Its not only a defensive stroke, it can be a weapon
How can you make your deep forehand a strength
Advice for beginners and intermediate players
Have you seen this post
The Deep Forehand – why it’s so important
.In it you can read about …
Why you need to be great in this area
At all levels, opponents will target your deep forehand
They want to get the shuttle behind you, so it’s harder for you to hurt them.
When you first start playing, the court seems huge, and there is plenty of space for your opponent to use against you, especially behind you.
As you progress, you’d expect this target area to disappear, but it doesn’t. Opponents will still target it.
What you decide to do in this area of the court, the stroke and tactical choice you make, can be the difference between average and awesome!
Should you try to jump up and out to intercept or should you allow it to go slightly behind you?
Both choices are correct, but of course, it depends.
Will your actions give you an advantage or place you in more trouble?
- What variations can you play: have you practised different variations in a gamelike practice to see what works, when.
- How do you view risk : Maybe the stroke you play is a risk worth taking: what’s your view on making errors?
- Are you thinking tactically: Maybe all you have practiced are the technical elements about how to move and strike the shuttle. However, just being technically great is not going to win you those close matches.
- Have you practised making decisions? : Can you play a variety of strokes from this area and to keep your opponent guessing?
- Are you able to 'hide' this area: How do you make it difficult for your opponent to get the shuttle behind you?
Don’t always practice in defensive situations
This stroke can be much more than that; it can become a weapon
The key elements that make a difference
Include this in your practice
Before we consider how to set up practice, here are some of the aspects that are essential if you want to have an awesome Deep Forehand.
The keywords and phrases
“E.P. – Early Preparation” – Prepare your racket and body, but remember to prepare your mind.
It’s vital that you move your racket early into positions shown in these photographs. I guarantee that you’ll see a difference once you concentrate on EP
“Make a bicep” – this is a simple instruction that causes a great racket preparation position, just look at all the images, can you see ‘make a bicep’?
“Foot out” – towards the end of the movement, be prepared to get your foot ‘out’. Combine this with the next two points
“Hit around the shuttle” – imagine stepping ‘outside’ of the shuttle. Ok, this won’t happen on every occasion, but just having the thought will help you. It will also make your cross-court shots easier.
“Hit-Land” – this will help you to generate lots more power and help you to reach those quick, deep flicks. You may have a slight pause/wait before the hit. If the hit and land happen at the same time that’s ok, it’s just not good to practice Land-hit.
Grip change – it’s important. However, often coaches use it as the key element despite being easy to change and on its own doesn’t make an awesome stroke.
All these combined together will start to create an awsome deep forehand.
However, it’s how you practice that will make it awesome
How to practice
What should I advise you?
I could tell you to line up 100 shuttles in rows of 10 x 10, find a great feeder who can deliver the shuttle to just the right spot for you to ‘groove’ your stroke.
It would certainly allow you to improve during the practice and maybe even hit a target 80-90% of the time.
You’d come off the practice court believing that you’ve improved and feeling great
It will look good in practice but not be awesome in competitions
Just hitting lots of shuttles over and over again is not the BEST way to improve
The difficult part is knowing how to measure learning and ensure that the stroke works in a game
Should you only measure your progress by checking that all the technical boxes are ticked ?
If that were true, then you’d be perfect in matches.
Be careful of defining that perfect practice session where the coach complimented you on your perfect technique.
My best advice is that it’s NOT all about seeking technical mastery
Yes, there are certain technical things that you need to do but to become awesome at this stroke you also need to be great at the Tactical and Emotional elements
Please don’t forget the Tactical choices you have when playing this stroke in a game.
The BIG question is how to practice these Tactical choices in situations that also test you emotionally.
It’s your ability to make great choices that’s what will make this stroke awesome
What are the decisions you need to practice?
- Deciding what you can use when you look over the net: you can find an information that will help you.
- The reasons and advantages to play different strokes: to hit with more slice or to play flatter and hrader into their midcourt, or play with more of a ‘hold’ to aid your deception.
- When its best to leap out for an interception: Can you recognise them or is it a skills that needs to be developed.
- Deciding when its best not to intercept: but to let the shuttle go behind you.
All these decisions (choices) must be practised
it may require a different approach to practice
Practice ideas to help a begginer
- Use Wallwork practice by feeding yourself and practising the essential technical parts
- When using single feeding from your coach, ask them to stand next to the trams and hit flicks ‘up-flatish’ behind you. Ask them not to lift high and upwards, you don’t want that extra time. Then move quickly and aim to hit the shuttle back at them … hard !!
- You may decide to start in a position that looks like you would be just before striking: making a bicep shape with EP, only 1 (large) step away from striking.
- Hopefully, you’ve already partly mastered net lunges using ‘hit-land’ and are happy to ‘get your foot out’ in from of you in a long lunge, you’ll need this for the deep FH.
- As soon as you can start in a racket foot forward stance, or hopefully, start block feeding yourself to the net so the feeder can flick behind you. That means you will have the shuttle at the start of the practice!
Your aims
- Prepare your racket and arm early ready for ‘Power’ and to be motivated to get ‘around the shuttle’ with your foot. EP is everything!
- Think about ‘Prepare-HIT ‘ so your foot lands just after striking or at the same time
- Hit straight back to the feeder – hit hard and flat to the midcourt
- Progress to a racket foot start so its more realistic, tougher and nearly like a game stance. Please don’t start standing square!
Practice ideas for everyone
- If you use single feeds, ask for tough (flat fast) feeds. Decide if you want an easy or tough or ‘World-class’ feed
- Ask them to feed from straight and crosscourt positions. Don’t allow the feeder to hit high!
- Start using ‘player feeds’, where you hold the shuttle and play to the opponent’s net area then they flick you flat and deep.
- Use Early Preparation, always!
- Once you have partly mastered the stroke it’s time to experiment with stepping ‘Up & Out’ to increase the power.
- Don’t forget to try out intercept jumping with clips and crosscourt shots, talk with your coach to decide how much variation your want
Your aims
- Demand that you start every practice rally. Then see if you can affect what type of flick they do, but be aware if you ‘feed’ too tight they may cross net you 🙂
- Encourage your feeder to be seriously tough with some feeds, maybe stepping forwards to reduce the time you have to move
- Experiment with changing your stance (use forwards to backwards attacking stances) after self-block as a feed, I recommend that you try this on your BH side first
- Ask the feeder to vary the stroke they play and, importantly, try to anticipate or affect what stroke they play.
- Most importantly play out the rest of the rally so you can see if your stroke gave you the advantage or reduced their advantage that you planned for
- Be a player in practice, not a passenger. Take every advantage: from your first thought, your feed, your movement before they strike, and in the rally!
Make it Tactical not just Technical
This last section is the most important
It may cause you to consider how you currently practice and may also cause you to stop reading.
I’d like to suggest that your practice should be more than just trying to ‘perfect’ all the technical elements.
In fact, the search for any form of technical perfection may be hindering you from becoming a skilful player.
Technical expertise should not be thought of as ‘skill’
What do you consider to be the ‘skill’ part of this stroke?
- Is it the ability to hit lots of shuttles into a target or is the skill more than that?
- What makes a player skilful, is it just the ability to hit technically perfect strokes?
- How do you measure 'game skill'?
Is the skill of this stroke the ability to recognise a situation
and play something in relation to that situation
Understand and improve …
- the ways you can influence your opponent and limit their possible strokes
- develope different methods for you to control your thoughts and prepare plans
- develope your ability to see (anticipate) a situation as it forms and be ready for a likely outcome
- to See, REFELCT, then ACT
Practice should (as soon as possible) include elements that
go beyond just technical practice,
to not do so is not making the best use of your court time
Top tips to help you turn up the Tactical parts of your Technical practices
- Start most of the practices yourself. You’ll need the shuttle to start. Use block or racket foot forwards feeds
- Accept that you can intentionally influence practice rallies and be allowed to do that (that means beating the feeder). Influence starts even before you start the rally.
- Accept that sometimes you will feel uncomfortable and may not make the right decision (your shot needs to be returned for you to know that.
- Have a goal which is more than just ‘how many can I hit over’ or a goal that is 100% ‘technical quality'
- Incorporate decisions and importantly, keep playing to see the outcome of your decision.
- Ask feeders to try and beat you, don’t just be a ‘passenger’ and allow the feeder to dictate everything
Send me a Question
I’m always grateful if you have read this far.
If there is anything that you have read that has helped or that you disagree with, then please send me an email.
It would be great to hear from you contact@badmintonandy.com
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