I feel I have a lot to work on, but where should I start first?

Discussion in 'Techniques / Training' started by precrime3, Jan 31, 2020.

  1. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Haha it's just me getting back into the rhythm of things, thanks for holding me accountable
     
  2. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Back In The States For A Bit 4-29
    So my friend from the badminton club from my uni is graduating this semester so I came back to the old stomping grounds to play badminton with them before they graduated. Also rematched Ben, just to see if I had improved.

    Here is the footage with me and Ben (after Thailand, and now after few months in Korea)




    Still talking with my coach to analyze it but I really think the biggest things were the:
    1. Debatetably illegal drive serve on his end. Def felt over 115CM.
    2. Struggled to find a good base position to cover the short and his OFTEN flick serves.
    3. Need to play more drops/nets.
    4. Almost only using fast lifts and getting punished for it.
    5. Slight struggle with getting the cross shots that were softer.
    6. His overall incredibly unorthodox play style made me feel very uncomfortable and out of rhythm. COmpare it with my footage against JT and you'll see with JT I play a more textbook style of singles, which I very much felt more comfortable in.

    Regardless, big improvement. Better score overall, and lucked out of that second set at 19-21. Happy with improvement but want to eventually win in two straight sets so I'll keep training and keep coming back.

    As for JT ( the friend graduating) here's that before and after.

    Before:


    After:


    JT was someone I never really had struggled playing against but I think there was still some improvement has he had also gotten better.
    I think the main issues with him were some unwise cross shots (fast p'ushes/drives) and wanting to be stubborn and force drive battles when I wasn't in a good position to win them.

    Would love feedback in terms of growth, as well as of course mistakes and constructive feedback :)
     
  3. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    Ben:

    1) Poor quality lifts in the second game. Rarely played a good clear to move him to the back.

    2) He plays a fast shot to the back - you mostly reply to the forecourt or you try to go for the outright winner. He just stands in the forecourt waiting for you. Your clears are mostly short and flat so he’s under no pressure to cover the backcourt area. Effectively, he’s covering a much smaller area of the court.

    3) Your low serves are too predictable- they reach him in his comfort zone on the forehand. You’re making it easy for him to play the next shot

    4) Your only variation on the serve is the flick.
     
    #383 Cheung, Apr 30, 2022
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2022
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  4. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    Forgot to write, after you low serve, your racquet is incredibly low.
     
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  5. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Yeah bad habit kek.


    But yeah rewatching it it really was just the basic things lol. Keeping racket higher, using the regular lifts more, not trying to force power from compromised positions, being confident in defense. First set was good example of how everything should've gone IMO

    WElp time to train more, get more consistent and then come back next time lol
     
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  6. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    First 1/1 lesson after 2 weeks of relatively easy life in USA (just playing for fun, super loose diet, not going to gym). My legs are DEAD

     
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  7. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    Need to use a better court sense rather than just relying on technique or trying to blast your way through the opponent when things aren’t going your way.

    There are plan As and plan Bs during game play. It’s all part of the process.
     
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  8. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Yeah court sense is probably the weakest part of my game. Especially singles. Not many challenging players to play singles with in Korea. Bright side I'll be sparring a lot more in doubles so hopefully that gets really good soon!
     
  9. Signature

    Signature Regular Member

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    Some notes:
    You seem to not implement the split step (or atleast generate power from it) in the exercises forcing you to accelerate during the movement to the shuttle, this is probably one of the reasons your legs are so tired. A more explosive splitstep enables you to only conserve energy while moving to the shuttle and not having to generate it (if that makes sense).

    Also looking at the warm up on the half court, you seem to lead with the racket leg infront at the split step. This should be changed to the inverse, think of it as returing a service where you should lead with the non dominant leg to cut out unnecessary steps or rotations. This is one of the reason you end up late in the back court due to you needing 2 extra steps and one extra rotation to get there + adding rotations before the stroke diminishes the effect of a correct split step.
     
  10. SnowWhite

    SnowWhite Regular Member

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    It's difficult to think about tactics and strategy when you are under a lot of pressure. So to improve court sense, I suggest playing against players that are slightly worse than you are. Then set yourself the goal of beating them with as big a margin as you can possibly achieve. To do this you need to dominate the opponent. There are different ways to do this.

    What I like to do as practice when playing a worse opponent is focus on winning my points in one specific way. It could be trying to win the net, play tight net shots and force short lifts. It could be pressuring the opponent in the back court with attacking clears and shallow fast lifts. It could be trying to make them move as much as possible as fast as possible, playing the corners accurately, making them run the diagonal and upping the pace. It could be relentlessly playing their backhand over and over until they play a bad return or move their base too much to the backhand.

    By practicing this against weaker opponents, you will start to be more aware of your choices on court and how you can construct your points. And when facing better opponents where plan A doesn't work, you will have other ways to try to score points, instead of burning out and getting frustrated. Different strategies will work against different people. Good players will adapt to how you play and what might have been effective in game 1 won't be in game 2, or even within a game. You have to be able to notice when things don't work and to know what to do about it. And often, what worked at the start of game 1, might work again in game 3 when the opponent has adapted to how you played in game 2. Ultimately, when you become really aware of what you can do, and what your opponent can do, you will start to see multiple different ways to construct a winning point within the same rally at different times.

    The opponent's lift was slightly short. You could smash it, but they've shown they can defend it and when they block it to the net, your advantage within the rally is gone. Instead, a fast flat clear to their backhand could provoke a weak return to smash into the ground, or kill at the net.

    Sometimes, you find something that works that you didn't even think about. I had an opponent that I discovered had a hard time with attacking clears to his forehand. He kept having to turn around and hit it low and behind him, and he didn't have the awareness or capability to anticipate or try to intercept them.

    But knowing how to put pressure on the opponent is not enough. You need to recognise when the opponent is in trouble and move your base to punish the weaker returns.

    When you have learned a solid technique and footwork, that's when the fun really starts, because that's when tactics and strategy can make all the difference. It's how you will be able to beat players that have a better technique, better footwork, or are fitter and faster than you are. It's how you can demolish players that on paper should be an even match.

    You should be able after every point to say why you won it or why you lost it. And more often than not, the reason for a won point isn't the big smash at the end, it's what created the opportunity for you to get under the shuttle and play the big smash. And the reason for a lost point often isn't that you couldn't defend their smash, it's that 7 shots earlier, you let them back into the game by not punishing their inferior shot or bad positioning, and then 3 shots later, you played an off balance smash that the opponent blocked cross court, causing you to have to scramble and play a few low quality desperate shots before they eventually smashed it. It's about those 2 moments. The moment where you gave away the advantage and the moment where you gave them the advantage.

    Sorry for rambling a bit. There aren't enough words in the world to describe all the different situations and strategies in badminton. Badminton is such a tactically and strategically complex game. Being able to beat players simply by playing a basic technically superior game is enjoyable, but beating a supposedly better player that you have no business beating because you played tactically superior is on another level of enjoyment. It adds a new dimension to the game that is more rich than all the other ones.

    Strategy and tactics are not an afterthought. It's what the game is all about. (although you do need a base level of technique, footwork and fitness to enjoy all the possibilities, so always helps to improve in those areas).
     
  11. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Interesting I will try this.

    So beautifully worded
     
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  12. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Tournaments starting up in Korea, so time to stop doing singles stuff and work on doubles... yesterday was the first doubles lesson in a long time and honestly, it felt so unnatural. Drives hella weak, not used to movement parts in doubles. First men doubles tournament is the 28th. I wanna focus on mixed doubles but at the moment no suitable female partner. I'm on the cusps of entering C tier in Korea I think, so the goal is to hopefully consistently place in top 3 for D tier tournaments while gaining much needed doubles experience lol.

     
  13. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    A bit better with the bounce but your activation of right and especially left leg to initiate acceleration is certainly behind the rest of your skill development. There are quite a few times you are in a suboptimal striking position due to inefficient leg and hip muscle recruitment. You cannot push your body mass well.
     
  14. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Drills I should be doing to fix this? I agree that actual moving is quite developed but start and stopping/accelerating needs work.
     
  15. viver

    viver Regular Member

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    I did watch the first few minutes of your video. The first thing that comes to my mind is you hand positioning after the hit. Watch your coach's form at around 2:15.
     
  16. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    First tournament in Korea
    Played a tournament last minute with a partner I've never played before. He is a few years younger than me but hella good. We won 2 matches, lost 1, but based on how the tournament format was, we needed to win all 3 "placement" (?) matches to go to the finals.

    Some thoughts of course:
    - Inconsistent serve. For most part it was fine, but missed a handful points from it being too high, or just going into the net. Same for my partner.
    - Defense. Still feels really weird to just stand there and adopt a backhand defense, so still need to get out of the singles mentality.
    - A couple of flicks I didn't get.
    - Tried my best to help stabilize my partner's mentality. I had been where he was before - playing with a weaker partner and thinking that I need to power through everything to win. You see this like at match point of the first set, and all throughout the second game (where his dad told us that we HAD to win this game before we started).
    - Should've won, and think that with some more doubles experience/coaching I can easily win D tier with a good partner.

     
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  17. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    How many serves in a game would go in the net or out?
     
  18. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    I think across the 3 games I probably have 6 serves that went into the net/otherwise unforced error?
     
  19. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    Bro, that’s near pro level :D

    What are you doing in a level D tournament?
     
  20. precrime3

    precrime3 Regular Member

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    Oh fr? All the pros I watch rarely make a service error. I feel they should never happen, you literally all have the time in the world to prep for it lol

    and I'm somewhere between high D and low C in terms of doubles by Korean standards lol. D doubles in Korea is probably C back in Atlanta (USA) where I competed last

    Also I wanna be able to say I worked my way up. Once I have a consistent partner I likely will play in C tier+ and do D stuff for exp
     

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