Strong smash only to the leftside

Do you play with your right or your left hand?

Scissor jump? Jump smash (let's call it rotating jump)? Block/China Jump?

Does your position on court make a difference?

Do you have a video of it?

There's a lot of different reasons that I've seen before and probably just as many that I haven't seen, do the least you can do is to provide some more details if a video is not an option....

 

This is pretty common. On the left, on the around the head position, you are forced to be below the shuttle to hit it (or turn for a backhand). With a forehand, you can much more easily hit it beside you rather than making the effort to get properly underneath the shuttle. When you hit it beside you in the forehand corner, you don't use the full body chain (hip, torso, shoulder, elbow, forearm), instead only hitting from the elbow and forearm (and maybe a little your shoulder), but the rest of the chain is absent. When you hit it above you, or toward the left, your body is much more able to make use of the full chain.

Also, I feel when you play an overhead from the backhand corner your body has a natural tendency to use the torso, shoulder, elbow, forearm part of the chain, whereas when it's straight above you, you have to 'make' yourself perform the technique.

There might be more to it, but this certainly plays a role.

 

I was hoping that you'd reply to SnowWhite's post first, but I'll just take my chances and make a few guesses what it might be. There's a lot of possibilities and I only have a few hints... and it might be several reasons at the same time.

Another note is that it's only better when hitting to your left side, so it cannot be from the far left ('round the head) corner. From what you write, I don't think it's the position of the shuttle relative to your body, I just wanted to mention it.

Since you say the position on court doesn't matter and it doesn't matter in what way and how much you can involve your body (scissor jump, jump smash, china jump), it seems unlikely, but you might be stopping your hip too early when not hitting to your left. When hinting to your left, your body might but have the urge to stop the rotation to cover the court, it's just following where the shuttle will go.

Since the strokes straight and left sound differently, you might be slicing the shuttle when hitting straight. This can easily happen when you don't adjust your grip. For a full smash, you want to be behind the shuttle, hitting it in front of you. This means you need to sightly rotate the racket towards panhandle/rush grip. It's not a lot, so don't overdo it, but even a slight slice in a smash will yield much weaker results.

Then, there's your shoulder that often (my observation) isn't used enough, it stops too early. It's easier to let the right shoulder really go through the strokes when hitting to your left, so there's another possible piece of the kinetic chain that might be better when hitting to your left side.

There's also a chance you're not using a lot pronation. Not enough.

There's more options and all I can do is to guess, so I hope this helps and I hope you find the reason(s).

 

Hi, Do you have a video on your youtube explaining the adjustment of the grip towards panhandle grip/rush grip. I believe I am making the same mistake of slicing.

 

I don't.

I started gathering ideas for an answer-it-all-grip-guide video and it went totally out of control. Thinking about it now, it should be way easier to make it three (or more) videos and I gave an urge to get started... however, the motivation drops thinking about video editing on my laptop (7 years old, passively cooled low power laptop) and I've since moved to a different country, not having the same access to courts.

Short answer: No and I hate it.

 

Thanks a lot for replying

 

Could help you with the video editing - DM me