Badminton Training – Badminton Insight

4 Types Of Footwork Into The Forehand Rear-Court Corner (Badminton Tutorial)

Fee Teng Liew — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:33:13 +0000

4 Types Of Footwork Into The Forehand Rear-Court Corner (Badminton Tutorial)

If you often find that you can’t get into a good position to hit the shuttle in the rear court, you might be using the wrong type of footwork! There are actually 4 main types of footwork to the forehand rear court corner alone, which we’ll be talking about below.

The 4 types of footwork to the forehand rear court corner in badminton are:

Jump up or kick through (footwork for high lifts)
Scissor kick (footwork for medium height lifts)
Jump out (footwork for flat lifts)
Late forehand (footwork for very flat lifts)

The forehand side we are referring to is on the right side of the back court for right handers, and on the left side of the back court for left handers.

The footwork you use will depend on the shot your opponent has played, so we’ll be breaking down the different footwork when retrieving high lifts, medium lifts, flat lifts, and really flat lifts when you’re taking it late.

Jump Up Or Kick Through (Footwork For High Lifts)

High lifts often happen when your opponent takes the shuttle late, forcing them to play a high lift.

Whilst this gives them time to recover, it also gives you time to get behind the shuttle and play a good quality shot. So we’d definitely recommend taking advantage of this!

How To Do The Footwork

Once you know the high lift is coming (which you can anticipate by judging your opponent’s body and racket positioning), you would perform a directional split step with your racket leg behind like this:

Then, you do a quick chasse to position yourself just behind where the shuttle is going to fall – around half a meter behind.

What you then do from this position really depends on whether you want to jump up or not. You can either do a two-footed jump, or kick through.

Jumping up allows you to look more intimidating and also take the shuttle earlier, giving you a better angle on the shot.

Whereas not jumping and instead kicking through allows you to focus more on timing and placement of your shot. Both are great options!

For the kick through, you load your back leg more and then bring it through as you rotate your hip through too to play the shot.

For the two-footed jump, you need to bring both of your legs together and then jump up using both of your legs. This helps you get height and rotate as you hit the shot. The two-footed jump is the same as the movement for a jump smash, so we’ll link our in-depth tutorial here.

Because you’re starting behind the shuttle and moving forwards into these shots, you’ll be in a good position for the next shot which you can then take advantage of (if it comes back)!

One common mistake we see people make with the two-footed jump movement, is that for this to be effective, you need great timing and also you need to be explosive! These are both things that can be worked on, and we’ll link our Badminton Specific Weights Programmes below to help with your explosive power!

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

We have 12 different programmes designed to help you improve your on-court strength, endurance, speed and explosive power.

Check them out here!

Scissor Kick (Footwork For Medium Height Lifts)

The scissor kick footwork is used when you’ve done the directional split step and chasse and you don’t have as much time to get fully behind the shuttle. Here you can perform a scissor kick movement where you bring your racket leg through as you strike the shuttle.

To do this scissor kick movement effectively, you need to be facing sideways in your preparation like this:

Then, you quickly push off your racket leg at the back and bring it through in a smooth and fluid motion.

A common mistake we see is people hesitating on their back leg which often impacts their shot quality.

When you land, keep your legs wide and not too close together as this will help you remain on balance to recover quickly. You then do almost a running step back to the middle or wherever you’re going to next.

The scissor kick movement is more common in singles as it allows you to recover quickly - because in singles you don’t have a partner to cover the rest of the court for you!

For medium height lifts you can also use a jump out (our next footwork) – especially if you are playing a clear or drop shot!

Jump Out (Footwork For Flat Lifts)

After a quick directional split step and chasse, you use the power in your quads and glutes to jump out to the shuttle and intercept it.

If the lift is really flat and you have read the shot or if it’s just quite close to you, then you can also just do a split step then jump out straight away. These are the quick decisions that you often need to make during a match!

For this shot, you’ll need a shorter and more compact swing as your body is facing forwards meaning you can’t rotate as much.

Because you are so explosive in this movement, it’s harder to recover quickly back into the court which is why this movement is used more often in doubles – as you have a partner to cover you afterwards.

You can still use the jump out in singles, often when the shuttle is very close to you and it is the only way to take it early and play an aggressive shot.

Late Forehand (Footwork For Very Flat Lifts)

When you’re under immense pressure, you’d use a step out to play a late forehand. Since you’re taking it later, you would play a neutralising shot such as a drop or a clear. If you sense that your opponent is high up the court you can also play a more powerful flat shot to catch them off guard.

For the footwork, you start with a directional split step as usual, then your non-racket leg pushes off towards your racket leg in a chasse. If you’re really late then your non-racket leg can cross behind your racket leg to maximise distance. At the same time, you also turn your body to face behind you.

As your non-racket leg lands, you perform a lunge with your racket leg and your foot should be pointing towards the corner like this:

This foot placement whilst keeping your body upright and engaging your core ensures that you don’t collapse in the lunge. Because if you do collapse, you’ll lose power and control in your shot and your recovery will be much less effective!

Your body and shoulder should also be facing the same direction as your foot, then as you strike the shuttle, only your shoulder and arm come round and not your whole body.

Then, you transfer the weight from your racket leg onto your non-racket leg and chasse back to recover.

This is a difficult footwork to master, so we’ll include the video below where we include demonstrations of each of the steps discussed above.

Practicing These Movements

For all four movements, we’d suggest practicing without a shuttle first so you can really get used to the different steps.

Once you’re comfortable with that, you can ask someone to feed in one shuttle at a time to practice the movement whilst hitting.

Hitting one shuttle at a time allows you time in-between the shots to analyse how it felt and make any necessary adjusts before trying again. Make sure you are really thinking about the height of the lift and which footwork you would be able to use!

Then once you’re comfortable with that, you can start incorporating it into rallies and eventually matches too!

It’s important to note that the progression of these practices will take time to get through. The ultimate goal is for these movements to become natural so you don’t need to think about it. If you’re thinking about what your feet are doing as you’re trying to play the shot then you’re not going to be thinking about what your racket is doing. You’ll therefore be unlikely to play an effective shot!

If you’re unsure whether you’re doing the movements correctly, you can video yourself and watch it back, or ask a friend/training partner to watch and give you feedback!

Learn More

We hope you’ve now learned that different situations may require different types of footwork to play an effective shot back, especially when you don’t have as much time!

If you’re interested to learn more, we’ve also covered how to move to the round the head rear court corner here.

Or if you’d like to see us demonstrating all four of these forehand rear court movements, you can check out our full YouTube video below!

The post 4 Types Of Footwork Into The Forehand Rear-Court Corner (Badminton Tutorial) appeared first on Badminton Insight.

Learn The Scissor Kick Footwork In Badminton! Step-By-Step Tutorial To Move To Your Round The Head Corner

Fee Teng Liew — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Learn The Scissor-Kick Footwork In Badminton (Round The Head Corner)

The scissor kick (or scissor jump) footwork in badminton is most often used in the round the head corner (or backhand rear court side).

A scissor kick is performed by doing a directional split step, followed by a pivot, before pushing off your racket leg to switch your legs like scissors as you strike the shuttle.

You can use the scissor kick in badminton to be faster to the shuttle, play better shots and therefore win more points, and the following 5 steps will help you do that!

The Footwork

Step 1: Directional Split Step

You start with a directional split step with your non-racket leg slightly behind (like the photo below).

Not doing a split step or doing it too slowly is why we see a lot of people forced to take a backhand, so this is really important to get right!

Step 2: Push Off Your Racket Leg

After the split step, both legs should be bent and you push off your racket leg.

This push off is where you can make extra gains in terms of your movement speed, so try to push off as quickly and explosively as you can.

Step 3: Pivot/Mini Jump On Your Non-Racket Leg

After the push off, you then do a pivot (or mini jump) on your non-racket leg.

This pivot is so important for two reasons:

It helps you change the angle of where your foot is facing so that you can be in a sidewards position which enables you to rotate into the shot.
It helps you make adjustments to exactly where the shuttle is going. If you’re closer to the shuttle then you’d only do a small jump whereas if you’re further away you would do a bigger jump.

If your pivot/mini jump still isn’t helping you move far enough, you can do an extra chasse step afterwards to cover the required distance.

Doing a mini jump helps you create extra distance in your movement, so you’re less likely to need to do an extra chassee. You shouldn’t pivot and just turn on the spot!

Step 4: The Scissor Kick Footwork

Once you’re in a sidewards position after the pivot, you need to perform what’s called a scissor kick movement. It’s called this because you push off your racket leg and your legs switch like scissors!

Doing this helps you generate power and control in the shot and also helps you recover faster back into court afterwards since your momentum is going forwards.

But, during this scissor kick movement you SHOULDN’T:

Pause on your back leg, as this ruins the timing of your shot. Instead, the weight transfer should be quick and should flow in one continuous movement.
Over-rotate, as you might strike the shuttle at the wrong contact point, causing your shot to go out the side of the court.

Since we’re only covering the footwork technique, we won’t go into detail on the hitting action as this depends on what shot you are playing.

If you do want to learn more about specific shot techniques, you can check out our library of articles here!

Step 5: The Recovery

After you’ve hit the shuttle, you should land with your legs slightly wider than shoulder width apart, and bent.

Doing this will help you absorb the landing and remain on-balance when moving at speed, which also helps you recover faster.

It’s also important to land with your feet at a slight sidewards angle. This is because if you have your feet facing forwards, you’re more likely to be off balance and fall back. You’ll then need an extra step to recover!

As soon as you’ve landed, you then push off with your non-racket leg and do one of either two recovery movements – a running step or a chasse.

Which recovery movement you do will depend on what shot you play and how on balance you were when you hit the shot.

For example, if you play a straight smash because you were on balance, you might then anticipate the straight block and move directly there using the running step. Or, if you weren’t quite as on balance and played a drop shot then you might do a chasse step instead back into the centre of the court.

If you do find you’re struggling with your recovery, it might also mean that your core and legs need strengthening. Having a strong core and legs helps to bring your body back into the court, whilst also adding extra power into your shot!

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

We have 12 different programmes designed to help you improve your on-court strength, endurance, speed and explosive power.

Check them out here!

Practices

We now have 3 levels of practices to help you master the scissor kick movement:

Practice 1: Shadow Repetitions

Though it might sound boring, repeating this movement again and again as a shadow movement is what will really help you get each step engrained into your muscle memory.

Practicing without hitting any shuttles will also allow you to focus on the footwork and break down each step individually. You want to get to a point where you can do this without even thinking!

We would recommend doing 3-5 sets of 6-10 repetitions, where you are just performing the footwork of the scissor-kick movement. Take your time after each movement to see what felt right, and what didn’t!

You might also find it useful to record yourself doing this.

Practice 2: Add In A Shuttle

For this practice, you can get someone to high serve to you so you can practice the scissor kick movement on it’s own.

You can then progress to doing a 2 shot pattern by adding in a shot prior to the scissor kick movement.

TOP TIP: Try not to go too slow when adding in the shuttle as you want to start practicing the movement like how you would move in a match. Slowing the movement down should come in the ‘shadow’ stage.

Practice 3: Open Routine

Now that you’ve got the technique down, you can start incorporating the movement into open routines and eventually matches too.

For example, the feeder can be stood in one corner and you as the worker should hit everything back to them as they move you around the court. The feeder should try to hit around one in every four shots to your round the head corner, so you can focus on practicing the scissor kick movement.

We cover lots more 1v1 routine examples in this article here!

Learn More

The scissor kick footwork is best used when you have time to hit the shuttle, but if the lift is flatter and you have less time, we’d recommend using the jump out footwork instead. We cover this in a lot more detail here!

We also have a full YouTube tutorial with visual demonstrations of each step of the scissor kick, which we’d recommend checking out to further understand this footwork pattern! You can find this below!

The post Learn The Scissor Kick Footwork In Badminton! Step-By-Step Tutorial To Move To Your Round The Head Corner appeared first on Badminton Insight.

How To Improve Your Endurance & Stamina In Badminton

Fee Teng Liew — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How To Improve Your Endurance & Stamina In Badminton

Badminton matches can last anywhere between 15 minutes to over 2 hours. In fact, the world record for the longest badminton match currently stands at 2 hours 41 minutes! Now that is a long time to be playing badminton without much rest, which shows how important endurance is in badminton!

Endurance is defined as your body’s physical capability to sustain exercise for an extended period of time. It’s made up of two components: cardiovascular endurance (which is the ability of your heart and lungs to fuel your body with oxygen), and muscular endurance (which is the ability of your muscles to work without getting tired).

We’ll now go through: 2 principles for improving your endurance, followed by 3 methods of training to help you get less tired and improve your badminton stamina!

The 2 Principles For Improving Your Endurance

1) The SAID Principle

SAID stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands – this is where your body will adapt to the exercise that you regularly perform.

This is why it’s important to have training methods that are focused on badminton-specific movements.

2) The Overload Principle

This is where you make gradual increases in either volume or intensity to improve your endurance. For example, if you want to improve your 5K runtime, you wouldn’t just keep running 5Ks; you would either run further OR faster to ensure you make improvements!

How To Improve Your Endurance In Badminton

As professional badminton players, we have tried and tested many different forms of endurance training over the years.

We have found 3 in particular to be most effective:

Interval training
On-court endurance training
Multi-feed training

We’ll now go through each of these in more detail!

Method 1: Interval Training

Although this method is done off court, it is still relatively badminton-specific as a badminton match will often consist of short bursts of high intensity, followed by a period of rest.

You can do this interval training on a stationary bike or by running (either in a sports hall, on a treadmill, or outside).

Which method you choose is completely up to you and your personal preferences.

We typically choose the bike option as we spend over five hours a day jumping up and down on a badminton court, so we want to reduce the impact on our knees and feet as much as possible!

Here is an example of an interval session we’d do:

This session takes around 35 minutes to complete and is split into four blocks of 11 points to replicate a physical two-set badminton match.

The blocks have varying work and rest times; again, to replicate a match as some rallies might only be 4-5 shots in length and you take 10 seconds to recover, whereas other rallies might be 20-30 shots in length and you take 30 seconds to recover!

Method 2: On-Court Endurance Training

For this training, you will need a partner to help feed you. On-court training is where you do a variety of on-court practices in a specific time block – we go through 10 different 1v1 practices with demonstrations here if you’re interested!

We would typically do this type of session 1-2 times a week where we’ll do one of two session types:

1) 25-Minute Blocks

Choose 3 or 4 exercises, work for 75-90 seconds, and alternate with your partner after each set. We’ll do this for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute rest, and then do another 25 minutes with a different three or four exercises.

2) 25 Shots

Other times, we’ll choose 3 or 4 exercises and hit 25 shots, but if we make a mistake, we have to go back to 0! If you make a mistake at 24 shots and have to go back to 0, then you’re working on both your consistency at crucial times and also your endurance!

It’s really hard to work on your endurance if you’re constantly making mistakes, which is why it’s so important to focus on both your quality AND consistency when doing these practices.

Method 3: Multi-Feed Training

Multi-feed training is a great way to get your heart rate up and in the zone to increase your cardiovascular endurance whilst also doing badminton-specific movements. It’s something we do almost every week!

This type of training meets the overload principle where you’re having to move faster than you would in a match as a shuttle is coming back to you a lot quicker than normal.

It’s also great because even if you make a mistake, the feeder will always hit the next shuttle in, so there really is no rest time!

However, you don’t want to overdo this type of training because the shuttle is only coming from one place, and you don’t have to think about playing a shot to get a certain reply so it’s not very realistic to a match situation.

So when doing multi-feed training, keep in mind that it is for your endurance and be cautious trying to use it to develop your technique or ability to read the game.

We have created 27 different multi-feed programmes with over 80 different exercises to help you improve your on-court fitness and speed, shot quality and consistency. There are video demonstrations for each one too so you know exactly how to perform them. If you’re interested, you can check them out below!

Check Out Our Multi-Feed Programmes!

We have 27 different programmes with over 80 exercises designed to help you improve your on-court fitness and speed, shot quality and consistency. These programmes are perfect for both players and coaches!

Check them out here!

As a final note, remember that improvements to your endurance and stamina takes time. You can’t just do one interval session and then expect to be able to complete an hour-long 3-set match without getting tired at all!

It’s also important to mention that we’ve been doing this type of training for many years as professional players, so we’re conditioned to doing it multiple times a week. If you’re not used to this, then we’d advise adding it gradually into your weekly training schedule to avoid any injuries!

Learn More

Endurance is an essential component of a good badminton player, so we’ve hope you’ve learnt how you can improve it!

If you want more visual explanations of the 3 training methods we’ve discussed above, you can check out our full YouTube video below!

The post How To Improve Your Endurance & Stamina In Badminton appeared first on Badminton Insight.

3 Deceptive Return Of Serves In Badminton

Fee Teng Liew — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

3 Deceptive Return Of Serves In Badminton

Adding deception into your game is really important, as it makes your opponents feel uncomfortable in a match.

If you use it at the right time, your opponent’s will never know what shot to expect next!

We’ll now go through 3 deceptive return of serves that you can play in singles and doubles – which we have named:

The Kevin Sukamuljo Special
Greg’s Favourite Return Of Serve – Greg’s Slice!
The Anthony Ginting Special

1) The Kevin Sukamuljo Special

Based on Kevin’s racket position in the picture below, you might expect the shuttle to land straight, around the mid-court:

But, he actually turns his body and racket at the last minute and the shuttle goes deep into the opposite corner!

So, how can you play the Kevin Sukamuljo Special?

You need to start by looking like you’re going to play a straight shot.

Then as you step forwards and your racket leg passes your non-racket leg, you twist your upper body and drop your racket arm shoulder.

You then squeeze your grip to add power and hit it into the opposite back corner.

There are 4 key points to playing this shot effectively:

To play this return, you should be receiving from the right box if you’re right-handed, and the left box if you’re left-handed.
We recommend playing at least one straight return before you go for this deceptive shot, to make your opponent’s think you are playing straight.
Don’t turn your body and drop your shoulder too early, as this will show your opponents that you’re going to play it cross court.
This return only really works if the opponent has played the serve to your non-racket arm shoulder. If the serve is across you, or right onto the T, it’s going to be much more difficult to do.

You can play this return in both singles and doubles, and you can also do this on your forehand side too, sticking to similar principles we’ve mentioned above.

2) Greg’s Favourite Return Of Serve – Greg’s Slice!

As you can see by the title, this is my (Greg’s) favourite deceptive return! Here you would look like you’re playing a cross return, then slice the shuttle to make it go straight instead. This return is very deceptive and satisfying when done right!

To see a video of this return in action, click here!

How can you play Greg’s Slice return?

You start by reaching towards the shuttle with your racket and body so it looks like you are going to play cross-court.

Then, you let the shuttle drop and bring your racket back, whilst keeping your body facing cross court.

When the shuttle is about half a metre from your racket, you begin the deceptive part of the shot by moving your racket sidewards and upwards to slice the shuttle (right to left if you’re right-handed and left to right if you’re left-handed).

And just as you’re about to strike the shuttle, you need to flick your wrist up, so that your racket is almost horizontal.

When hitting this return, the shuttle should be roughly in line with you and the shuttle should be on your backhand side.

So you should only use this return when your opponent has served to the T when you’re in the right box if you’re right-handed, or in the left box if you’re left-handed.

Keep in mind that this return is quite difficult to do, as getting the ‘perfect’ slice on it isn’t easy… So make sure you’ve practiced it before using it in a match!

3) The Anthony Ginting Special

Here you take the return on your forehand, and look like you’re hitting it straight:

But at the last second, turn to hit it cross court at the net!

This return is equally effective on both the forehand and backhand side, but the technique for each is slightly different.

The Technique When Playing A Forehand

Firstly, you need to be in the left box if you’re right-handed, and the right box if you’re left-handed. You also need to look like you’re going to play a straight net shot or lift.

Then, just before you strike the shuttle, you need to do 3 things:

Slightly drop your racket arm shoulder.
Bring your elbow close into your chest.
Turn your wrist so it’s facing upwards.

This allows your strings to face cross-court, so you can gently guide the shuttle cross.

The Technique When Playing A Backhand

For this, you need to be in the right box if you’re right-handed, and in the left box if you’re left-handed. And similar to the forehand side, you want to look like you’re going to play a straight net shot or lift.

Then, just before you strike the shuttle, you slightly drop your wrist and bring your racket elbow up and guide the shuttle cross court.

For both returns, you need to experiment with how much to turn your wrist. You don’t want to turn it too much, or your shot will go backwards! But, if you don’t turn it enough, your shot will go too far into the court and make it easier for your opponent to retrieve.

When playing against slower players or those that can’t read the game as well, deceptive returns can still be effective even if you’re taking the shuttle late!

Common Mistakes When Playing Deceptive Returns

There are 2 common mistakes that we see people make when they try to add deceptive returns into their game:

Not using their body enough – you need to make sure your body (in terms of movement and momentum) shows the opposite direction to where your deceptive shot is actually going. You want to make it look as realistic as possible so you need to put your energy into it!
Having a tight tense grip – all of the professionals have a relaxed grip which enables them to quickly change the direction of their racket at the last second. This helps to create this deception and to have good control of the shot too.

Learn More

We’d recommend watching our full YouTube video below to see clear demonstrations of all 3 deceptive returns, which will hopefully help you understand how they work better!

The post 3 Deceptive Return Of Serves In Badminton appeared first on Badminton Insight.

Multi-Feed Training For Badminton – Benefits And Exercises

Fee Teng Liew — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:18:41 +0000

Multi-Feed Training For Badminton - Benefits And Exercises

A multi-feed or multi-shuttle practice in badminton is when the ‘feeder’ has a row of shuttles in which they continually throw or hit to the ‘worker’, without retrieving the shots that the worker hits.

A continuous rally is therefore formed where you are able to control the pace, speed and trajectory of each individual shot.

Multi-feed training is used at every level of badminton, and there are many different types of practices you can do to improve all areas of your game – including your attack, defence, movement, and reactions.

We’ll now discuss the benefits of multi-feed training, what NOT to do as well as some example exercises for you to try!

Benefits Of Multi-Feed Training

1) Very Customisable To An Individual’s Needs

Since each shuttle is fed into the court independently of the previous shot, you can really manipulate the speed of the shuttle, pace of the rally, and trajectory of each shot (provided you have a good feeder of course)! Therefore, there is a huge variety of practices you can do with this type of training.

For example – if a player has an injured knee and is therefore limited with their movement, multi-feed training can be used to refine technical skills.

Or, multi-feed training can be used to practice a specific movement pattern, like a smash and then mid-court drive.

2) Helps Develop Endurance

The idea behind multi-feed is that you are moving quicker than you normally would, so that when you get into a match it feels easier and like you have more time.

Therefore, working at a higher speed for a longer period will improve your endurance since the rally never breaks down!

Training your badminton-specific endurance is in our opinion the biggest benefit of multi-feed training.

3) Improves Consistency

Similar to the above point – since the rally keeps going even if you make a mistake, you can practice your ability to consistently move well and hit good quality shots, especially when you are already tired.

4) Improves Reaction Time

As we mentioned, you can create a lot of different scenarios that you might want to practice with multi-shuttle training.

For example, hitting or throwing shuttles into the court at a faster pace than what the worker is used to in a match can help improve their reactions.

It can also help improve the ability to make good decisions and hit good quality shots when under more pressure.

5) Develops Confidence

Especially when leading up to competition, multi-feed training is a great tool to add into your training.

It can help you sharpen up and feel good about your shots and movement.

And don’t forget to practice your strengths too – it helps develop confidence and it’s important to remember what you’re good at and use it to your advantage in matches!

6) Encourages Creativity

Multi-feed can be used to practice a variety of different shots from the same position which is sometimes difficult to replicate with a single shuttle rally. We personally have used it to practice lots of different ways of hitting shots and this experimentation has helped us develop new skills and also shots that we regularly use in our game.

Mistakes To Avoid When Doing Multi-Feed Training

1) Poor Feeding

The most important component of a good quality multi-shuttle practice is a good feeder! Ultimately, if the practice is always breaking down, the worker is not getting the opportunity to improve.

If you have a good coach feeding you then this might not be an issue, but in group sessions, often players need to feed each other and they may not be as experienced in feeding as coaches are.

It’s definitely not an easy skill to master, but as with everything, the more you practice the more you will improve over time!

You can start with doing more simple feeds, such as hand throwing or feeding to the same place (for example when you are doing technical practice), then over time you can increase the speed and add variety in the types of feeding you do.

Check out our Badminton Multi-Feed Programmes below (for both singles and doubles players), as there are also video demonstrations on how to multi-feed.

Check Out Our Multi-Feed Programmes!

Check them out here!

Even if you see your training partners as your ‘competition’, you all need each other in order to practice and improve. You want to make sure you always give your best when feeding - and hopefully they will also give their best when feeding you!

2) A Lack Of Communication

It’s important to take responsibility for your own training and improvements, which includes communicating when you might want things done a bit differently when someone is feeding you.

For example, they might be feeding too fast or too slow, or perhaps you want more shots fed into a specific area so you can practice that more.

Every player is different, and you’re all there to improve your badminton. So as the feeder, it’s also important to not take offense when someone asks you to do something differently, as they just want to get the most out of their training.

If you can create this type of training environment where everyone is open to feedback and willing to support one another, it will make a huge difference to not only the rate of improvement, but also the enjoyment of training!

3) Overloading

Since multi-feed training allows you to move at a higher intensity than what you might be used to in a match, it’s important not to overdo it as this could lead to you becoming injured (especially if you’re only just starting to incorporate this type of training).

It is important to gradually build up the amount of multi-feed training you do, and also the intensity of these sessions. This is something that is incorporated into our multi-feed programmes.

4) Only Doing Multi-Feed Training

Remember that in multi-feed training, you will not always get a match-realistic scenario and the shots might come back differently in a match. This is why it’s important to do other practices in your training that incorporates more match realistic situations too.

Examples of this would be 2v2 drills with a single shuttle, or mini games where there is a certain ‘rule’ – such as the back tramline is out!

We’d also encourage you to think about each multi-feed practice you do (we have included a few examples below) and how they relate to a match. Think about what shots you are playing and what would be the likely response. If you’re using multi-feed training primarily as speed or endurance training (which it is great for) then this might be less important!

Ways To Do Multi-Feed Training

There are MANY different types of exercises you can do with multi-feed training (we have over 80 exercises in our multi-feed programmes), but here are a few popular ones to help you improve your badminton!

Smash-Kill (For Singles)

This drill helps to improve your attack, speed and explosive power. The feeder will lift a shuttle up to the rear court, around ¾ length to the back, then follow up with a shot at the net. The worker will hit a smash on the first feed, followed by a kill on the second feed (if they can).

After the ‘kill’ at the net, the player will go back to the centre quickly and the next shuttle will be lifted to the rear court again and the whole process is repeated. We recommend around 5 sets of 12 shuttles for this exercise.

KEY POINTS:

- Focus on racket carriage after the smash, bringing it up in time for your next shot, and having an explosive movement forwards into the kill.

- Remember to think about your shot choice and placement too - you might not always be able to play the kill!

Throw Downs (For Singles)

This drill will help you practice your movement from a low position and also your lifts. The feeder will hold a row of shuttles and be standing around the service line. Then, they will simply throw the shuttles down one-by-one to the worker who is covering the mid-front court.

KEY POINTS:

- Keep your legs bent and your body in a low position, as this exercise will definitely push your speed!

- Focus on trying to play good quality shots, whilst moving very quickly and being under pressure.

Rear-Mid (For Doubles)

This drill will help improve your doubles attack and control from the mid-court to the rear-court.

The feeder hits shuttles at differing heights and paces in the mid-court to rear-court area for the worker to practice a variety of shots.

This might be a good practice to communicate to the feeder if there are any specific areas or patterns of hitting that you might want to work on!

KEY POINTS:

- Focus on being early to the shuttle in the mid-court.

- Remember to think about shot choice and placement too, which will depend on the position you are in.

Random Net Attack (For Doubles)

This exercise is great for improving your front court attack, which is a key skill in doubles for putting pressure on your opponents and also finishing off the rally!

The feeder can either stand in the middle, or to one side (they can switch each time!) and will hit shuttles upwards at differing heights and speeds to encourage the net player to play shots at different angles, replicating that of a game.

KEY POINTS:

- Keep your racket and elbow up and active throughout (if your racket is down as the feeder is hitting their shot, then you waste time needing to bring it back up each time to hit the shot).

- Don’t try and hit it too hard! Remember that placement of the shot is much more important than simply hitting it as hard as possible without any control of where it’s going.

27 Multi-Feed Programmes PDF

We hope you can now see why multi-feed training can be a key component in any badminton player’s weekly training programme.

If you’d like more information on multi-feed exercises, we have various Multifeed Programmes that are perfect for both players and coaches! They are downloadable PDFs that include 27 different programmes, 80+ exercises as well as video feeding demonstrations!

The post Multi-Feed Training For Badminton – Benefits And Exercises appeared first on Badminton Insight.

How To Improve As A Beginner In Badminton – 5 Common Mistakes

Fee Teng Liew — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How To Improve As A Beginner In Badminton - 5 Common Mistakes

Playing badminton as a beginner can seem overwhelming at first as there are so many different components and techniques you need to learn to improve your game. It can sometimes feel like you can’t get any better, and that’s why we’re here to help!

The 5 most common mistakes that beginners make in badminton are:

Hitting to the wrong place
Using the wrong grip
Using the wrong footwork
Making your shots too obvious
A lack of repetition or practice

We’ll now discuss these mistakes in more detail, and most importantly, tell you how to fix them!

1) Hitting To The Wrong Place

A large part of badminton strategy, whether that’s singles or doubles is to outmanoeuvre your opponents.

This means they’ll be later to the shuttle, and either play a worse quality shot, make a mistake or not reach it at all!

A very common thing we see beginners doing wrong is NOT outmanoeuvring their opponents, and instead hitting straight to the middle!

So rather than hitting to the middle, you need to hit into the different corners of the court, moving your opponents front and back and side to side. Doing this means you can start to control the rallies, and prevent that feeling that you’re running around the court chasing the shuttle!

2) Using The Wrong Grip

There are 3 common grip mistakes beginner badminton players make:

1) Pointing your finger up the racket on overhead shots

This means you’re using your wrist rather than your forearm, and you’re only using 3 fingers to squeeze the grip, rather than all 4. Your racket head speed then becomes much slower, which hugely reduces your power!

Instead, you need to be in a forehand grip like this:

To learn more about all 4 basic grips in badminton, check out our in-depth article here.

2) Not using a backhand grip

A backhand grip is where you place your thumb on the wider part of the racket like this:

This will help you when playing shots in the mid court or front court on your backhand side.

Using the correct backhand grip will help you create control and power, meaning you can hit shots right to the back and avoid mistake number 1 – hitting straight to your opponent!

3) Not changing between the different grips fast enough

If you don’t change to the correct grip for specific shots, you will have much less control over the shot, which hugely impacts your ability to win points!

To be able to change your grip in time you need to use your fingers and never be gripping your racket too tight. This is a difficult skill to learn but one that’s essential if you want to improve the quality of your shots!

As well as learning the 4 different, grips, to learn more about how to change between the different grips effectively, check out this article here.

3) Using The Wrong Footwork

You can be as fast as Usain bolt but if you don’t use correct badminton footwork you’ll actually be quite slow on the court and find it difficult to reach shots in time!

The 3 biggest footwork mistakes we see beginners make are:

1) Not lunging with your racket leg

This is your right leg if you’re right handed, and left leg if you’re left handed.

Lunging with your NON-racket leg means your core is more likely to collapse – this not only makes it harder to be in control of your body and racket when playing the shot, but it also significantly impacts your recovery after the shot!

2) Not being able to pivot or turn in your round the head corner smoothly

To fix this mistake:

For lifts or clears where you have time, you should do a split step, push off your racket leg, and then pivot on your non-racket leg so you’re facing sidewards. You then push off your racket leg to rotate and do a ‘scissor kick movement’.

Being able to do this smoothly helps you rotate into the shot, rather than being front on to the shuttle where you then can’t rotate (which impacts your power, control and recovery!)

3) Not Doing A Split Step

A split step helps you load your legs and push off explosively in whichever direction you want to travel.

It also enables you to move more efficiently in between shots and get to shots earlier as a result.

It’s likely that if you don’t split step you’ll end up taking lots of little steps and basically start running, which massively slows your movement down!

You can learn much more about the split step in badminton here.

4) Making Your Shots Too Obvious

We see so many people using their whole arm to play shots in one slow motion because they’re so focussed on just hitting the shuttle over and in. This unfortunately makes it very obvious where the shot is going to go, especially for softer shots like drop shots and net shots.

Instead, you need to be able to keep your opponents guessing where you’re going to hit it right until the last millisecond.

As well as using the correct grip and footwork as we’ve already discussed above, this can be helped by 2 more things:

Being relaxed in your arm and grip before hitting the shot as having this one slow motion is often caused by being really tense.
Then, squeezing your grip at the last second to help add more power into your shot.

Doing all of these will help you play multiple different shots with the same preparation technique, which will help to not make your shots too obvious!

5) Lack Of Repetition (Practice)

In his popular book Bounce, Matthew Syed talks about the importance of ‘implicit systems’ which basically means that once you’ve practiced and mastered a task, it becomes automatic and therefore frees up your mental space to think about other things.

So, if you keep practicing lunging with your racket leg or your footwork into the round-the-head corner, then over time you’ll be able to focus on other things that will further improve your game such as your shot placement or tactics!

We’d recommend trying to improve 1 or 2 things at a time so you don’t overload your brain and then when you’ve improved it and it’s engrained into your muscle memory, you can move your focus onto another area!

Learn More

By being more intentional with your training and being specific with what you want to improve, we’re sure that you will see huge changes in your game! And we hope you’re now able to level up your badminton game by fixing these common beginner mistakes.

If you’re interested, we have a beginner to intermediate playlist on YouTube here which includes lots of other tutorials and tips that you might find helpful.

Or, you can watch the full YouTube video of what we’ve discussed in this blog below, which includes more visual explanations, plus an additional 3 practices to help you correct the 5 beginner badminton mistakes above.

The post How To Improve As A Beginner In Badminton – 5 Common Mistakes appeared first on Badminton Insight.

Round The Head Jump Out Smash Tutorial (Stop Playing Backhands!)

Fee Teng Liew — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 09:05:40 +0000

Round The Head Jump Out Smash Tutorial (Stop Playing Backhands!)

A lot of people often struggle with always hitting the shuttle late in their backhand corner, not knowing how to take it earlier.

But, what if we said that we have a solution for that – a round-the-head jump out smash!

The round-the-head jump out smash in badminton is played on the backhand side, where instead of playing a late backhand shot, you jump out to intercept the shuttle before it goes past you. This will help you reach the shuttle earlier to play an effective downwards shot.

To hit a good round-the-head jump out smash in badminton, you need to split step, then push off and jump out, keeping your hips square to the net. Bring your elbow back, open up your chest, throw your elbow forwards, then bring your forearm through followed by the wrist to hit the shuttle.

We’ll now go through everything you need to know about the the round-the-head jump out smash:

Step 1 - When Should You Play The Jump Out Smash?

You should play the jump out smash when your opponent has played a flat lift or clear and you don’t have time to get behind the shuttle.

Instead, you jump OUT to intercept the shuttle before it goes too far past you and you have to take it late. The earlier you can anticipate your opponent’s flat shot into the backhand corner, the better – because this is going to make the next steps more effective!

To get better at anticipating your opponent’s shot:

Look at your opponents body position and the position they’re in on-court.
For example, in singles if you hit a flat, deep clear into your opponents forehand corner then a likely shot from them is a flat straight clear so you can jump out and intercept this.
Another example in doubles is when you drop from your forehand corner where the ‘natural’ shot for your opponent to play is to whip the shuttle flat cross-court (where the gap is), but this is actually the shot you’re waiting for and you jump out to intercept it!

As soon as you anticipate the shot, you should start doing the footwork for the jump out smash!

Step 2 - The Split Step

The split step is done for 2 reasons:

1. To get your feet in line with the direction you’re going to move to.

2. To help you push off.

Unlike the forehand jump out smash where you can do a directional or side-by-side split step, the most common split step for this jump out smash is doing it side-by-side.

A common mistake we see limiting people’s ability to push off from their split step is having their legs too straight or too close together.

Instead, your legs should be bent and feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart.

Step 3 - Moving Into The Right Position

After the split step, you need to look at the shuttle and instantly assess how far away it is. Depending on this answer, there are 2 options:

1) Simply jump straight away. This is used when you can reach the shuttle in one jump.

2) Where you do a chassee then jump. This is used when you’re further away from the shuttle and is much more common in doubles (we’ll explain why in Step 6)!

You need to be confident in your decision to commit to the jump out, and if you do get it slightly wrong you can hopefully still clear it out and reset the rally which is still better than taking a late backhand!

If you’re new to this, we’d recommend practicing this footwork without a shuttle before moving on to the next steps.

Step 4 - Mid-Jump

This is what you should do from the moment you push off until the moment you begin your swing.

This step is really important because it enables you to have a fast racket head speed which is the ultimate goal when trying to create a powerful smash!

So, as soon as you’re pushing off to jump, you need to do 4 things:

1) Keep your hips square to the net because unlike most shots, you DON’T rotate. This is because you simply don’t have the time.

2) Bring your racket arm up with your elbow back, which helps to open up your shoulders and chest. The further you can get your elbow back whilst keeping your hips square, the more distance you have to create a fast racket swing speed and therefore increase your power.

3) Make sure you’re in a loose forehand grip. Being loose until the last second is important because it means you can create extra speed in the racket.

Extra racket speed = extra power!

4) Whilst you’re bringing your racket arm up, bring your non-racket arm up and out to the side of you.

This is important for 2 reasons:

It helps your balance.
If your non-racket arm is forwards (like it should be for most overhead shots), then your chest will be too closed which massively reduces your swing speed. Or you’ll have to rotate your hips which will completely ruin your timing!

Step 5 - The Smash

Firstly, you need to remember that your hips stay square to the net throughout this entire movement!

It’s difficult to say exactly when you should initiate the swing because it really depends on how tall you are, your reach, and the height of the lift, but the following sequence should remain consistent:

You want to throw your elbow forwards and at the same time bring your non-racket arm down to help generate more force and also allow room for your racket to come through.
After your elbow comes through, this quickly slows down with your forearm coming through.
And then finally your wrist comes through to hit the shuttle!

It’s important to note here that it’s not just the wrist that creates power, which many people think! It’s all of the small movements quickly combined together.

There are then 2 final points in this sequence:

As you strike the shuttle, you want to have your arm almost straight but not completely locked out.
Your legs should be quite close together as you strike the shuttle and almost straight. Not tucking your legs when jumping will improve the speed of your recovery.

Step 6 - The Recovery

The recovery for the round-the-head jump out smash is what a lot of people find most difficult because you actually land on your non-racket leg first.

Players find this shot difficult because in badminton you almost always land and push off with your racket leg which usually means it’s much stronger and more stable!

So, after you’ve hit the shuttle you then need to widen your legs, and land on your non-racket leg with your knee slightly bent to help absorb the landing.

You then land your racket leg, again with your knee slightly bent.

You shouldn't do a big follow-through with your racket because if you do, it will ruin both your timing and recovery!

How fast you’re moving into the jump, along with your leg strength will also determine your recovery:

If you’re moving at speed and jumping a long distance, you might need 1 or 2 mini steps to recover.
Whereas if you jump from a more static position or with less distance then it’s likely you can recover without taking any additional steps.

Like we mentioned earlier in Step 3, this is why doubles players can do this chassee movement more often – because they’re able to use the jump out smash and apply maximum pressure and it doesn’t matter as much if they are slow to recover as they have a partner to cover them!

Whereas in singles, if you were to do this chassee movement and fall out of the court then you probably wouldn’t be able to get the next shot if your opponent did get it back!

Instead, in singles it’s often a better choice to take the shuttle slightly later and do a scissor kick to ensure you recover back into court as your bodyweight should be moving forwards after the scissor kick.

Of course we’re not saying you shouldn’t do this jump out smash in singles, but if you can’t do it and land reasonably on-balance then we’d probably recommend not doing it!

How To Practice The Jump Out Smash

If you’re new to this movement, we’d really recommend practicing the movement without a shuttle first to not only get it engrained into your muscle memory but also give you the confidence to know that you can do it well, and also safely, in a match.

When you then add in a shuttle, it will be difficult at first, but keep practicing it, and most importantly practicing with good technique!

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

If you struggle with jumping explosively or having the strength and stability to land, we have 12 different programmes designed to help you improve your on-court strength, endurance, speed and explosive power.

Check them out here!

Learn More

We hope you’ve now learned how to play less backhands, and instead how to implement the round-the-head jump smash effectively into your badminton game!

Remember that the round-the-head jump out smash is slightly different to the forehand side jump out smash, which you can learn more about here! Or if you’d like to learn about the 5 different types of smashes in badminton, click here.

Otherwise, you can also check out our full YouTube video below on everything we’ve discussed above, which includes more visual explanations and demonstrations of each step!

The post Round The Head Jump Out Smash Tutorial (Stop Playing Backhands!) appeared first on Badminton Insight.

What To Do When Your Opponent Returns Hard Into Your Backhand (Badminton Strategy)

Fee Teng Liew — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What To Do When Your Opponent Returns Hard Into Your Backhand (Badminton Strategy)

In badminton, a common return to hit in doubles is to the rear-court to your opponents backhand – this is because it’s really hard to get back!

And this means your opponents are likely going to do the same return to you!

Sometimes it can feel like you can’t do anything about this hard return to your backhand apart from to improve your backhand, but we have 3 simple badminton strategies you can implement today to stop people winning points by hitting hard to your backhand!

The 3 ways to avoid people returning hard into your backhand (and being successful) are:

Vary your serve
Think about your positioning
Playing the right shot

Let’s now go through each of these tips in more detail!

1 - Vary Your Serve

This tip of course applies to your partner who is serving – but if your partner is able to serve to a place where it’s almost impossible for your opponents to hit this hard return, they can stop this return from happening altogether!

For example, if your partner is serving to a right-hander from the right side of the court, serving to their backhand means their natural swing is to hit the shuttle straight. This is directly into your backhand!

But if your partner serves across their body to their forehand instead, their natural swing is to hit the shuttle cross-court, which then goes to your forehand.

Serving to this specific place makes it a lot harder for them to play a good shot to your backhand!

There are two important things to note here about your serve placement:

1. You need to look at how your opponent is setting up to receive the serve. This could change where you should serve to!

For example, if your opponent sets up like the image below, then serving to the T means their shot is actually more likely to go cross-court to your forehand because they will have to take a later backhand.

2. You can also tempt your opponent to play down your backhand side, but then you are ready to take it early!

You can do this by either serving low out wide to the tramline, as the most likely reply would be a straight push up the line to your backhand.

Or you can also serve to the T like we discussed earlier. You would do this knowingly and then make sure you are ready for it to take the backhand shot early!

2 - Think About Your Positioning

The 2nd tip is to think about your positioning – specifically, think about where you’re standing when your partner is serving.

For most people, this is in the centre of the court with their feet an equal distance each side of the middle line. Whilst this isn’t wrong, we’d recommend moving your starting position slightly over to your backhand side, to help you reach the hard return earlier. Just make sure to let your partner know so they can cover the forehand side after they serve!

Ideally, you should always communicate with your partner what you’re going to do, so you each know what you’re looking for and what areas of the court to cover.

However we’re not saying your partner should step back a lot to the forehand side because this would leave a huge gap for your opponents to play a simple net shot.

By you and your partner slightly moving position and you’re now only looking for the backhand side, it should look like this after your partner has served:

As well as moving slightly over to the backhand side, you can also move your positioning slightly forwards. This enables you to intercept the return, and play an early backhand shot!

From this earlier position, it’s really important to play the right shot – and this is our 3rd tip.

3 - Playing The Right Shot

If you are able to reach the shuttle early in the mid-court and play an early backhand, we’d recommend 2 options:

A soft shot to the middle because the returner can’t easily reach this as they have to change their direction of movement, and it also creates indecision.
Hit the shot over the returner and to the back if they’re staying in and looking for this soft shot.

One big mistake we often see people making which prevents them from playing a good shot from the hard return is not having their racket ready! We see a lot of people waiting with their racket down, which means their racket has a further distance to travel to the shuttle.

This means you can’t intercept the shot or take it early and instead, you will have to turn and play a late backhand (which is what we’re trying to avoid)!

So having a better starting position will hopefully help you with this and get you out of the habit of automatically turning to play a backhand.

If your opponent’s return is higher (like a lift), you might have time to play a round-the-head shot, which will be a lot more effective than a backhand from this position.

What If These Tips Don’t Work For You?

If you try to implement these 3 tips, but still find your opponents are hitting winning shots from the hard return into the backhand corner then you might need to improve two further things:

Your backhand strength – to help you generate enough power to ease some of the pressure. To help improve your backhand strength, we’d recommend watching the video here where we share some tips to maximise your backhand power.
Your explosive strength and speed – to be able to move to the shuttle as efficiently and explosively as possible. For this, we’d recommend checking out our badminton-specific weights programmes.

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

We have 12 different programmes designed to help you improve your on-court strength, endurance, speed and explosive power.

Check them out here!

Learn More

We hope you’ve now learned how to solve this very common issue that a lot of people have asked us about! And you can also check out our YouTube video below on this same topic if you’d prefer to see more visual explanations of what we have discussed.

The post What To Do When Your Opponent Returns Hard Into Your Backhand (Badminton Strategy) appeared first on Badminton Insight.

5 Ways To Still Win Badminton Matches Even If You’re Slow

Fee Teng Liew — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000

5 Ways To Still Win Badminton Matches Even If You’re Slow

Some of the best players in the world don’t actually move very fast, BUT they do have other qualities that still help them win a lot of matches!

Of course, it’s still beneficial if you can get physically faster as this will improve your game overall, but here are 5 ways that you can still win matches as a slower player:

Read the game
Use good shot selection
Improve your shot quality & accuracy
Use deception
Train your footwork

Let’s now go through each of these in more detail!

1) Read The Game

One of the best examples of a player that can read the game is Hendra Setiawan – Indonesian men’s doubles badminton player and a legend of the game! He certainly isn’t one of the physically fastest players on the world tour, he even managed to win the 2019 All England when he was so injured that he was pretty much playing on one leg!

So how did he manage to win one of the biggest badminton tournaments with basically one leg?! And how is he so good despite being a lot slower than most other players?

Firstly, Setiawan is very good at knowing where the shuttle is going by reading his opponent’s body and racket positioning, and also having a great understanding of what shot his opponents are likely to play.

But what he also does very well is intentionally leave gaps in the court. He will hit certain shots to tempt his opponents to play into this seemingly open space, but he’s actually ready and waiting to move over as soon as his opponent hits it!

This is most effective for the net and mid court, and also when you’re playing doubles as you have your partner to cover you if the shuttle doesn’t go there! If you’re interested, we go into more detail about how to read the game in badminton here!

2) Use Good Shot Selection

In badminton you should play shots to expose your opponent’s movement and gain an advantage from this. You can also play shots that stop your opponents exposing your slow movement.

For example, in doubles you can block and move forward to the net to leave the rear court for your hopefully faster partner! This is what Hendra Setiawan does very well in his partnership with Mohammad Ahsan!

You might have slow movement but you can still have a fast racket, so another way to avoid exposing your slow movement is to engage in a fast and flat rally. This often encourages your opponents to hit hard back at you. Just make sure you’re hitting good quality and accurate shots or it may not be as effective! And this links on the the next point…

3) Improve Shot Quality & Accuracy

We often see players lifting half court or to the middle and not making their opponents move at all.

Lifting more accurately will enable you to put your opponents under more pressure, making them take it later and therefore reduce the quality of shot they can play.

This isn’t just for your lifting! Improving the quality and accuracy of other shots such as your serves, return of serves, defence and attack will put your opponent under more pressure and also take some of the pressure off your slower movement!

4) Use Deception

Using deception effectively can put your opponent under a lot of pressure, as it keeps them guessing and not knowing where the shuttle is going. You can gain many quick points from using deceptive shots, and it feels pretty satisfying too!

As an example, here is a tutorial on Greg’s favourite deceptive shot:

You can also use deception when you’re taking the shuttle late – just make sure you don’t overdo it as your opponents could end up anticipating your shot!

5) Train Your Footwork

If you do want to improve your game and your movement is the main issue, then it’s probably worth trying to improve that too! There are lots of practices that you can do for this, for example fast feet, or simple movement drills to increase your efficiency and speed.

You can learn more about how to get faster footwork in badminton here, or ensure you’re getting the technical aspects of your footwork right here.

Learn More

We hope you’ve now learned some ways to utilise your strengths and win matches, even if your movement is slow! If you’d like to see more visual explanations of the points we’ve discussed above, you can check out our full YouTube video below!

The post 5 Ways To Still Win Badminton Matches Even If You’re Slow appeared first on Badminton Insight.

The 6 Best Return Of Serves To Play In Singles Badminton

Fee Teng Liew — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 09:05:06 +0000

The 6 Best Return Of Serves To Play In Singles Badminton

Even though you have a lot more space to play into in singles, people still struggle to know where to return to.

So, we analysed over 1000 singles return of serves from professional singles badminton matches and found the 6 best return of serves to play!

We also found that:

Professional males serve low 86% of the time and high 14% of the time.
Professional females serve low 40% of the time and high 60% of the time, which is quite different!

Of course this will vary between individuals but generally this is quite an accurate statistic for the split of low vs high serves across all levels of badminton!

The 6 best return of serves to play in singles are:

From a low serve – lift, net shot, deceptive backhand net shot
From a flick or high serve – clear, drop, straight slice

We’ll now go through these returns of serve, as well as some important points for executing each of them well!

Returns From A Low Serve

Return 1 – Lift (All Levels)

It might sound basic but playing a lift pushes your opponent to the back of the court which instantly creates space. We found that from a low serve, professional men and women play a lift return of serve 56% of the time.

This is a good choice of return of serve because:

If you choose to play a net shot, this can invite your opponent to play another net shot.
This will likely be tighter than yours as they’re playing it from in front of the service line rather than behind the service line (which is where you played it from when returning).

We have a few key points when doing these lifts to make sure it’s successful:

You should vary the corner that you lift to and also vary the height of your lift. For example, flat lifts can put your opponent under more pressure meaning you can try to take the advantage & counter-attack on the next shot. But these need to be accurate otherwise they might get you into trouble!
You should still take the shuttle early even when you know you’re going to play a lift! Don’t wait for it to drop down otherwise it might be more obvious to your opponent and will also put them under less pressure.
Don’t just stand there and watch your lift after you’ve hit it. Instead you should assess your opponent’s position and get ready for the next shot!

Return 2 – Net Shot (Intermediate)

Despite what we’ve said above, playing to the net can still be a good return in certain situations. You can either play a deep net which lands around the service line so they can’t play a tight net as easily, or you can play a tight net shot.

If your net return is good quality, then your opponent can only either play a net shot back or a high lift. Here you can move your positioning forwards to anticipate the net shot as you should still have enough time to move back for the lift.

Your returns will unlikely be winning shots, but if you can play the returns with purpose and look for the next shot then you can get into a good position and maybe win the point on the following shots!

Return 3 – Deceptive Backhand Net Shot (Advanced)

A deceptive return is a great shot to use to unsettle your opponents right from the start of the rally and in fact professional players used some sort of deception in 10% of their returns.

This deceptive net is played when the serve comes to your backhand side (from the right box if you’re right handed and the left box if you’re left handed).

Here, you look like you’re going to play a straight shot and then at the last second you turn your shoulders to face the left side if you’re right-handed and the right side if you’re left-handed and play a cross shot instead.

Your shoulder movement is what creates the deception in the shot so it’s really important to get this right.

We wouldn’t recommend overusing this deception – about 10% is a good amount otherwise your opponents will get used to it and it will no longer be deceptive!

It’s also a good idea to play a straight shot in the return first before you use this deceptive cross court shot.

Returns From A Flick Or High Serve

Return 4 – Clear (All Levels)

This return was used around 19% of the time for males and 36% of the time for females. Similar to what we said for the lift, this is used to move your opponents to the back of the court and it’s important to vary the corner you clear to.

Hitting it accurately with a good length is also important as if you’re clearing it short to the middle it’s so easy for your opponent to hit their third shot on balance and put you under pressure!

Return 5 – Drop Or Fast Drop (Intermediate)

This was by far the most used shot from a flick or high serve, being used 56% of the time by professional males and 47% of the time by females!

We noticed 2 interesting things from our research:

From a forehand high serve, the drops and fast drops varied between both straight and cross.
However, from a backhand flick serve almost all of these drops or clips were straight!

This is because from the flick serve you’re slightly less on balance and if you played cross, the easiest shot for your opponents is a straight block or net shot. This would mean you have to move the longest distance on the court and potentially take it late and put yourself under pressure!

Return 6 – Straight Slice (Advanced)

This is for more advanced players as it requires a high skill level to play with accuracy. If you aren’t accurate and slice it to the middle for example then your opponent won’t have to move and can put you under a lot of pressure.

The advantage of playing a slice is that the shuttle typically lands in front of your opponent – meaning they have to reach down and they have fewer options of playing a shot that puts you under pressure.

This is because you have a fast swing so it looks like you’re going to play a smash but the slice takes the pace off the shuttle and surprises them.

Should You Play A Smash On A Return Of Serve In Singles?

You might have noticed that we didn’t cover a smash off the return, and might be wondering why?

Well, when we watched over 100 flick serves to professional males, we only saw a few smashes and it often put the player returning under a lot of pressure straight away! So we wouldn’t recommend this unless the serve is bad quality, your opponent has a weak defence or if you have a really good smash.

Learn More

Of course, this isn’t a complete list of what returns you can play, but this is what we found worked best for the pros, which means they can definitely work for you too! To learn more about how to improve your singles game, you can check out our singles defence tutorial here.

Or, to watch video demonstrations of all 6 returns we’ve discussed above, you can watch our full YouTube video below.

The post The 6 Best Return Of Serves To Play In Singles Badminton appeared first on Badminton Insight.

Badminton Training – Badminton Insight

4 Types Of Footwork Into The Forehand Rear-Court Corner (Badminton Tutorial)

4 Types Of Footwork Into The Forehand Rear-Court Corner (Badminton Tutorial)

Table of Contents

Jump Up Or Kick Through (Footwork For High Lifts)

How To Do The Footwork

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

Scissor Kick (Footwork For Medium Height Lifts)

Do you want to level up your footwork?

Jump Out (Footwork For Flat Lifts)

Late Forehand (Footwork For Very Flat Lifts)

Practicing These Movements

Do you want to level up your footwork?

Learn More

Learn The Scissor Kick Footwork In Badminton! Step-By-Step Tutorial To Move To Your Round The Head Corner

Learn The Scissor-Kick Footwork In Badminton (Round The Head Corner)

The Footwork

Step 1: Directional Split Step

Step 2: Push Off Your Racket Leg

Step 3: Pivot/Mini Jump On Your Non-Racket Leg

Step 4: The Scissor Kick Footwork

Step 5: The Recovery

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

Practices

Practice 1: Shadow Repetitions

Practice 2: Add In A Shuttle

Practice 3: Open Routine

Learn More

How To Improve Your Endurance & Stamina In Badminton

How To Improve Your Endurance & Stamina In Badminton

Table of Contents

The 2 Principles For Improving Your Endurance

1) The SAID Principle

2) The Overload Principle

How To Improve Your Endurance In Badminton

Method 1: Interval Training

Method 2: On-Court Endurance Training

Method 3: Multi-Feed Training

Check Out Our Multi-Feed Programmes!

Learn More

3 Deceptive Return Of Serves In Badminton

3 Deceptive Return Of Serves In Badminton

1) The Kevin Sukamuljo Special

So, how can you play the Kevin Sukamuljo Special?

2) Greg’s Favourite Return Of Serve – Greg’s Slice!

How can you play Greg’s Slice return?

3) The Anthony Ginting Special

The Technique When Playing A Forehand

The Technique When Playing A Backhand

Common Mistakes When Playing Deceptive Returns

Learn More

Multi-Feed Training For Badminton – Benefits And Exercises

Multi-Feed Training For Badminton - Benefits And Exercises

Benefits Of Multi-Feed Training

1) Very Customisable To An Individual’s Needs

2) Helps Develop Endurance

3) Improves Consistency

4) Improves Reaction Time

5) Develops Confidence

6) Encourages Creativity

Mistakes To Avoid When Doing Multi-Feed Training

1) Poor Feeding

Check Out Our Multi-Feed Programmes!

2) A Lack Of Communication

3) Overloading

4) Only Doing Multi-Feed Training

Ways To Do Multi-Feed Training

Smash-Kill (For Singles)

Throw Downs (For Singles)

Rear-Mid (For Doubles)

Random Net Attack (For Doubles)

27 Multi-Feed Programmes PDF

How To Improve As A Beginner In Badminton – 5 Common Mistakes

How To Improve As A Beginner In Badminton - 5 Common Mistakes

1) Hitting To The Wrong Place

2) Using The Wrong Grip

1) Pointing your finger up the racket on overhead shots

2) Not using a backhand grip

3) Not changing between the different grips fast enough

3) Using The Wrong Footwork