4U G6 I originally felt I reached my limit with smash power but can improve on other areas of the game. With smash power, I am relearning the technique again. Although we have head heavy racquets to help us smash harder, with a less head heavy racquet, I find I have to pay much more attention re-engineering my technique to produce even a moderate speed smash. That’s not a bad thing. Sometimes , it’s just as good as my smash with a head heavy racquet when I get it right…which is not often *edit added G6
I haven't played/trained much recently. Last week was the HK Open. I was there as much as possible being a photographer. During one of the sessions, I was on the court side area and then recognised my tournament partner who was sitting at the physio seat. I didn't know he was a physio. We haven't seen each other since our tournament together. We had a good banter and I said we should be getting on the show court get some warm up and have a game. Gillian Clark was next to us and started laughing at our banter. It was typical British banter and something you don't normally expect to hear in the Hong Kong Open. Definitely good vibes!
Finally back on court for training. I have been playing social sessions but my level has gone down. A lot of frame hits which is to be expected but at least my movement around court is still okay. I am getting into the right positions so I still feel comfortable and I just need to fine tune my timing with multishuttle drillls. I did some plyometrics exercises the other day in a 1h gym class. My left ankle started hurting afterwards affecting my walking and then that affected my knee! The body just can’t keep up. It took five days to get better. I had my first training session in a while. Sadly all those bad habits came back again. We worked on my forehand shots again trying to use the finger strength and timing it better at the forecourt, then mid court and then rear court. Coach said my shoulders are too closed - I tried to actively retract my right scapula during the preparation phase again as well as keeping the shoulder relaxed. Coach also said my timing of the finger power was too early in the swing. Perhaps that’s what makes my right shoulder tighten up too early in the swing. During the multi shuttle feeding, I was doing mainly cross courts drives and every so often, try to use the same action and do last minute change of direction to make the shuttle go straight. I didn’t do much footwork as the ankle pain only just got better. Also I still had some muscle soreness from doing back squats a couple of days ago.
Ankle discomfort has cleared up but my muscles feel a bit tight in the leg and foot. Almost like the beginnings of plantar fasciitis. Need to stretch and roll. The last couple of times I have played have been good. Defensively on the left side of the court, it was good to see some progress on my defense. My overall power and movement has definitely been satisfactory. It could be that I have gone for gym sessions beforehand during the morning and that has helped activate my body for . I noticed it seems to be one particular gym that has this effect. For this gym, the instructors also work on using strength at the limits of your limb extension. I quite like training hangs from the bar for grip strength and stretching the muscles of the ribs. My smash seems more powerful but not consistently so. I was watching some smashes on IG from rear view and noticed a very slight active retraction of the shoulder that recoiled into the overhead swing. I didn’t really notice it very well on slow motion smashes on YouTube. That makes sense to me and will try it out during the next training session in a few days time. One of the gym coaches (he does speed and agility classes) was asking me for feedback on his classes and if they helped me. Honestly, I felt not so but it’s difficult to say because there were other factors being worked on at the same time. I did feel two exercises were useful for me in particular. One was pushing the sled with weights. I did that on a class which I didn’t realise it was a hyrox class. I was proud to have lasted my first and last hyrox class. The second was 20second short sprints on a running machine. That machine is quite frictionless so your legs really end up going fast, faster than if sprinting on a track (my impression).
be careful. this happened to me out of no where almost two decades ago, playing my first masters. while warming up, felt a heavy pop, like someone took a baseball bat to the sole of my foot. this was when i was still quite proactive in stretching and exercising, out for months. to this day, not sure how it could have been avoided.
I have had it before! I think it was the right foot but I can’t remember now. In the end, it needed a course of shockwave therapy to the sole of my foot. The shockwave hurt a lot but after six sessions, the foot got better by a huge amount. The therapist said sometimes it doesn’t work but I wonder if that happens because some people can’t tolerate the pain. Apparently the more painful it is, the more the therapeutic effect.
i dont recall exactly either. most likely my left foot, pushing off for a lift. at the time i was a bit complacent with seeking treatment, just hobbled around for weeks. which probably explains why that that side gives me more problems these days, scar tissues and all.
I got a chance to try it out during training. I had a couple of social sessions where I forgot to try because of being more focussed on the game itself. So in training, I tried to recreate the very slight active retraction of my right shoulder and scapula just at the start of my hip movement with still keeping the shoulder relaxed. The feeling became more like a whiplash effect in my arm. The result was pretty impressive. My timing was pretty good as well. Remember a few posts back where the coach said I contracted my fingers too early? That didn’t happen at all. My consistency on the optimum hitting point went up as well. Usually I can’t tell if I have a hit a good smash. I never have had a power smash but during this session, coach was saying I got it. The important thing is that I could feel in my body that they were good, penetrating smashes. Can’t wait to try it out in the next few games sessions and surprise people In the last couple of games sessions, my gameplay has got much better controlling the shuttle, changing defence to attack formation and anticipating the next forecourt shot. Got good feedback from my partners who were impressed. It’s been ten months now. Definitely longer coming back this time. I broke the strings on three racquets last week. Now down to one which is already showing signs of fraying. It’s BG65. They are not lasting as long as I thought
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get on court too often. It’s harder to reproduce the smash during a game. There’s too many things going on. It’s something I just need to get used to. On the days I am on court, it’s been good. Quality of shots can be better but I know it’s a matter of more time on court with practice. Still hitting the gym and putting some extra emphasis on the stretching plus putting some strength at the extreme the stretch. A bit like the concept of reformer Pilates. I do a fair amount on my shoulders since coach said my shoulders look tight and I frequently don’t open them up enough doing the strokes. Hangs are a favourite of mine as it helps stretch my intercostal muscles and serratus anterior with an added advantage of training grip strength. Today, I did bilateral pec stretches adding a bit of active contraction at the limit of the stretch. I have been working on my upper back muscles to help scapula retraction and also balance out the pectoral muscles. I have seen strained pectoral muscles occur in badminton because of the continued smash/overhead action and imbalance with the back muscles. It all looks quite busy even though I haven’t been on court much.
It’s been nearly three weeks since I last had a training session. Saved a lot of money. LOL. It’s just because of schedules didn’t match up. I have been playing games mostly and my court awareness seems quite okay. I reported to coach that my movement is slow. Specifically, it’s like after playing a shot with strength, I am not recovering quickly enough and then turning and moving for some shots is slow. Thus, it was back to basics. Coach just stood in the T area and hand fed shuttles to four corners. Obviously with my age, going fast was not an option and making the area very big so that I would have to take two steps to get to the shuttle is a bit beyond me. To make things simpler, he fed the shuttle so that I would only need to take one step away from the base. We did five sets of 16-20 shuttles with enough rest in between. It was pretty hard at first as mostly I have been concentrating on hand skills. However after the fourth set, I started to get my rhythm of breathing and movement and controlling my centre of balance much better. Back to the feel of the old days of singles but obviously with a smaller area I felt pretty satisfied at the progress and identified I don’t move to the forehand forecourt very well. My left leg pushing the body front and rightwards can be a lot better and my stretching of the arm out is a slow. We did some other light forecourt skill work and then finished off with smashes. My smash is hugely better with a really good sound. Coach asked me to go lighter on the arm movement and tighten the fingers more at the point of striking the shuttle. That made my elbow feel a bit weird and out of position. I tended to keep the elbow up too high after the strike. After a bit of analysis, we worked out the change of finger timing made my elbow hold back too much - I had to concentrate on getting the elbow forward first more. It was a good effect after that. I felt this session was very good quality. We were able to identify deficiencies faster and I could correct them faster. I could also feel some of the areas where I wasn’t being efficient and could start to self correct them. Surprisingly a good feel on court considering that I don’t have many hours a week on court. My 120gm training racquet is in the sitting room and everyday I do about ten to twenty shadow swings with the technique the coach taught me. This translates to much better with my 4U racquets. That helps me have an additional variation on court in games. I have to say the Arcsaber 11pro 4U G6 really rocks for me right now. Total satisfaction. I want to order a couple more but there’s no stock for another month or more.
