Because of my work schedule I not able to practice or play. Last night was the first time in a while. Also I had poor traction and I was sliding all over the courts. Because of that it was one of my worst nights playing In months.
My shots from playing on Saturday night . I was able to warmup and practice before the games so that helped but my shoes are still a big problem. I was sliding all over and I couldn’t move properly this effecting all of my shots . New shoes are on the way !
Well I was able to go to the club a half hour early and do lots of warm up shots and also the drop/net/drop drill Someone at the club allowed me to use their extra pair of shoes and it was a world of difference in traction. I couldn’t believe how well I could grip the floor!!! Overall especially in practice I was able to do some pretty good scissor smashes and it had some good carry over into that games Any suggestions would be appreciated
I think that you make some great improvements so far and I really like, that you invest so much effort in actually learning to get better. Here are some thought, which might help you. The aerodynamic of the shuttle (with the right speed) is, that if you would hit a clear from one back line with infinit power (without destroying the shuttle ), you would barely reach the others end backline. Therefor increasing the power to smash will result in a nicer sound, but not really better length or much faster speed. The initial speed of the shuttle will decrease really fast, therefor your best option to utilize the power of a smash is to shorten the distance between racquet and floor and this is only possible by adjusting the angle. A very hard smash without a steep angle is just a waste of accurary, stabilty and lot of energy. With this in mind I think that you try to put too much power into your shots, therefor sacrifying accuracy, stability and energy. Theoretically you need to learn a jump smash to get the right angle to utlize the power, but I wouldn't recommend it for now. My recommendation is to reduce the power you put it into your smash and invest it into more stable,accurate shots and trying to reach the shuttle more early and reaching up to get a better angle, until you get a quite consistent smash this way.
Good. You got better when you did more A) try to play the same dropshot with more body motion and arm speed to help disguise. B) after the stroke , do one skip forward, then run to the net. That will give you better rhythm and style.
I have a question for everyone. I have noticed that sometimes during clears and smashes, that my the racket slides or moves slightly within my grip. Generally it seems that my racket will rotate a bit towards panhandle right before i contact the shuttle. Almost as if i do not have a firm enough grip on the handle. When i play drops and use less force my grip does not slide or move at all. My initial guess is that the racket once i firmly squeeze my fingers, should NOT rotate or move at all (within my hand)? Am i correct in my thinking here? I believe that this sliding of the racket is creating some inconsistencies in my stroke and id like to try to fix it
Indeed once you have tightened your grip the raquet should not rotate at all. Is you grip slippery? The only reason I could see this happening is because your grip is quite slippery and you are not hitting the sweetspot.
Ok thank you for the clarification. Yes sometimes the grip will get slippery. But i think it happens more often because of muscle memory. I think my brain knows to rotate the grip towards panhandle slightly just hit the bird more cleanly. its a bad habit that i developed that I need to work on
I had these effects too, rotation of the racket and pan grip. I observed a few month ago, that sometimes, especially during warming up, that my racket face rotates a little bit when hitting a clear. It is gone now, I think, that it was improper technique, that I do not hit close to the horizontal center of the racket face and therefor the power of the shot rotated the racket face. The second issues was the pan grip. When I tried to play a crosscourt clear from my backhand side, I rotated the grip towards a panhandle grip. I think, that this is a technique issue too.I believe, that I need to rotate my body more, so that it is almost parallel to the side lines before executing the stroke. When I am almost parallel to the net, then I would need a pan grip to play to my right side.
My new shoes came and and they have good grip and are fairly comfortable so I am happy with them. I was able to do 10 min of footwork and also 30 min of practice on clears , drops smashes and drives. The person practicing with me has a good smash and told me that I was too stiff in my upper body and I should follow through with my whole upper body. I attempted to do what he suggested and I think I was able to somewhat do it. (See the first couple of shots in the video )
im no expert but to me it just looks like you turn your whole body in one movement, without activating the kinetic chain, alot of the power in a smash comes from the body, (core, legs and hips) i would suggest to try and learn to use your body and mostly your hips try and learn to smash without jumping but with feet planted and start by pushing off with right foot and swing your right hip forward and follow through with the arm pronation which by the looks of things you have correct. take a look at this video: listen carefully to what he says about hips and legs especially, it kinda looks like you do what he does at 2:16 . dont just turn the body, just to turn your body, you lose a lot of power by doing that. hope this helped, i havent read the whole thread so i dont know if anyone has pointed it out, im no expert so if anyone thinks what ive said is wrong please correct me
its all good, just keep practicing and you'll get it one day! theres also this video if you are interested in more information: good luck!
I do not want to beat on a dead horse but it feels like you are more focused on rotating your whole body and less on going forward through the shuttle. A good way for me to hit a good clear and even smash is just to walk through the shuttle while hitting it. Have you tried the exercise of throwing a shuttle by hand as far as you can? To get a good length on that you have no choice other than using your length and transferring all momentum. But I would say you have already gone quite far already and you could shift your focus to footwork, balance and lowering your stance now. (Depends on how much you want to 80/20 rule your progression)
I really hope that he didn't mean what you're doing in that video someone: letting your entire upper body drop... DO NOT DO THAT. We all noticed the stiffness before, a long long time ago... You could say, "Once upon a time..." and it's still there, but I do see some improvement. Regarding the kinetic chain and the hip, I also see some improvement. You still have a lot work ahead of you, but there's nothing new I could tell you. I've seen garage swings of you that looked much better, hip wise, but that was only a few. Try to replicate those (look again in the messages, I think that's where you showed them to me). You are improving! It often is a slow process, especially without a coach. At the moment, I think you're trying to focus on many things at once... that doesn't make it any easier, but you'll get it right eventually. Just keep going.
I think the idea of my bending was for me to work on hitting “through” the shuttle more, similar to what he is doing here
