Hey guys, I want to start doing some shadow footwork. I only play doubles and am wondering if my shadow footwork should be in doubles positions (eg rear court only, then front court) rather than singles (standing in the center of the court and doing the 4 corner footwork). Are there any youtube videos with doubles specific shadow footwork drills? I did a search and most of them are singles 4 corner and 6 corner drills. How often should I do these drills per week and how many sets etc duration etc? I play social games 3 times a week. I know it varies with each person but roughly how long before I can expect to see some improvement? I think my footwork speed is ok, its more the technique that i need to correct. At the moment I think I'm taking too many unnecessary small steps especially at the rear court.
On early stage where you already build a bad habbit, it need intensity. The more the better so you could forgot the old pattern & carve a new pattern on your muscle memory. Remember its shadow training / drill, not games. Coz on club, its hard to have time for self training.
Great! Do both. These are good It’s all about training muscle memory into good habits. The more frequently you train the patterns, the faster it will change. There are various strategies you can use to help you improve faster. if you are only doing footwork drills, then you might see an improvement. Why only might? Because you haven’t gone through the other exercises that will help your footwork. You must have seen videos of shuttle runs. These train the basic muscle memory but it’s important to do them efficiently. You must have also seen videos where a coach feeds the shuttle to specific areas and you use that footwork. I.e. the complexity increases. The next step would be feeding shuttles randomly so that you can apply the footwork with hitting shuttles with less and less thinking. I.e. it starts to become automatic in a game like situation. Many people play badminton to be fit, however with this specific issue, IMO you need to be fitter first with better leg strength to train footwork. If you get your legs stronger (means you can train longer with better quality, better power) , the quality of your footwork training will improve faster. All in all, I would say if you do leg strengthening, on court shadows, and then work with a coach on running and hitting the shuttle with better footwork 2-3 times a week, then possibly around two months.
Hello, I would just like to add that most people in clubs play with whole foot planted on the ground. If you make a conscious effort to be on your toes (ball of the feet) + crouched position then it would further boost the movement speed & should give a good pump to your calves. Cheers.
Feel free to send a video of you playing a game / showing us all the small steps. From playing matches and analysing my play, I know I can make improvements moving from midcourt to rearcourt forehand and backhand corners. Like others have said before me, footwork should look effortless and be efficient and not too loud (squeaky).
