My nephew wanted to make the badminton team of his high school. His school’s team is one of the elite badminton teams in the south bay.
I have been hitting with him for the last few months, trying to identify areas where he felt he needed to improve. He already has a private coach, a group class to help him with the fundamentals.
The last time I trained with him, he has improved significantly in his smashes and drop shots from the back.
Here is the breakdown of our three hours of training
We started with hitting 20 straight clears end to end. We have to restart if any of his clears were not far enough, near mid court. This took about 20 minutes
Then we went to the other side and did the same thing.
He mentioned his coach said his smash defense needed work. So I asked him to clear to me and I’ll smash at him. He was flat footed, racket was not moving quickly and he swing his arm too much instead of relying on his wrist. When he started the training, he was not able to return most of my smashes because the fundamentals of wrist turning was not there. I switched us to just having him return drop shots from me instead. We worked on being able to return high and deep. Then I had him move back two steps and I half smashed at him. Things got better. Then when I asked him to step 2 more steps back, he was still struggling with returning smashes. I decided to take a little break from doing the same thing over and over again.
We switched over to doing drives at each other and he was not snapping his wrist enough. So I had him stand right at net to drive shots for me downward. After 20 of these shots I had him move back and we drive back and forth much better.
Next up, I played 2 half court singles with him. The rule is that we must hit five good clears before the next player can attack. So we did this with nine points single style and his clear was really really good. Only missed a few times and then the returns of smashes was actually better than during practice.
Next up, we decided to just play freeform singles style. He can hit any serves, any shots he wants, and attack whenever he wants. And in this style of play, he did get five good points from me, and his smashes and drops were definitely much better than I expected. On the second game he actually did so much better. I believe he either beat me or he got 9 points out of 11.
I was much more impressed with how he was improving pretty much on the second hour of the training.
The last thing he wanted to do was work on his backhand clears. With the backhand skill, the main thing is about being able to snap the racket fast, but the most important part is hitting the shot in front of you. And I think this is the area where he needs to continue to work on being able to move his feet quicker before trying to hit it. The birdie must be in front of him when he hits, otherwise there will be no power and no pop. This is going to be a continue work in progress with footwork.
Two and a half hours into the training, I would like to end with a high note. So we ended up working on a drill where one person clears, the second person smashes. And we don’t end the drill until the smashing, attacking player can smash seven straight times. If the returner cannot return, the count continues. If the smasher hits into the net or out, then everything resets. This tries to encourage the attacker to think about how much power to hit each of the attacking moves because the if you attack 100% all seven times you either hit into the net, you get blocked and you get super tired. And since the drill could continue endlessly, you have to make a decision how much you attack, how much power you attack.
We ended the night with my favorite drill which is player one clears, player two drops on the back, player one net drops back, and then player two clears and the loop starts again. This also encourages good footwork, gets both players in the groove rather than trying to win. They try to work on improving shot quality and be able to hit three shots which is clear drop and net shot. The alternative of this drill is instead of dropping from the back, you can actually half smash from the back.
My final recommendation to my nephew is to make sure to warm up before the tryouts and relax and play his own game.
