Advanced

Generating power in minimal time and reading the game are the 2 additional things for moving to the advanced.

No need to say, better sense of distance, better control + higher speed of footwork and better sense of timing are all required. To make it more clear, “better sense of distance” means the range of distance to do a proper shot is narrower – doing the shot with a more precise distance during the most of the time. “Better sense of timing” means the range of timing to do a proper shot is also narrower – you can do the shot always with a more precise timing.

As you observe those advanced players playing games, if they do Drive, the shuttle is always just above the net. The shuttle doesn’t hit the net, neither too high above the net. In another word, the “quality” of the shots are much better and much more consistent.

Power generation in minimal time

This is critical to move to the advanced level. When your playing level goes up, the speed in the game goes up as well. Faster reaction is demanded, while shorter time to generate power is also required.

When the opponent is pressuring you with speed: a faster Smash, a faster Drive or a faster Push, the time left for you to react and return is short. In such a short time, you need to return a powerful and fast Drive, a long Lift, you need to be able to generate full power in a very short time and a very minimal movement. No need to say that the precise distance and timing is the foundation at the first place.

Here the Grip Power plays the role. Why? Because squeezing a hand is much faster than all any other ways of power generation. Rotating your body? Swinging your arm? Rotating your fore arm? Nothing can be faster than squeezing your hand.

If you one-hand grip power is 10kg and the person having 30kg power can generate much more power by squeezing his/her hand in 0.1 second, and return a much faster shot. An advanced badminton man player can probably have 60 to 70 kg grip power. An average badminton man player can have 45 kg and a woman player can have 30kg.

Again, without the precision of distance and timing, grip power is useless. Accurate sense of distance and timing is the first thing, and grip power is built on that to bring your badminton to the next level.

Read the game

A coach told me that there are three things to pay attention to if you want to level up your badminton game: Technique, physical power and reading the game. Technique is about be able to do various shots and maintaining high quality of the shots (precision in the sense of distance and timing). Physical power means fast footwork and strong grip power. Then the last is reading the game.

In my language, reading the game is “Not to see the shuttle while hitting the shuttle.”

In your sight, there is a focused point and all other areas are blurred. When you are a less-experienced player, you can only pay attention to the focused point in your sight which is the shuttle, because you are trying everything you can to make the sense of distance and timing good enough so that you don’t miss the shuttle and swing the empty air.

However, when you are leveling up, your sense of distance and timing is getting better and this makes it possible that you can hit the shuttle with a good distance and timing without paying 100% attention on the shuttle. Gradually, when you reduce your attention on the shuttle to 90%, 80% and 70%, you can gradually see what is happening in the blurred area in your sight. It’s still blurred and not clear, but you can somehow feel that the opponents are standing closer to the left side and the right side seems to be empty. Then you got the chance to hit the shuttle to the right side.

Again, it’s very difficult to try this if you don’t have good sense of distance and timing yet. (because you will miss the shuttle more often, if you don’t put enough attention on the shuttle)

Tip

These two “Power generation in minimal time and reading the game” take a long time to build up, but there is also a good news: these two works even when you age.

When you get older, your footwork starts to slow down. Your covering area starts to shrink, but as long as you train your grip power and your sight don’t get too bad, it helps you to maintain certain competitiveness on the court again those young and fast players.