So I understand that you generate a lot more power when you turn your hips followed by your upper body when hitting overhead shots, but I find that in actual play, you seldom have time to use your hips. The shuttles usually come fast and you usually only have time to use the 2nd part of the movement (elbow and pronation) for most shots. Am I just slow or am I applying this concept wrong?
In doubles the first couple shots will usually be too fast for you to turn your hips but once the rally moves past drives you should expect to be able to turn your hips. Check this out ... Post a video of your yourself playing to get more specific help.
In doubles there are less opportunities for you to go side-on and turn to hit your shot since everything is fast. Sometimes you can get into a situation where your opponent is lifting high and that's when you can use the rotation more - but still, one thing in doubles to remember is you actually put your full weight into the rotation because you don't want your momentum to carry you forward, since you're not covering the net on the next shot. You need to keep your balance for multiple consecutive smashes. The only exception is when you're rotating with your partner and you want to move forward with your attack. In singles it could be that you're too slow, or your shot quality is not high enough so your opponent plays better shots and you end up with less time, but you will have more opportunities to do the full rotation but also move forward with your momentum. This again does require you to hit a good quality shot because if it's poor, your opponent could lift your smash over your head for example and you're still moving forwards with your momentum, which creates a lot of pressure on you for the next shot.
You want to generate more power to produce faster shuttle speeds, but you only realy need a fast shuttle if it needs to travel a long way due to the way the shuttle lose speed quickly the farther it travels. You can kill a shuttle in the front court with a full power jump smash, but it is unnessarry, a lot slower shuttle will do the job too. So the rule of thumb is, that you need to generate more power when you take the shuttle deep in your own court. But if the shuttle travels such a long way, you will have a lot more time to prepare your shot and therefor you can incoperate more hip movement etc. A good way to learn it more or less automatically is, that you should always try to turn your body to the sidelines when playing a backcourt shot. This way you are more or less forced to turn your hip. I see people in my club who play a backcourt shuttle while keeping the body turned to the net and they are not really able to generate a lot of power (especially when smashing).
