What do you call this badminton stroke?

Does this stroke/movement have a name?

How often do you deliberately practice it?

Is this badminton stroke a net shot, a defensive push, or something else, when it’s played to the opponents’ net area

• it’s played from around or below knee height
• from away from the net, but not quite the midcourt
• arms and legs wide, often in a long lunge

It’s not in the coaching manuals that I’ve seen but it happens many, many times in a match

I was chatting to a coach about how much we thought this stroke was practiced.

We both agreed that there was much more time attributed to net shot work (shots played around and neat to the top of the net) than shots played from around the service line at or between knee to waist height.

For the majority of junior players (and maybe all players), I’d guess that a greater percentage (%) of these strokes are played compared to shots at or around the net-tape level.

So, does your practice reflect this?

Do you specifically work to develop this stroke?

What are the key elements to this stroke, are you aware of them as you are for other strokes?

Consider these ideas

• Set up lots of practice situations to encourage strokes to be played from around the service line at knee to waist level and struck towards the opponents’ forecourt area.
• Incorporate a wide range of variability in feeding – racket or hand, underarm or overhead, fast or loopy.  The aim is to create these mid to front court low stroke strokes using lots and lots of variabilities (and uncertainty) in the feeding.
• Using ‘player starts’ in practice can give a new dynamic to this practice.  The player starts the practice in a similar position to the ones in the image.  Very important and easy for the coach to encourage.
• Best of all, use games with conditions or themes to encourage more opportunities for this stroke to appear in game-like rallies.  Motivate players to use fast slices or drop shots to ensure more shuttles go towards this area (especially the height).  This will give lots of opportunities.

Maybe we need to realise that far more shots are played from mid-net to knee height.

If it’s true then why do we set up so many “top of the tape” practices?

 

Do you agree that far more shots are played from between the service line to the net than played around tape height?

Does your practice reflect this?

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As always, I’m very grateful if you have read this far 🙂

I’d love to hear your views about what you think this badminton stroke is called and how you practice it.

Why not 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.