Hi, From my understanding is that pretty much every other nation in Badminton usually all train together under one roof but I have been told that is not the case with the Japanese as they have a club system. Too my knowledge their are currently 3 main clubs where the national players train but where do people like Park Joo Bong come into play? Does he jump between all the clubs to see how the players are progressing? Does he just meet with the players at the tournaments and coaches them from there or what?
i see from the video below that Takahashi belongs to Unisys whilst MM belongs to NTT East.. [video=youtube;-M_Tfy76VyA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M_Tfy76VyA[/video] And Panasonic is a major patron too.. [video=youtube;GNeQOijAY6g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNeQOijAY6g[/video]
As I understand it the national team trains together on a regular basis but most of the time the players train in the clubs. Before important tournaments the players of the national squad will also train together. I'm pretty sure the coaches of the national team and the coaches of the clubs also talk to each other on a regular basis.
most of the club players are also employees at the company they represent, so they'll be guaranteed lifetime employment after they retire from badminton, they would still be able to work for the club's sponsor company which is usually major companies (NTT, Tonami,Unisys, Yonex, etc to name a few), they receive monthly salary just like all other employees in the company which makes it different from pros in other parts of the world who mostly earn from prize money, sponsorship deals, endorsement, commercials, national caps salary etc while Japanese players have stable income (salary from club company) on top of sponsorship deals, endorsements, national caps salary, commercials and prize money (while players from other countries could get most of their prize winning, Japanese players will receive theirs after a cut from the national badminton association)
well they're guaranteed employment within the company upon retirement to be precise, meaning they're backed and looked after by company/corporate as opposed to their counterparts from other nations, although the main prominent company with strong players are Tonami, Unisys, NTT (telecommunications) or Renaissance (major pharmaceutical) but from what I know some global corporate giants also has players in our J1/J2 league for instance Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Konica Minolta, Canon, Seiko Epson, Toto, to name a few.
Some national-coach-turned former national players also enjoy great coaching success after retiring from being an active players, like Keita Masuda who's the current MS national coach, and also the head coach of Tonami, apart from getting royalty from badminton books he authored and the occasional national coaching clinic/workshop he's doing and maybe lots of other business stints related with badminton that he currently earns more than while he's still an active player^^
Just out of curiosity, how exactly does that work? If they have a full-time job, that means they practice after working hour, right? Japanese tend to work very long hour due to their work culture, I find it very impressive that they have the time and energy to practice.
Not everyone work long hours or do crazy amount of overtime work although I must admit that we do work long hours even until late night, they practice after work and could get days off from work during international tournaments, but when it's off season they're usually back to behind the desk work or some just hold temp worker position which is not a full time position, players like Akane Yamaguchi's also impressive, she's doing all this while attending school full time and go through studying, exams like all other high school students while still rank among the top in the world
