Hi all. I live in the US and want to get my girlfriend a racket, probably on Amazon. 1) She's a beginner with almost zero experience so no need to spend too much. I'm completely unfamiliar with any non Yonex, Victor, or Lining racket. Does anyone know any budget ones that are decent all in around $50? She refuses to let me purchase it and wants to keep it cheap. I'm thinking of a $30 racket and I'll take it to the pro shop and have it strung. The factory strings are so bad on these rackets I imagine. 2) She broke her wrist a few months ago and suffers from wrist pain when I got her to to backhand drives. Would it make sense to go head heavy or head light? Also in terms of weight, I imagine finding some featherweight racket like 5U would be best? 3) She doesn't have much power in her swings so I'm guessing a string like Nanogy 98 that has a lot of repulsion at 23 tension. Otherwise, please give me your suggestion. Thanks!
tension these days are so inflated. when we were kids we were stringing at 18lbs. beginner with weak wrist and fragile should go way lower than 23lbs. I'd also suggest she do some wrist strengthening exercise.
How she end up with injury? Did you give a not easy shuttle & she unconciously force herself to take it & end up injury? As She is totally beginner, dont give her to much variety of shot, short clear within her half step reach for example. Let her muscle memorize the pattern before goes to more difficult shot. Does she had other sport background? If not, i could assume she is not quite fit physically, so some physical training might be needed.
Great approach. A fairly decent beginners rackets in that price range is the Senston N80 (https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B00W...1673593433&sprefix=senston+n80,aps,327&sr=8-6). 4U weight, flexible shaft and even balanced and robust (and lots of colors too!). Give that one a decent soft to medium-feeling string like NBG98, NBG95 or even BG65 and start with ~21 lbs. and she'll have a racket that can get her far in her badminton carreer. Most important thing for the wrist issue will be to develop a clean technique and then to carefully develop more strength over time. And then she'll basically have to see how much her previous injury will still be causing her issues. Impossible to predict without actually trying it I'm afraid.
I see that there's a 4u, 5u, and 6u. S_mair gave me a link to the 5u, but was wondering if anyone has any advice to go higher or lower weight than 5u for wrist injury due to landing on the wrist the wrong way.
Go with the 4U if available. I wasn’t aware that there are different versions of it now. Those super light rackets are very dangerous in terms of developing bad (unhealthy) technique.
I concur. Have come across quite a few beginners starting out who haven’t learnt the strokes properly yet but bought themselves very light rackets strung with high tension. Lots of them end up with wrist injuries…and even worse give up eventually because of repetitive wrist/elbow/shoulder injuries.
