Opinion and results of T.R.A TRI system

Here is a video where you can see where you can see him playing backhand clears.

For an amateur player (yes, I checked, he has never played a BWF rated tournament), it's not bad, but it's certainly not at a high level of any kind. Note that he always takes the backhand in front or to the side of his body (far easier than hitting behind) and before the doubles service line, and yet still does not reach the baseline, let along the cross baseline. This is far from a professional player.

There are also significant different technical differences to his technique and that of Lee Chong Wei. You don't need slow motion to see that LCW's technique looks easy and relaxed because there is no superfluous movement. The self-proclaimed "Mr. Backhand" on the other hand, has no settled technique, and a lot of superfluous/incorrect movement - that's why he does not reach the baseline.

But he's an adult male, and thus will produce a somewhat decent backhand clear with any technique, especially when hitting in front of the body. At 1:00 in the same video, you can see his female student play a backhand clear. The shuttle barely reaches the front service line. So given he seems unable to teach people correct technique in person, I don't see any reason why he should be better over the Internet.

So far, he could be just an overenthusiastic player/coach. What moves mrbackhand.com into scam territory is:

• A lot of YouTube videos talking about how good he is, and how he found out the technique etc., but little to no actual content. If you look at videos of proper coaches, they will show technique in detail and/or discuss a specific part of the technique.
• The promise to learn something within a day, which is extremely unrealistic, especially without coaching feedback.
• He is addressing beginner players. If he is as good as he says in teaching badminton technique, how come he's not a national/international coach? If he can teach the backhand clear in one week, his pupils should easily have the complete grasp of badminton after a year.
• The logo of the site says Official Badminton Website, but I cannot find any indication of affiliation with BWF. In fact, it looks like he has been banned for physical abuse by multiple badminton associations.
• Frequent use of sockpuppet accounts, or language which obscures that it's him. For instance, the description of this video mentions my buddy Jazz Lopez, but it's uploaded by his own account. The comment here seems random, but uses the same words as he did in Facebook communication.
  His written English is not idiomatic and thus easily recognizable by incorrect capitalization, run-on sentences and his trademark ending of sentences with three to five dots or commas. Even in this very thread, this comment is almost certainly written by him.
• He has been convicted for misrepresentation and false advertising before, albeit in an unrelated case.
• When confronted with the above points, he makes legal threats instead of refuting them. When this does not work, he randomly messages badminton organizations with weird accusations.
  After I did not answer for a while, he sent me a string of emails that can be described as crazy at best. But don't take my word for it, read them yourself.
• When I offered to review his program and post a public apology if my backhand clear improved by doing it, he declined. If his course was any good, public reviews would surely bolster his credibility.

More experienced coaches will be able to offer a better critique, but I think the above evidence is more than enough to show that this is a scam. I don't doubt there is some funky video you'd get, but it is extremely unlikely to improve your badminton skills, let alone in the way promised. Invest your money in court hours and a good local coach instead.

 

It's a scam, I've had people inbox me about this guy.

 

Yep, it's a scam.

 

Generally speaking you'll find that badminton players are very humble in providing their information on training to people.

@Gollum only charges a small amount for accessing his content.
Lee Jae Bok only charges a small amount for accessing his content.

There are loads and loads of free videos, including from places like Badminton England, Zhao Jinhua etc. on YouTube you can access for free.

Lots of us on BC provide the information we can for free.

When someone starts asking for a lot of money for information in this sport, it's likely a scam. The only time you're likely to shell out money is for actual coaching with someone, and at that point, you're paying for their dedicated time.

 

Exactly.

Very roughly, there are two business models when selling instructional content:

• Charge something reasonable and hope to get lots of people paying
• Charge something extortionate and hope to get a few people paying

The first model works best when you focus your efforts on creating something useful. There is a strong connection between making better content (and more of it) and making more money. The idea is to build a good reputation and have people genuinely recommending your stuff because they like it. It's hard work!

The second model works best when you focus your efforts on tricking people with your marketing. Since the product is massively overpriced, you won't have many satisfied customers and will struggle for recommendations. The quality of your product hardly influences the money you make. The idea is to set a high entry price -- high, but not completely unaffordable -- so that you can fleece a few gullible fools.

With the advent of the internet, scammers' access to gullible fools increased a hundredfold. Repeat custom and recommendations can be completely ignored, which allows the scammer to lie through their teeth while selling.

Scamming is a skill. It requires a certain kind of person, and a certain kind of confidence. You need to radiate self-belief, even while knowing you're peddling snake-oil. It's this iron self-assurance that plants a seed of doubt in people's minds. "What if it's true? He couldn't just be making all this up, surely? No one could be that brazen."

Well yes, he could. Some people are like that. It's a skill.

 

That backhand is no better than mine considering he is practically mid court and I've had no training! It just looks wrong. Keep your money in your pocket or spend it on proper training

 

Even better, just spend that money on a spanking brand new racket!

 

Better still spend it on proper coaching! Although that new racket does look tempting...

Scamming people out of their hard earned cash does annoy me. As a general rule if something looks to good to be true it probably is. Plus an honest businessman will usually explain exactly what you are getting from your money before you spend it. Saying top Chinese coach X said it transformed his game is no good without the name of the coach. After all if it had transformed mystery Chinese coaches game he might be a little more thankful?

If you do want some videos which might help improve your technique (they improved mine) here are two channels below which might help, theJym and KC Badminton. All content has been produced by the owners of the channels.

https://www.youtube.com/user/thejym?&ab_channel=thejym

and

https://www.youtube.com/user/kowChan86/playlists?&ab_channel=KCBadminton


Also search Peter Rasmussen footwork drill for another favourite. Lee Jae Bok's channel also has some great tactical advice and front/mid court technique but I steer clear of his newer rear court technique videos (especially forehand) as in my view they teach a grip that is too "pan handle" and this limited my own shot variation (and power) when I used it.

A recent newcomer is also Shuttle Flash, in some videos they analyse the pros play and how and why they do certain shots which is really helpful from a tactical point of view:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnGHt9C1lHpCcSxwl6GUF0Q/videos?&ab_channel=ShuttleFlash

Also from a non-coaching perspective I find watching the pros play from the courtside view on this channel really helpful for my game:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClmeRFQQ595hbqE-GTWjiLg?&ab_channel=BadmintonUniverse

If you want to spend (a small amount) of money then the Badminton Bible is very good at breaking down shots into stages, ideal for learning and it helped me finally get the hang of overhead shots.

 

I have received an email, apparently from the same Jazz Lopez, threatening legal action for my comments here on BC. So far I have received nothing "offical looking", so I don't know whether it's real or just a nasty bit of intimidation.

I am saying this now, because if it is real then I may soon be legally required to shut up about it.

It's a sad state of affairs when someone believes the best way to make their product succeed is to stop people expressing opinions about the product or the marketing.

To make my position absolutely clear:

• I have no personal or business interest in this. While I do run a business selling instructional badminton content, I don't consider Mr Lopez to be a competitor. Our products and our marketing approaches are so very different, that success of his business will have no appreciable effect on mine. Besides, I would never try to undermine anyone for business reasons, because I feel that's a scummy thing to do.
• I have expressed an opinion here about Mr Lopez's marketing style. It's a style of marketing that I detest, because I feel it's deceptive. However, I have not paid for or seen the product, so my comments are purely based on my opinion of the marketing content and the price.

 

On the plus side if his legal (thanks autocorrect) action is anything like his training scheme, it's likely fraudulent. Maybe one mr Paul Stewart should consider sending a letter to him after his video calling him out, as it seeks to damage the reputation of his business.

On the plus side, nobody with any real system sends these stupid legal claims out based on someone's forum posts haha. He's reinforcing his position as a con artist.

 

Was that for a post in another thread? Despite having posted before you, I have not received any such email. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding of the laws in Germany is that it is not forbidden to post true information about companies. In any case, I would assume any legitimate coach to post a detailed themselves upon reading a negative review.

 

The description from the email was vague:

 

I'm in no way an agent of gollum, badmintonbible, or it's affiliates. I am a completely independent party, and do not represent them or any other organisation.

MrBackhand is a scam. It's snake oil. I've had messages from people saying they've played at his club, and he just isn't that good. His video demonstrations are lacklustre and show nothing above novice grade badminton. He is welcome to sell his product but I would strongly advise against purchasing it, visiting his website, or contributing to his fame hereafter. It is best that scams are left to fade into the obscurity they deserve. If you have purchased his video please note that per PayPal and most credit cards policy, you are entitled to your money back if you do not feel his product operated as advertised, including the effectiveness of the product.

 

Have a look down in the comments of this YouTube video (on the kinetic chain of forehand overhead shots), more claims of defamation from you know who (no, not Lord Voldemort) against random people on YouTube. I would therefore hazard a guess that the above threat to Gollum is a scare tactic.

 

Excellent find! Note that Stefan Ljutzkanov is a full-time professional coach whose students regularly compete at high national and international levels. In contrast, I am unaware of any students of Jazz Lopez/"Mr. Backhand" who compete at any official tournaments, let alone high-level ones.

 

I just found his YouTube channel by pure chance, so a particularly lucky find as I also liked his videos.

I particularly like has video on gripping the racket, had his videos existed in 2009 I could have saved myself a lot of time trying to work out why my wrist locked out all the time when gripping the racket a certain way.

 

For anyone else reading this: I believe @Sevex is talking about Stefan Ljutzkanov and NOT the topic of this thread "Jazz Lopez"/"Mr Badminton".