badminton tutorial – 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.

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.

How To Use Your Wrist In Badminton

Fee Teng Liew — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

How To Use Your Wrist In Badminton

A lot of people use the WRONG wrist movement in badminton, causing them to lose power, control, consistency, deception, and also at times actually cause some pain!

But, the solution doesn’t actually come from your wrist at all.

We’ll now share why your wrist isn’t as important as you think, why your fingers and thumb are important, and crucially, how you can use them to improve your badminton game!

Why Your Wrist Isn’t As Important As You Think

Imagine writing just using your wrist, rather than actively using your fingers.

It’s a lot more difficult to control the pen when you’re only using your wrist, and this is essentially what a lot of players are doing on court! Playing badminton, like writing, becomes much easier when you use your fingers and thumb.

The Impact On Power

For example, in your backhand lift or drive, bringing your wrist back too much and then snapping it forwards isn’t actually what generates the power (and it’s probably going to give you a wrist injury)!

Though you do need to use your wrist a little, you should aim to keep your wrist much flatter, and use your thumb to squeeze against the wide part of the grip and accelerate into the shot.

By keeping your wrist flatter and squeezing your thumb, it also engages your forearm much more which helps add power.

The Impact On Control And Accuracy

For example, in darts, the difference between hitting a triple 20 or just 1, comes down to such small, minuscule movements. They are barely using their wrist, and relying on their index finger and thumb to create ultimate precision!

So in badminton, we need to become experts at using our fingers and thumb to get maximum control and accuracy.

We’ve found that generally, the less your whole body is rotating, the more important it is to use your fingers and thumb as you don’t have the momentum of your body rotating into the shot.

For example, the backhand serve – you need to rely on using the squeeze of your fingers and thumb to add not only accuracy but also power into the serve, especially if it’s a flick.

But it’s important to mention – you do still need to use your fingers and thumb when you are rotating!

When you’re smashing or hitting a late backhand for example, you use your fingers and thumb at the final stage of the shot which helps with accuracy and power. Your fingers and thumb aren’t the main component, but it’s a combination of all the factors such as your rotation, footwork, swing speed and timing.

The Impact On Grip Changes

Generally, players who overuse their wrist really struggle to change between the different grips quickly, especially between a forehand and backhand grip!

Using your wrist too much means that you have a bigger followthrough, and often means you can’t change your grip in time for the next shot.

For example, if you hit a forehand drive with a really big followthrough and it comes back at you fast, you won’t have enough time to change into a backhand grip. You will then have to stay in the forehand grip and will NEED to use your wrist to try and create some power in the shot, rather than using your thumb.

The more you use your fingers and thumb, the better you can change between the grips, and this will therefore help your power, control, accuracy and consistency!

How To Use Your Fingers And Thumb

Although we’ve said “fingers and thumb” together throughout this blog so far, there are actually shots where you don’t really use your thumb, and it’s more just there to create a good grip and ensure you don’t drop your racket!

However, you DO use some finger squeeze in EVERY shot in badminton! This is something the best players do really well – whether that’s in their overhead shots, using the squeeze to add power and deception at the last moment, or improving the accuracy of their net kills.

Having a relaxed loose grip right up until the shuttle hits your strings is really important because using your fingers and thumb is the quickest way to twist and turn your racket, compared to moving your whole wrist.

As the shuttle moves so fast in badminton, any wasted time can make a really big difference! So make sure you’re lightly holding the racket and not gripping it too tightly before hitting a shot.

4 Ways To Easily Practice Using Your Fingers And Thumb (And Improve Consistency)

Practice 1 (No Court Or Shuttle Needed)

This practice can be done at home, and you simply need to have your racket in hand, then practice changing between a forehand and a backhand grip and squeezing to hit a shot after each grip change. You can do this whilst replicating hitting net kills, drives, lifts, or net shots.

This might seem basic (and also boring!), but this is a great way to practice not only changing between the different grips, but also keeping your fingers and thumb loose and then squeezing them to recreate the feeling of adding power into the shot!

Practice 2 (No Court Needed)

Hit a shuttle up continously, and see how short you can make the swing whilst getting as much height as possible. We’d recommend doing it on the forehand side, then backhand side, and then alternate between the two!

This will really encourage you to use your finger squeeze and also your thumb when on the backhand side!

A key tip is that if you find yourself reverting back to using your wrist when doing this practice, then don’t hit the shuttle as high as this will give you less time and almost force you to use a shorter, more efficient action!

Practice 3 (On-Court)

Here you want to work on the different shots and skills that you regularly play in badminton.

Below Net Height

Experiment with using your fingers and thumb to generate power and control in your lifts.

This can be done by repeatedly lifting to a partner who is dropping. If your partner cannot drop consistently, or you would like more time for your own intrinsic feedback in between shots then they can throw shuttles over the net to replicate this. They would throw the shuttle like a dart – making sure they are using their fingers of course

We know a lot of people struggle on the backhand lifts in particular so one way to improve this is to take the 3 fingers off the racket (shown in the image below) for the entire duration of the shot!

This gets you used to only using your thumb and index finger. Once you’re used to this, you can add the 3 fingers back on to help with a little more control.

You can also practice your net shots, experimenting with how much you need to squeeze your fingers and thumb to hit a tight net shot from varying positions.

We’d advise doing this practice with some movement - don’t just stand still as this isn’t what you’d be doing in a game. Adding in footwork provides you with momentum that naturally adds some power into your shot, so it’s important to get used to this!

Above Net Height

You’ll then want to experiment using your fingers and thumb in the rear court and in other shots above the height of the net.

Here’s a couple of examples for why using your fingers and thumb are so important in the rear-court:

The attacking punch clear – you act like you’re going to play a drop shot or smash, and then a lot of the deception comes from you squeezing your fingers and thumb at the last millisecond to hit the punch clear instead.
The smash – experiment with how much and when you need to squeeze your grip, and what you should do with your wrist too. Just look at how relaxed Praveen Jordan is before hitting a smash in the image below!

Practice 4 (On-Court Single Shuttle)

One person is at the net tapping the shuttle down to the other person who is defending on a half-court. This is a great exercise as both people are constantly using their fingers and thumb – and if you’re not, then it’s not going to work as you won’t have the necessary accuracy, power or control!

This is for 2 main reasons:

If you hit a shot in defence and use your wrist too much, then your racket swing will have a bigger follow through. This means you have a longer distance to get your racket back in its ‘ready position’ and you’ll be put under more and more pressure and therefore not be able to keep the rally going!
You also need to be able to play your defensive shot with enough power to enable the net player to keep hitting down. Being able to defend with power is so important if you want to improve your badminton as it enables you to play much better shots from a variety of positions!

Learn More

We hope you’ve now learned more about how to use your wrist, fingers and thumb in badminton to help you generate power, control, consistency, deception, and also eliminate any wrist pain!

If you’d like to see more visual explanations of the practices and points we’ve discussed, you can watch our YouTube video below!

The post How To Use Your Wrist In Badminton appeared first on Badminton Insight.

badminton tutorial – Badminton Insight

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

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

Table of Contents

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

Step 2 - The Split Step

Step 3 - Moving Into The Right Position

Step 4 - Mid-Jump

Step 5 - The Smash

Step 6 - The Recovery

How To Practice The Jump Out Smash

Check Out Our Badminton-Specific Weights Programmes!

Learn More

The 6 Best Return Of Serves To Play In Singles Badminton

The 6 Best Return Of Serves To Play In Singles Badminton

Returns From A Low Serve

Return 1 – Lift (All Levels)

Return 2 – Net Shot (Intermediate)

Return 3 – Deceptive Backhand Net Shot (Advanced)

Returns From A Flick Or High Serve

Return 4 – Clear (All Levels)

Return 5 – Drop Or Fast Drop (Intermediate)

Return 6 – Straight Slice (Advanced)

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

Learn More

How To Use Your Wrist In Badminton

How To Use Your Wrist In Badminton

Why Your Wrist Isn’t As Important As You Think

The Impact On Power

The Impact On Control And Accuracy

The Impact On Grip Changes

How To Use Your Fingers And Thumb

4 Ways To Easily Practice Using Your Fingers And Thumb (And Improve Consistency)

Practice 1 (No Court Or Shuttle Needed)

Practice 2 (No Court Needed)

Practice 3 (On-Court)

Practice 4 (On-Court Single Shuttle)

Learn More