They can damage your game
The hidden problems need to be identified and resolved
What do you think?
Whilst watching a singles practice between two friends,
these thoughts came into my mind
Can practice become too friendly?
Are there hidden dangers of playing the same people regularly?
What could you do to maximise development and still be a good friend?
Let me describe the scene
The two players were evenly matched, well, one was better than the other, but the rallies were closely fought.
Points were won and lost, and the score was generally never more than 4 or 5 points apart and the same wghen the match finished.
Often it was around 14 – 12 in the middle part of the game.
But something struck me. One player seemed to be cruising, ok they were working hard but not stressing. In fact, they either won or lost most of the points. The other player hardly won any outright winners.
Watching closely, it became apparent that the better player was almost feeding the other.
Choosing when to stress his opponent and when to play a little more freely, even gambling at the net by moving in before the shuttle was returned.
He was at times appearing to play hard, but after a while it was apparent how comfortable he really was.
I wondered if both players were maximising what they could from the practice
However, maybe development wasn’t the uppermost reason for their regular matches.
Maybe enjoyment and social play also featured highly in their minds. They certainly did play hard, and there were some very tough rallies.
If you play matches regularly with the same people, especially singles matches are you becoming too friendly?
In practice against regular opponents, have you stopped pushing hard to
exploit their weaknesses or stopped tactical strategies you know will hurt them?
The conversations should be having
- Talk honestly to your partner/opponent about how hard both of you are playing – this could be adifficult discussion, but a worthwhile one
- Consider applying some ‘conditions’ to your match: use 80% smahes rather than full power: player to areas where the ‘weaker’ player is stronger, this will test your defence and retrieval skills.
- Asking the stronger player to ‘go for it’ and see what happens – sometimes the additional stress causes a player’s standard to drop.
Talk with each other and avoid the pitfalls of ‘regular friendly practice’
Do you want a conversation?
I’d like to hear from you if you have a viewpoint on anything that you’ve read
We don’t need to agree, but explore viewpoints.
It would be great to hear from you, send me an email : contact@badmintonandy.com
This is part of a series of conversation starters.
Although not in detail, the posts are written to get you thinking and talking with others.
