5 Common Beginner Badminton Mistakes
Are you a beginner badminton player that's either
just started or you've been playing for a while but can't seem to get any better if so this
video is for you as we're going to share five common mistakes beginners make in both singles
and doubles and most importantly we're going to tell you how to fix these! And in case you're
new here we're Greg and Jenny two professional badminton players releasing regular videos on all
things badminton let's get straight into mistake number one A large part of badminton strategy whether
that's in singles or doubles is to outmaneuver your opponents this means they'll be later to the
shuttle and either play a worst quality shot make a mistake or not reach it at all! But unfortunately
the number one thing we see beginners doing wrong is not outmaneuvering their opponents and
instead hitting it straight to the middle it's criminal! so rather than hitting to the middle
you need to move your opponents to the different corners of the Court doing this will mean that
you can start to control the rallies and prevent that feeling that you're running around
chasing the shuttle! Now to be able to control your shots and easily hit into the corners of the
court you need to fix our next mistake of being in the wrong grip and within this we actually have
three common mistakes that beginners make the first is pointing your finger up the racket on
your overhead shots doing this means that you're using your wrist rather than your forearm and
you're only using these three fingers to squeeze the grip rather than all four this means you're
racket head speed is much slower which hugely reduces your power so instead you need to be
in a forehand grip like this and listen to how different the racket sounds when hitting with your
finger pointing up the racket compared to being in the correct forehand grip okay that's grip
mistake number one now the second grip mistake we see people make is not using a backhand grip
a backhand grip is where you place your thumb on The Wider part of the racket like this it will
help you create deception control and also power meaning you can hit shots right to the back and
avoid mistake number one hitting straight to your opponent! Getting a grip on your grips will also
help you reduce the mistakes you make which as you'll know is very important in badminton so if you
want to learn the four correct grips then we'll link our tutorial on this at the end of the
video our third grip mistake is not actually changing between the different grips fast enough
if you watch me playing right-handed in an old but classic video of ours you can see I don't
have much control in my backhand shots because I've not changed to the right grip and I'm running
around like a headless chicken as a result now if you compare this to when I was using my left
hand and using the correct grip a bevel grip I was able to play much better quality shots and
control the rallies so to be able to do this you need to use your fingers and never be gripping
your racket too tight this is a difficult skill to learn but one you need if you want to improve
the quality of your shots but using the wrong grip wasn't the only thing making me run around like a
headless chicken it was also caused by having bad footwork and this is the third of our five common
mistakes that beginners make you can be as fast as Usain Bolt but if you don't use the correct
badminton footwork you'll actually be pretty slow on court and find it really difficult to reach shots
in time so we're going to share the three biggest footwork mistakes we see beginners make and how
to correct these to improve your game the first is not lunging with your racket leg which is your
right leg if you're right-handed and left leg if you're left-handed lunging with your non-racket
leg is criminal it means that your core is more likely to collapse which not only makes it
harder to be in control of your body and racket when playing the shot but it also significantly
impacts your recovery after the shot it's a bad habit you need to get out of but luckily it can
be done and we'll explain how later in the video! The second footwork mistake is not being able to
pivot or turn to your round the head corner smoothly and for many beginners it looks like this but what
should you be doing instead well we've shown this in a previous video but for lifts or clears where
you have time you should do a split step push off your racket leg and then pivot onto your non- racket
leg so you're facing sidewards you then push off your racket leg to rotate and do this scissor kick
movement.
Being able to do this and do it smoothly helps you rotate into the shuttle rather
than being front onto the shuttle where you can't rotate which impacts your power control and
recovery now a crucial part of most movements is performing a split step at the start something
a lot of people don't do so much so that it's our third footwork mistake a split step helps
you load your legs and push off explosively in whichever direction you want to travel it
also enables you to move more efficiently in between shots and get to shots earlier as as a
result it's likely that if you don't split step you'll end up taking lots of little steps and
basically start running which massively slows your movement down just look at the difference in
the speed of Greg's movement when he takes fewer steps Okay let's move on to our fourth common
mistake that beginners make and this is making your shots too obvious we see so many people
using their whole arm to play shots in one slow motion because they're so focused on just
hitting the shuttle over and in this unfortunately makes it very obvious where the shot is going to
go especially for softer shots like Drop shots and net shots instead you need to be able to
keep your opponent's guessing right until the last millisecond yeah this is helped by using the
correct grip and using good footwork to get you in a better position like we've already mentioned
but it's also helped by two more things one is being relaxed in your arm and grip before hitting
the shot as having this one slow motion is often caused by being really tense so try to relax and
two is then squeezing your grip at the last second to help add more power into your shot doing all
of these will help you be able to play multiple different shots with the same technique and not
make your shots too obvious! Mistake five is your lack of repetition in the book Bounce Matthew Syed
talks about the importance of implicit systems which basically means that once you've practiced
and mastered a task it becomes automatic and frees up mental space to think about other things for
example Serena and Venus Williams could solve complex maths questions whilst hitting quality
shots at the same time so if you keep practicing lunging with your racket leg or your footwork into
the round head corner then over time you'll be able to focus on other things that will help your
game like your shot placement or tactics we're now going to demonstrate the mastery of our implicit
systems by showing you three different practices to correct the mistakes we've shown in this video
whilst also telling you about surfshark vpn who are enabling us to share these tips for free by
sponsoring this video and two of these practices you can also do from home too so you've got no
excuses practice one is to not make our shots too obvious so do you ever get one of these annoying
messages like not available in your location well surfshark vpn enables you to change your virtual
location with a click of a button so you can now access these previously geoblock sites we use it a
lot to watch live badminton on YouTube but you can also use it to unlock different shows on sites like
Netflix practice to is footwork into our round the head corner another benefit of surfshark
is it helps keep your password safe and secure when you're on a public wifi and this is another
reason we use it imagine if someone hacked into our channel and taught you to move backwards like
this! Practice three is to help change between the grips quickly we genuinely use surfshark on a a
regular basis if we didn't we wouldn't be sharing it with you and they're currently offering you
an exclusive Black Friday deal where you can get up to six additional months for free so if you're
interested in downloading it then we'll include a link in the description below and if you're not
satisfied with it for whatever reason they offer a 30-day money back guarantee no questions asked
and by the way when you're doing the first and third practices make sure you don't hit it to the middle! We'd recommend trying to improve one or two things at a time so you don't completely overload
your brain and when you've improved these things and they're ingrained into your muscle memory
you can then focus on other areas and hopefully some of our videos can help you with this so if
you now want to learn the four correct grips in badminton that we mentioned earlier click here
or for our beginner to intermediate playlist click here and of course if you found this
video useful please give it a like, SMASH the Subscribe button if you haven't already and we'll
hopefully see you on another video very soon! Bye 🙂
