1. Start overhead coaching with the player in the round the head court

You have 3 choices. You have to choose one!

1   start overheads with the player in their BH / RTH court

2   start with the player in their FH court

3   It doesn’t matter which court

I wished I’d known the advantages of starting overhead coaching with the player in their Round The Head / Backhand court.  It would have saved me so much time and lessened the chance of inappropriate/limited techniques from developing.

It’s a simple choice and the differences between using either court really surprised me

I consciously make this decision every time when introducing overhead hitting to a novice player

Starting in this court will ‘constrain’ the player in their choice of movements

It will help with

• the feeding,
• the body rotation,
• the initial body and racket preparation,
• encourage quick racket preparation,
• lift up off the court,
• and many more aspects.

It gives the player the best chance of success and helps to establish some of the essential elements for a great overhead

You will find that its an appropriate time to use the Backward Chaining teaching method to progress the practice.

Starting in this court the coach will find it easier to reduce or increase the difficulty by changing the players starting position, feeder’s position and the elements of the feeding.

Importantly – All this can be done whilst maintaining the essential technical elements

Even if you occasionally use a super tough feed, which I recommend 🙂

 

Please think about how this practice would differ in terms of feeding, player progress and development of core techniques IF you were to start overhead coaching with the player in their FH court.

Of course, you may decide it doesn’t matter which side the players start in

consider why I reccommed it,

what would change your mind?

Do you agree with these statements when starting in this court

• the shuttle will be passing over the players’ non-racket shoulder rather than out to their ‘open side’, therefore removing the opportunity to play a deep fh pull when the feed is too flat
• in the right-hand court, players must be allowed the choice of rotating or staying sideways (block jumping) when striking the shuttle, the player decides
• therefore to encourage rotation in the RTH court this option must be removed.  Only starting in the RTH ensures this.

 

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