of not having a strong enough smash or not picking the right shots to attack. Don't forget, a clear can be an attacking shot. You just need to make sure it's a flat punch clear. Using clears only as a defensive tool where it's high and loopy makes your game very predictable. Consider the following scenarios: If I clear to you - get ready to block your smash (but why because you can clear back, play drop shot, or smash) If you're out of position at the back court - get ready for a defensive clear (but why not defensive drop shot) If I play a good drop shot or net roll - expect diagonal lift (why not straight lift or net roll back) In singles, every shot your opponent plays gives you the chance to play at least 5 different shots, unless their shot puts you under a lot of pressure which would indicate either your footwork is not good enough or your previous shot quality wasn't good enough.
Bravo, it's looks like your game has gone up a level. You gave your opponent a good game, and as you say the rallies are much longer now compared to a year ago which is a good sign of progress. Footwork and shot selection is coming on. Your stroke quality and speed around the court should improve as you continue to play and practice. To enhance the latter you might want to consider fast feet work a few times a week, it makes a big difference to my own game.
Seriously, it is not that hard to make an improvement by doing this. 1) serving a bit more intelligently... Like there are too many backhand high serves and this opponent is a tall one. 2) smashing fewer times. You didn't need those stats to tell you that 3) smashing steeper 4) playing to different corners to make the court larger 5) playing to make the opponent change direction of movement (I wrote about this before)
Nice improvement! Although I agree with s_mair, you still need to reach a tad higher to take your overhead shots a bit earlier especially smashes for better angle. Btw, if you're keeping track, that's point #1 on your OP one year ago. I understand you look like you have a similar stocky short body type like Sho Sasaki, but you need to make it a habit to reach higher. Perhaps some yoga or stretching would help you stretch your shoulder and trunk muscles to loosen them.
