Correct me if this is not applicable to you... I am going to pick out one moment in particular as an example but there were others, in MS2 @ 47 seconds. Your shot selection was really odd. Often your choice of shot, when it is right, is played well and all the related movement is fine. This particular neutral drop put your opponent in such an advantageous place it would be unthinkable to do it at all. Which is the problem, "unthinkable" yet it is what you did. Your quality of shots and movement are being well taken care of by your coach and suggestions from BC members. It is probably fair to say that your judgement on the day was being clouded even when you were under little or no pressure. Clouded judgement should be expected under extreme pressure so you may need to look into the mental side of things - do some sports psychology homework, either reading or watching some TEDx talks. There is plenty out there. You know yourself best so consume knowledge that helps you how you prefer. Did you feel like your mind was distracted or lost in some way? Spoiler: If you are still interested and it is applicable A lot has been made of high performing people (athletes and non athletes) being able to do their thing whilst being able to have a conversation with others and talk about unrelated things at the same time e.g. streaming gamers talking about random stuff with viewers whilst playing very well, racing drivers talking about their strategy and other teams strategies all whilst driving over 200mph or under 3g+ lateral loads. It is astonishing and something you are born with but we are also born with a multi-layered brain that can be overwhelmed by internal thoughts and external stimuli without us realising it. Start simple; as you play try to have an internal conversation about what you want to do before doing it. For example, whilst waiting to receive serve have plans of what your response will be and what your opponent will do. "If they serve deep I want them to deal with a fast drop to their backhand so I can attack the mid-front court or get a high lift". "If they serve short I want to force them to lift so I am in control". You can only plan 1 or 2 shots in advance before the number of variables gets too great so keep it simple. During a rally you will fall back on a number of options that work best for you, freeing up more capacity to think about your shot quality. There are 2 benefits to making sure you have actively thought about what it going to happen and at your reactions - you are only focusing on the shot/rally ahead and not thinking about anything else that is going to distract you and overwhelm your brain. This leaves capacity to imagine outcomes based on actions which are pretty simple thoughts. Choices about how you take a shot - china jump or turn and use backhand..brushing a loose net shot or tumbling it from below the tape - can all be made sooner and decisively leaving you to focus on quality. The mind is a fragile house of cards. Hard enough to build and even harder to maintain if they start to tumble. A mental reset may have saved your day but for whatever reason you struggled and have been left with a bad day at the office. It happens but it should not happen again if you can find a way to control your state of mind. Start by gluing some of the cards together so they are never going to tumble. Certainties like your overall shot quality is good, your movement is solid, your speed is good...these cannot be affected by anything so if you feel like your game is not going well you know it is not going to be difficult to rebuild your house of cards. Just try one card at a time until you are back and in control mentally.
Latest tournament video against the eventual winner of this tourney (MS2) - I am playing in blue. Thoughts: Better shot selection - I feel I lost fewer points on bad stroke choice, and more on inconsistent shots. Really struggled to retrieve punch clears/attacking lifts whilst keeping the pressure up. I have found a lot of success using attacking clears - they appear to give the the confidence of a smash in terms of creating a weaker reply, and also mean drops are more effective. Need to improve my finger power - my opponent was anticipating really well, probably because I'm telegraphing my choices before playing a shot. Need to stay lower - those punch clears/attacking lifts really hurt if I don't push off well off split step backwards @llrr using a DUO-8XP now. It does help a bit, particularly on the forecourt finger power stroke, as much as it pains me to admit Any other particular comments? I also managed to win the other group game (MS2) - interestingly, it was against an impatient player who was doing a lot of jump out smashes in difficult positions. Reminded me a lot of where I was not so long ago. MS2 (12-21, 10-21): MS1 (21-9, 21-15):
Only watched part of the MS2. Here are some brief things on your points 1. Agree 2. change your base backwards one foot against this sort of player. These players are also less likely to do slow drops, so you don’t need to cover the very front forecourt. Adjust your base position accordingly. 3. it’s finger technique first. Still got some way to go for this. It is better than before but racquet carriage, racquet handling and preparation is not optimal in certain situations (especially going to the forecourt for a drop and under slight pressure of movement) and therefore impacts your quality 4. Agree. 5. LOL 6. You are quite predictable in lifting to the crosscourt when under slight pressure in the forehand forecourt side. I couldn’t see you playing straight lifts very often. He is waiting to put you under even more pressure after you lift. 7. If you do get him under pressure in the deep forehand, and he plays a defensive straight clear, your usual reply is a backhand. (In you mind , you are only expecting a forecourt shot). In fact, this the time you need to explosively accelerate to a round the head position and play a fast downward steep shot (his dig out straight clear is not deep into your court). In this situation, you have to change your thinking on court to change to being aggressive as you have gained control. Other times you are trying to attack when he is half controlling the rally which is a bit difficult. 8. Receiving low serve can improve more. Try to think of sometimes changing your speed to take the shuttle earlier. This is to surprise the opponent and disturb his rhythm. Definitely avoid taking the shuttle at knee level and below - it happened a few times.
You have progressed really well and this is one of the thread thst inspire my own. I just want to share a correction that I receive from my coach which i saw you did the same mistake. When receiving low serve, try to have your racket foor firmly on the floor before doing anyshot. This allows you to push back immediately. At this moment i see that even without any pressure you are still hitting the shuttle at the same as putting your foot on the floor. That gives some delay before pushing back to base position. Once this become a habit, even under pressure hopefully you would find more control even when being under pressure as this allows you to recover faster. I think there are 2 keys to this: 1. Active “push” your leg “out” to touch the floor faster when doing front court. 2. Take your shots with ample space. What i mean is that instead of reaching for the shuttle and take it as high as possible, actually wait to have your foot on the floor first, this means you take the shuttle lower so you will need low lunge but in sacrifice you get side distance which allow you to play cross court lift, cross court net, straight net. Most of the time you are reaching and hit with the bare tip of the racket so you can only return straight. So with this you will increase deception and opponent have to look out for one more corner and you are already moving back to base the moment you hit the shuttle. Huge huge bonus
also, if practice net, try to take shuttle at eye-height only. Unless it is a kill, any shots that involve an undercut and a striaght arm takes away a lot of deception. If you do an undercut at net (net straight and cross, lift cross and straight) would be more deceptive with a slightly bent and relaxed arm.
As an example of this, watch the last point semi final match of KV against Ajay in the Spanish Masters. KV pushes to Ajay’s deep forehand and take particular note the position of KV’s feet on split step. That allows him to go cross court forecourt or round the head. KV goes round the head and plays a fast steep clip/stick smash. The emphasis is not on power.
Something that i've told Mason also. Your feet seem planted on the ground because when doing your split-step/waiting, you put your heel on the ground. Try to keep them up as much as possible and "bounce" on it (unless you lunge or walk)
This tends to happen when I stand too upright - in a more crouched, lower position, I stay on my toes better and end up more bouncy, more reactive, and more agile in general...hard habit to break! I'm focusing less on footwork at the moment, as I believe that I'm more limited by my stroke accuracy/consistency and my tactics. I haven't completely disappeared by the way, I've just had limited posts because all I've been doing so far is play doubles these days, as much as I'd like to get some singles in! Might be a while before singles tournament circuit begins again... On the plus side, my racquet technique has improved in terms of finger power as well as getting my elbow up on overhead preparation (since lockdown restrictions allowed badminton again). Speed of doubles does mean good racquet prep + finger power means a lot - I found the improvement far outweighs the difference between moving from a head light racquet to a slightly head heavy racquet! On the minus side, this much doubles is almost certainly going to lead to me being far too attacking in singles, which will make my tactics problem even worse. Here's a club game from this week - I'm playing nearside camera, in the grey top.
