Current training regime

I got them made by a podiatrist. Not sure how easily accessible they are in your area. Expensive but overall, my feet are more comfortable. They don't prevent tiredness but help make things feel easier. Difficult to be very definitive.

 

I was not sure. I had suffered a meniscus + MCL injury which put me out for about a year. Just didn't want to take any chances.

 

Sorry. I am no supersmasher. LOL. (wish I was though). I just picked up the racquet and liked it. Funny you should mention the variance of the racquets. All the racquets are secondhand. All are strung the same way from the same stringer. They have roughly the same size handle though underneath, the grip, each underlayer is slightly different depending on what materials I had at the time. One of the racquets does feel slightly weighted to more head heavy. Not enough to make a difference to me picking it up and using it but just enough to make a difference. Not sure if it's because of the materials I used in the first layer of wrapping the grip.

@raymond. Agree with your statement on the games/training ratio. I will need more games soon and high quality. But the higher quality you go, the harder it is to get the required standard games for doubles with your partner. Coupled with my irregular work schedule, this is going to be difficult.

 

Her's a picture of my service practice. Sometimes it lands and I think the shuttle is in only for the opponent to call it out. For this exercise, I placed the empty tubes just past the service line. If it lands just short, then the shuttle doesn't hit the tube. This particular time, I only have at most 50% acceptable service success..

 

Yup. I do that. Pushing the margins very tight on these serves. I decided to post up a bad run rather than a good run of practice serves.

 

Feeling much better after my cold. Unfortunately, no taekwondo sessions as the instructor has gone back to Korea for a holiday. Did some gym work and the upper body is feeling more stable. My deficiency is some stamina training.

We did more work on defence training. My backhand is much better being able to control a medium pace drive or a strong drive. We worked on the drive from my right shoulder using a backhand grip. This is a weak area of my game play. Good things are on the left court with a drive/smash coming to the right zone of my right knee, I can play to the opponent's left court with a cross court flick or flat shot to the tramlines. Playing the straight push from this area is a bit tricky. The principle of the shots are the same as before - I need to also have a little forward movement of my wrist and forearm. If I just rely on fingers and wrist joint, it's a poor quality shot or in the net. One interesting thing picked up is the coach wants me to shift my centre of balance slightly to the right on these shots. Initially I was getting it wrong and also standing upright. Nope, must keep the shoulders down and shift the body to the right. This standing upright as the shuttle comes to me is a bad habit from my years as an uncoached junior player. I had to change this habit when learning singles. Obviously, after many years of not working with a coach, I have unconsciously slipped back into the bad habit. Funnily enough, keeping my shoulders low and shifting centre of balance to the left for left zone shots is easier.

 

Absolutely not. This is how they fell.

Good idea. I did this the other day. Played half court small court singles with a very good amateur girl player (one of those mentioned earlier in the thread). The boundaries are the front service line, the wide tramline, the doubles service rearline and the centreline. I got beat....

 

To speed or to not to speed?

Some games last night and another session with coach.

Good Friday , get called up by a friend who says are you on for a game. Am I on? Don't ask silly questions. And my coach is along at the session as well. It was very tough. New hall, different background, different players. Have you had those times where you think you are swimming through mud just to get to the shuttle? It was just like that. Can't move well, can't get the right hitting point, can't even clear to the right place and then your legs are feeling tired and metamorphosising into a jelly-like state. Sigh. One of the players was a current international, my coach who is an ex-international...yeah, it was hard work and the shuttle is going around like a blur. I don't really expect to play at that standard but there are shots I know I can reach but cannot play. Or I just cannot quite get into the comfortable position to play them. Under the extreme pressure, you do see technical deficits more clearly which we worked on today.

I have an extra lesson with coach today because of the public holiday. Just love it in Asia where sportshalls are still open on holidays. After last night's physical session, coach has a couple of new things planned.

He shows me this training video. It's Goh Liu Ying of Malaysia training the forecourt. He points out a couple of things on the first part of the video. First, look at her feet move. Notice how she doesn't lift her feet off the ground very much. Second, see how she bounces both legs in time when the coach strikes the shuttle. Third, observe her positioning after hitting the shuttle (she doesn't rush back to the middle). The first two points are relative easy for me to get. The third one is harder.

What I tend to do (and what a lot of people do), is hit the netshot drive and immediately try to cover back nearer the centreline zone. Coach is very strict on me not to take an extra step back to position nearer the middle forecourt. If the opponent does manage to cross court my drive from the net, invariably, it should be my partner's to take. We talked about the zonal area of coverage when I am at the net.

Another thing we picked up is my net footwork movement to reach the forehand drives. Playing the shot always seems uncomfortable. There are two two mistakes. One is although I step with my right leg in the rightwards direction, I am only moving my leg rather than my whole body. So really, all I am doing is stretching out the leg on its own. I needed to also push with my left leg towards the right to keep the balance and reach the shuttle comfortably. Second thing, I am so anxious about playing fast and recovering so my right foot has hardly landed and then I am then trying to recover. So, I am trying to be too fast. He asked me to put my right foot down in a stable fashion. Thirdly, because I put my foot down very quickly (and a little off balance), I need an extra small foot movement to recover balance. This extra foot movement introduces a delay in my body reaction time. So, if I put my foot down properly and firmly, although that initially seems slower, within the whole sequence of events, my body can react faster for the next shot.

All in all, I feel very happy about today's session especially after not really performing very well last night. Identified some fundamental errors and being able to correct them quickly is not easy. Of course, grooving them into a habit that can be applied to a game is going to take a some time.

Last night, I was asked how long have I been back in training on court. Just thinking back, it's has been about five or six weeks. It's not very long at all compared to the six months lay off previously.

 

So, my coach picked up these errors when we played games together. I am too rushed and it affects my timing on footwork and then my whole timing of striking the shuttle goes awry.

Coach now gets me to warm up by hitting drives. We do this for about ten minutes. Then it's on to those net routines as I described before. Previously, coach fed at the same pace varying the position. That was to practice a) bounce and moving (plus more pushing off with left leg when stepping to the right) and b) after hitting the net drive back, not automatically trying to take an extra step back to middle. This came relatively quickly so coach threw in another variation - varying the speed of feeding. He gave me the regular feeding drives and then would change the speed faster or slower. My role is to 'sense' the speed of the shuttle coming at me by watching his arm speed. That's the clue to the variation in speed and adjusting to it. This was quite fun i.e. I coped quite well, kept balance, and had my racquet ready for every shot. If I had done this routine previously straight off, I would have been at odds and ends after about three shots. Now it's easier to think where I should be and self diagnose errors.

Let's have a look at footwork. As mentioned above, there are some footwork issues. Funny how you can tell other people's problems but not your own. Coach asked me to slow dow a bit. You see many times that the standard advice is to play fast, reach the shuttle as early as possible. It's not true. Depending on the situation, your timing of feet and balance will be off leading to a slippery slope of not controlling the rally. We did a routine that I haven't done for a long time. Coach stands in one front area of the court, I am covering the midcourt and rear court. I have to hit every shot to him when he works me around the mid and rear court giving me pushes, wide shots, low lifts. I have to be very clear on my timing of my feet. In fact, it's an excellent exercise for movement and consistency. I used to do it in singles training but the feeding shots are slightly different.

Picked up another footwork mistake whilst doing this. When there is a shot to my right, initially I move my left leg to the left slightly to help me push off. That represents an extra wasted step and not being able to make up the distance so well. In effect, that makes the court seem so much bigger and funnily enough, that's exactly what I said to my coach when I was having those tough practice games - the court seemed so much bigger, bigger than I expected even with the different shots.

After our session, I went for games the next day against players around the same level as me. Couple of games of doubles. A few mistakes but generally the result was good. Not because of winning but because of the tactical play. My partner is more a singles player and not that consistent. Initially, I told him that we work the tramlines with a few smashes up to the 2/3 of the way into the game. Sometimes we would hit the net or hit out but I told him not to worry about it - the objective was to pull the the opponents wider. The scores were fairly even. Then around 16-17 points, I asked him to change the smashes to the centre. That gave us a good run of points to take the game. We also took the second game in a similar fashion. I was quite pleased because: a) not panicking, b) feeling in control even the scores were fairly even, c) clear strategy. Later that night, I had four games of singles. It went really well. I haven't practiced singles, older than the opponents by twenty years and yet still able to match them. The previous footwork practice and cutting out unnecessary extra steps really helped a lot. I had some tight games and lost some but honestly speaking, I felt more control over my movements and less anxious.

For the other stuff, I still continue taekwondo - those lower body and core exercises kill me but it's good for me. . I like the stretches. I did find another centre under the same group - it means if I miss one session in my usual place, I can go to another place at a different time to train (without those usual martial arts politics). I still have weak leg muscles in certain areas.

Gym work is still going about twice a week - today I just finished session. Moved up to doing 3 sets of fifteen reps. I was tempted to increase the weights for some exercises but decided not to risk injury. Also past experience has shown it's easy to get caught up and over train leading to injury. Pretty certain I am still heading in the right direction - my friend who I haven't played with for a while commented I am looking quite fit.