Hey, I was wondering how do you maintain your focus? I often lose mine and though I won't visibly get angry when playing a bad shot, I often get frustated a bit and well that's when one bad shot starts following another... (also I tend to rush things a bit when that happens, so I won't be as relaxed as I probably should be). Everytime I go to practice (3x a week) I set myself goals to accomplish or things to concentrate on. Because I just started off with badminton, they won't be to fancy and look something like: "clear: arms parralell with shoulder, relaxed grip before and tightening grip on impact, quick return to base position after each shot,..." However I find it hard to keep all that in mind and pay attention to each single step. My clubmate suggested that I might be trying to do just too much at once. Nevertheless I would really really appreciate any advice on keeping my composure and most importantly my focus, because I really think it's hindering me to improve faster. Cheers Seb
Ur thinking too much, thinking is almost worst thing u can do lol, you want your subconscious brain to just automatically play. If you wanna think sumthing, think, "success" or "Im the greatest" or with regards to technique, think sumthing small like "soft hands" this one helps me relax when playing With regards to getting angry or frustrated when playing bad shot, this is more attitude. You have to understand, telling urself, that was S**T and putting urself down will make it worse, getting angry makes it worse and therefore as u have found, you get more of the same and make more mistakes!! Read my article Do you say the right things in a Match?? Also Mistakes, How to deal with them
This is every sportsmans problem.. even the pros has to work with this. As badminton coach I studiet this for a while. You can read about my findings and tips here: http://www.squidoo.com/Psychological-tips
Don't think too much about how you make your shots. Because you'll only perfect them with a lot of practice. That's the only real way of doing it. Also when you have a strong desire to win, you end up using too much strength and it interferes with your play. You try to correct yourself but it's not the way you usually play so you keep making mistakes. When this happens you've trapped yourself in a vicious cycle. *Right?* It can happen when you tell yourself, "I absolutely have to win" and you cause mental stress. Solution when you get too stressed out: If you get nervous it's just proof that you really want to win, when it comes to competitions it's a good feeling to have. But instead of focusing too much on yourself, make sure you look at your opponent.
Seb, what you describe above happened in training or competition? Besides that, what level of player you are?
in training, you should only ever be concentrating on one thing. you just can't handle more than one. this: "clear: arms parralell with shoulder, relaxed grip before and tightening grip on impact, quick return to base position after each shot,..." should be turned into three exercises. * One where you concentrate on preperation. * One where you concentrate on grip * One where you concentrate on recovery. do a couple of sets of shuttle feeding on each, and then at the end try and put them all together.
it is really the will to win that will get you thru a tough game. changing your strategy or the way you play in the middle of a game, IMHO, will mess you up even more. when your will is there pushing you, you'll do what you usually do, but trying harder, like moving a bit quicker, or pay even more attention to the shuttle, which both of these things will help you react to where the shuttle is going
