Shadow drills and playing for real...

Balance when hitting the shot is an important part of footwork. When shadowing I always try to make the hitting action as realistic as possible (try to imagine the opponent's position on the court, the type of shot I'm making etc) so that if I'm caught out of balance at least I'm more aware of it.

I agree, though it's even harder when you don't know where your opponent is going to send the shuttle next

 

you just need to move quicker with well balanced steps and lots and lots and lots of practice. forgetting getting back to central position is one of the sign of muscle tiredness. reading opponent's shot helps saving your footwork's stamina. in singles game, it is super important to have a strong basic of footwork. it is unlikely for the opponent to make a fancy hard trick shot or attacking that might cost him trouble. if you can take the shot in a good well balanced position all the time ull be hard man to beat =)

 

You need to include more game-like situations in your practice. At the moment, you're doing two very different things:

• Shadow badminton (footwork practice without a shuttle)
• Real games

The skills you learn in shadow badminton are not enough: they won't transfer easily to real games.

Try doing corners work. You need a partner to stand in one corner of the court. He hits to the four singles corners, while you return the shuttle to his corner. He should not try to beat you; he should try to put just sufficient pressure on your footwork/speed to make it difficult. He can (should) use deception, however.

You can start with only two corners and progress to four.

The exercise is excellent for integrating your footwork patterns into a real game. It helps develop your split drop timing, and it's also good for fitness.

 

Shadow footwork drills are a good way to practice specific movement patterns and to work on speed endurance. However it doesn't help your anticipation of your opponents next stroke move or your tactical awareness.

Gamelike situations is what you need - you can still do this with shadow work by having a partner point to specific areas of the court when you move back to a base position. However, you must remember that your base position is fluid and not fixed. This is why it is better to have a coach or partner to feed shuttles in an "open" practice. The feeder needs to focus on how you use the split drop to change direction and its timing. Probably better to have a competent person feeding while the coach watches and assesses your stroke moves.

 

I guess another way to get a more gamelike situation is to get another partner. Have him cover the areas he wish and you just have to follow to very place that he goes. Say about 20strokes, then switch over to your turn to decide the places. In these case, its more like a singles game.

 

This isen't as big of a problem as you think it is, it just takes practice. get a partner and tell him to hit slow shots and have a really low pace rally going, no pressure very slow and focus on footwork, first, dont think about the stroke, good badminton players dont think about the stroke they only think about options, or where to place the shuttle and how powerful or spinny(slice) should this shot be? so this is how it should run in ur mind, partner hits the shuttle, you think "get into position to hit this shuttle as fast as possible( so basically focus on footwork, this part will become subconscious with practice and footwork will like just flow) then think of options, dont think about the actual stroke.