Pronation In your overhead stroke

[Mason]

Since I have started playing badminton a couple of years ago there seems to be too lines of thought when it comes to pronation. Some people say that your swing must have pronation and then they explain how pronation works. However from the few people that I know that have been coached professionally, none of them were taught to pronate, they were simply taught the correct way to swing and pronation came automatically once they learned the proper swing, with proper grip and proper body rotation. So for me it was very confusing , because people would post on here or make videos on YouTube showing professionals swinging to prove that you must have a lot of pronation. So for me when I would intentionally try to pronate and isolate the pronation part of my swing , then My swing was always off. So the question has always been in my head, should in intentionally try to pronate on a typical swing....?
This video here from a Korean coach has cleared this up for me. Basically he is saying pro players do not try to pronate , it just happens because of their good power and technique. This coach has some very good content and he is now putting in English subtitles. He coached Lee yong dae when he was young and seems to be a doubles specialist.


I would encourage all to subscribe to his channel.

 

[Sumanth99]

Since I have started playing badminton a couple of years ago there seems to be too lines of thought when it comes to pronation. Some people say that your swing must have pronation and then they explain how pronation works. However from the few people that I know that have been coached professionally, none of them were taught to pronate, they were simply taught the correct way to swing and pronation came automatically once they learned the proper swing, with proper grip and proper body rotation. So for me it was very confusing , because people would post on here or make videos on YouTube showing professionals swinging to prove that you must have a lot of pronation. So for me when I would intentionally try to pronate and isolate the pronation part of my swing , then My swing was always off. So the question has always been in my head, should in intentionally try to pronate on a typical swing....?
This video here from a Korean coach has cleared this up for me. Basically he is saying pro players do not try to pronate , it just happens because of their good power and technique. This coach has some very good content and he is now putting in English subtitles. He coached Lee yong dae when he was young and seems to be a doubles specialist.


I would encourage all to subscribe to his channel.

Good question, I am not proficient enough to answer but I do concur to your observation that swing is more efficient it pronation is not forced but natural, and thanks for video suggestion.

 

[SnowWhite]

I find that if you hit a straight clear or smash while holding the racket with a standard forehead grip, it is very difficult not to pronate. If you try to hit a straight clear while holding the racket with a more square panhandle grip it is impossible to use any pronation and those shots will be much worse.

So while people who say that you need to pronate to generate power are not wrong, it's just usually not the best way to approach improving someone's swing. First, make sure they have the proper grip at all times (it's easy to slide back into bad habits, so you really have to go on and on about this until it is second nature to them). The vast majority of the time, the wrong grip is the problem when it comes to lacking pronation. Even if it is not a full panhandle, if the grip tends more toward panhandle than a forehand grip you tend to lose power.

Second, encouraging the player to use plenty of body rotation will usually automatically make the player have a longer and smoother swing with more power (and semi-force them to pronate). While there is a time and place for short hitting actions, when trying to improve the overhead swing, it's better to keep the swing long until the technique is correct. When the technique is correct it is easy to make the swing shorter while keeping correct technique.

One of my first coaches used to tell me to avoid a square (panhandle) grip and square (static) shoulders.

 

[ralphz]

If somebody's idea of trying to pronate, leads them to get the stroke completely wrong, then that's different to if somebody "tries to pronate" and does the stroke better. So a blanket rule can be problematic. And If somebody is studying part of the stroke it is different to if trying to do the whole stroke. If they aren't pronating then something is going wrong fundamentally and it's not really a question of trying or not trying to pronate. Grip is a factor but also, with a change in grip , contact point can change. and these can be big fundamental changes. More complex than "trying" or "not trying". Let's say somebody has it very good re grip, contact point, and has no choice but to pronate and even pronate a lot. They could still do an exercise where they "try to pronate" to get used to that part of the movement.

 

[Mason]

I find that if you hit a straight clear or smash while holding the racket with a standard forehead grip, it is very difficult not to pronate. If you try to hit a straight clear while holding the racket with a more square panhandle grip it is impossible to use any pronation and those shots will be much worse.

So while people who say that you need to pronate to generate power are not wrong, it's just usually not the best way to approach improving someone's swing. First, make sure they have the proper grip at all times (it's easy to slide back into bad habits, so you really have to go on and on about this until it is second nature to them). The vast majority of the time, the wrong grip is the problem when it comes to lacking pronation. Even if it is not a full panhandle, if the grip tends more toward panhandle than a forehand grip you tend to lose power.

Second, encouraging the player to use plenty of body rotation will usually automatically make the player have a longer and smoother swing with more power (and semi-force them to pronate). While there is a time and place for short hitting actions, when trying to improve the overhead swing, it's better to keep the swing long until the technique is correct. When the technique is correct it is easy to make the swing shorter while keeping correct technique.

One of my first coaches used to tell me to avoid a square (panhandle) grip and square (static) shoulders.

I 100% agree here , well said

 

[ralphz]

However from the few people that I know that have been coached professionally, none of them were taught to pronate,

So some coaches don't like long or obscure words, some say wrist when they mean forearm. The guy in your video(according to the translation), is using the word "pronate". If he's using the word pronate and making movements with his arm then that's teaching pronation. If you look at badminton coaching manuals you'll see the word / it taught, even over a dozen times.

One time I spoke to a guy about pronation, he said he knew nothing about it, though I know his coach had spoken about pronation and supination. A lot of coaches don't use the terms, and even less ones from Asia, but a lot of coaches do.

......pro players do not try to pronate , it just happens because of their good power and technique.

Technique is the factor that causes or involves pronation, .. But not "power"[i.e. power is not a cause of pronation. i.e. You can use technique without power / without much power, and still pronate], e.g. a drop isn't a power shot.

I think you may find that players can use pronation when doing (not just smashes/clears, but), drops too.

Of course, there are other factors in a full swing and if somebody just focussed on "pronation" then they could miss out on other factors.

 

[Mason]

So some coaches don't like long or obscure words, some say wrist when they mean forearm. The guy in your video(according to the translation), is using the word "pronate". If he's using the word pronate and making movements with his arm then that's teaching pronation. If you look at badminton coaching manuals you'll see the word / it taught, even over a dozen times.

One time I spoke to a guy about pronation, he said he knew nothing about it, though I know his coach had spoken about pronation and supination. A lot of coaches don't use the terms, and even less ones from Asia, but a lot of coaches do.



Technique is the factor that causes or involves pronation, .. But not "power", unless you want to consider e.g. a drop a power shot, which it isn't.

I think you may find that players can use pronation when doing drops too. And a drop is not considered to be a power shot.

Of course, there are other factors in a full swing and if somebody just focussed on "pronation" then they could miss out on other factors.

I believe that you are wrong.
Proper Technique gives you the power because proper technique will result in pronation. That’s is what he is trying to say.

 

[ralphz]

Proper Technique gives you the power because proper technique will result in pronation.

Of course proper technique can provide good power.

what he is trying to say.

I was taking the words in your post #1 as they are, as you seemed to approve of those words

Regarding what he said, there were some places where he said one thing but might have meant another, but English isn't his first language.

 

[asadafgs]

Can confirm. I have no idea what pronation is and I've been playing for about 9 years

 

[visor]

Actually @Mason what you're also lacking is grip tightening (ie finger power). I see you have strong forearms, so that and combined with pronation, will give you much more oomph in your smashes and clears.

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[ralphz]

Actually @Mason what you're also lacking is grip tightening (ie finger power). I see you have strong forearms, so that and combined with pronation, will give you much more oomph in your smashes and clears.

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He is a regular on the forum. He has a thread with hundreds of posts just about his stroke, and that'd include many mentions of what he is lacking. He's liked posts mentioning grip tightening, and he has mentioned it himself in his posts, and he has had multiple people mention it to him., in that thread where people give him feedback on his stroke including what elements he is lacking in his stroke.

 

[Mason]

Actually @Mason what you're also lacking is grip tightening (ie finger power). I see you have strong forearms, so that and combined with pronation, will give you much more oomph in your smashes and clears.

Sent from my SM-G988W using Tapatalk

Yes I agree with that , finger power is part of proper technique !

 

[Mason]

Can confirm. I have no idea what pronation is and I've been playing for about 9 years

This seems to go a long with what I’ve noticed. At my club there are two players who were trained professionally to play internationally. One player was an international doubles player in the mid 90s for the county of Berma. He was not trained to think about pronation and pronation was not a segmented part of his training. Pronation came about naturally as he was coached with proper form and technique.
The other person was trained to be an international junior player and he told me that they never taught him about pronation as something to worry about. Basically once again pronation was a byproduct of proper form and grip....

and from my limited personal experience experience anytime I try to isolate or force pronation in my stroke , it not only looks worse but the shot is worse.

Now I am not referring to a stick smash where you have very little swing and you just use pronation . In this thread I am referring to a full overhead swing.

the reason I bring is up is because I have a tendency to over analyze things and also there is a lot of vidoes on YouTube about pronation. But then there are many videos of Coaches who are teaching the basic stroke and pronation is either not touched on or it’s simple one part of the stroke. So for me I am going to not focus on isolating the pronation in my swing. I am going to focus on proper grip, getting behind the shuttle far enough, using my kinetic chain , being more relaxed until point of impact and then I will probably find that my stroke will continue to improve.

 

[ralphz]

Now I am not referring to a stick smash where you have very little swing and you just use pronation . In this thread I am referring to a full overhead swing.

Even with a stick smash there is quite a bit more than pronation going on.

 

[Rittersport]

I would say, "pronation" is just a word to describe the forearm rotation, nothing more. It's just a part of the proper stroke. As newbie tends to grip the wrong way and thus hit without "pronation", coaches will show them the pronation in different terms.
Young player will be showed the proper technics visually and they would simply copy it. No need too overcomplicated terms.

 

[speCulatius]

That's one of the problems of "remote" coaching, there's a need to explain things to such a detail you never need in person. In person, less input is more, then you can go and correct what's wrong at first. You cannot do that when giving feedback to something in the past or describing how a stroke should look like for somebody to follow. You don't know what's natural to them, you cannot intervene when something is wrong.

When coaching I've seen everything between...

... I showed the grip, just made some slight adjustments and a six year old could clear full court after two months of weekly (group) training and...

... I've tried everything, from just letting it come to them naturally, splitting the stroke up into pieces and practicing those, things in between, but the progress is very limited.

Coaching is a very individual thing. Every coach is different, but more so, every player is different. Most players will never hear the word pronation, even if they learn it separately, because it doesn't come to them naturally. There's more efficient ways to communicate in person. Writing it down, the language should be as precise as possible, thus well defined words are used, like pronation for inward rotation.

 

[ralphz]

While it is the case that pronation happens automatically as a result of grip,

I have heard that players pronate more nowadays than in the past. (besides facts like lighter rackets), It'd be interesting to know the reason for the difference,, from the perspective of it happening anyway so what changed that made less happen at that time, e.g. if it's the "forehand grip" that has changed.

 

[SnowWhite]

While it is the case that pronation happens automatically as a result of grip,

I have heard that players pronate more nowadays than in the past. (besides facts like lighter rackets), It'd be interesting to know the reason for the difference,, from the perspective of it happening anyway so what changed that made less happen at that time, e.g. if it's the "forehand grip" that has changed.

I could be wrong, but I think the main difference isn't the technique, but how it is referred to. If you learned to play badminton 2 decades ago in the Netherlands you are unlikely to have learned about 'pronation' and more likely to have heard that it's 'all about the wrist'. Both the modern coach as well as the coach back then mean forearm rotation in the overhead swing, whether they realize it or not. The modern language is just more precise. It's easier for coaches and players to know what a proper swing looks like than it is to describe it completely and accurately.

But again, if the grip is correct then you're naturally inclined to use pronation and not wrist flexion, which is why grip is always the first priority. After that terminology doesn't matter much when it comes to teaching someone to generate power in the overhead swing.

 

[ralphz]

I could be wrong, but I think the main difference isn't the technique, but how it is referred to. If you learned to play badminton 2 decades ago in the Netherlands you are unlikely to have learned about 'pronation' and more likely to have heard that it's 'all about the wrist'. Both the modern coach as well as the coach back then mean forearm rotation in the overhead swing, whether they realize it or not. The modern language is just more precise. It's easier for coaches and players to know what a proper swing looks like than it is to describe it completely and accurately.

But again, if the grip is correct then you're naturally inclined to use pronation and not wrist flexion, which is why grip is always the first priority. After that terminology doesn't matter much when it comes to teaching someone to generate power in the overhead swing.

I'm well aware of how it's referred to. Even in the UK today some refer to it as "wrist", even when their first language is English, some coaches don't like obscure words, and like "wrist" as a cue. But what i'm talking about is not an issue of how it is referred to.

I have heard, from people that pronation is used more nowadays(and i'm not talking about people that are confused by the terminology)
One coach I spoke to told me he'd made huge changes to the way he holds the racket.

Many here are far more visual than me so you may be able to give some great observations looking at this.. Unfortunately video from those days put on youtube is not as clear as modern videos.

Do you see any differences in regard to pronation e.g. as a result of a slightly different grip or any other reason, looking at this video?

Badminton Smash Evolution 1980 - 2020 (MD)

 

[SnowWhite]

Do you see any differences in regard to pronation e.g. as a result of a slightly different grip or any other reason, looking at this video?

Not really. They're might be some nuanced changes I'm not qualified enough to distinguish, but it looks the same to me. I don't suppose we have a kinesiologist specialized in badminton on the forum?