How To Improve Your Footwork In Badminton – 5 Tips!
Having good footwork not only helps
you to be faster around the court but it also helps your efficiency
which means you don't get as tired Increased speed and you don't get as tired? Sounds like a win-win but footwork is one of the hardest things to get right especially
if you've developed bad habits over the years yeah so in this video we're going to give you
five actionable tips to improve both the speed and efficiency of your footwork and we'll
also give you some practices throughout that we regularly incorporate into our training
as professional players so let's get to it Okay so let's start at the beginning of your
movement and that is the split step. We see a lot of mistakes with this but we're going to share
the three biggest mistakes that are critical to get right if you want to have smooth speedy
footwork! The first common mistake is standing with your legs either too straight or too narrow
whilst you're waiting to split step.
Having your legs too narrow makes it difficult to generate any
power or explosive energy and having your legs too straight means that your center of gravity isn't
low enough a low centre of gravity is so important as it increases your balance and stability and
you're able to change direction faster! This is why formula 1 cars are so low to the ground and
are able to change direction at speed a lot better than say a bus! And before we tell you what you
should do instead it's important to make sure that you're not doing the second common mistake
which is jumping when you do your split step yeah this is a huge mistake because you're wasting
a lot of time in the air and in some extreme cases if you jump too high your opponent might already
have hit their shot when you're still in the air and if you jump up you then still need to land
and push off and because of the huge downwards force this jump has created it will make your
next movement slower.
So getting your split step right is the first step to hugely improving
the speed and efficiency of your footwork! You should have your legs slightly bent and your
feet should be slightly wider than shoulder width apart and having your legs too bent or too wide or
even doing both together means most of your weight is going through your quads rather than your
calves glutes and quads and not using all of these muscles makes your next movement a lot slower! And
as your opponent is just about to hit their shot and we're talking milliseconds here you should
quickly drop like this slightly widening your feet so that you're ready to push off out of this step
as soon as you see where your opponent has hit their shot.
Our third and final split step mistake
is that we see a lot of people split step in the wrong direction but we'll talk more about this a
little later in the video! Okay so the split step is phase one of the movement, phase two is actually
moving to the shuttle and lots of you out there could be reaching the shuttle much faster if you
took bigger steps which is our second tip. As you can see here I'm reaching the shuttle slightly
earlier because I'm taking bigger but less steps this might only be a fraction earlier but if
you add this time onto every shot in the rally and this time compounds then look
how different the rally could be…
Now we have one very important tip to help you
take these bigger steps and that is to use the power in both of your legs this is where a lot of
people go wrong they just let their non-racket leg almost completely relax behind them, just imagine
Usain Bolt trying to push out of the starting blocks by just using one of his legs he wouldn't
have gained anywhere near as much momentum and speed! Or imagine trying to drive a car with only
three tyres working it wouldn't be very fast right? Anyway we hope you get the point, you need to
use the power in both of your legs now if you've developed this common bad habit of only using
your racket leg to move around the court it might be quite difficult to change at first and you'll
probably find your non-racket leg getting very tired and end up reverting back to your old ways! So one way to combat this is of course to do more on-court training but we'd also recommend doing
badminton specific weights training and this is where we talk about the sponsor of today's video,
ourselves! Only joking but we do actually have eight weights programs and two circuits available
on our website which are designed specifically for badminton players to improve their speed power
endurance and efficiency around the court yeah these programs include over 100 different
exercises which all have video demonstrations so if you're interested in improving your badminton
then we'll include a link in the description below okay so now we've helped you with your split step
and the movement to the shuttle but what happens when you actually reach the shuttle? Well our
third tip is all about the timing of your lunge which is mainly used at the net and at the mid
court.
Where we see a lot of players go wrong is landing either too early or too late and doing
either of these means that you're much more likely to make a mistake on your shot so let's show you
what we mean and why this is a mistake that you need to fix! So if you look closely you can see
that I'm landing way before I've hit the shuttle this is bad because if the shuttle doesn't end
up coming to exactly where I am then I've got to either lean to reach the shuttle and I'll be off
balance or I could be too close to the shuttle which again reduces the control of the shot but
it also impacts my recovery for the next shot as I'm moving further than I have to! And if you look
closely again you can now see that I'm striking the shuttle whilst I'm in the air and therefore
landing after I've hit the shuttle.
This isn't great because I have less control of my body and
racket especially if I'm moving at full speed and I therefore have less control of my shot! So that's
what you shouldn't do and if you've not guessed it by this point what you should do when lunging is
land your front foot just before you strike the shuttle, again we're talking milliseconds here,
this gives you control over both your body and racket enabling you to play better quality shots
in probably over half of the shots you play! There might also be times when you land at the same time
as you hit it, such as when you're taking it early in the mid court and obviously there are times
where you don't lunge such as in defence or in most rear court shots but we're not talking about
them here. So how do you fix your foot timing? Well to know if you're actually landing at the wrong
time we'd advise you to film yourself playing and slow the clips down when you're playing shots in
the mid court or the net.
If this is you you need to start changing your habits! You can start by
getting someone to throw shuttles to you at the net like this where you don't move too much and
you solely focus on landing at the right time, from there you can add more intense fast movement to
the shot which better replicates a match scenario Now let's move on to our fourth tip, getting smooth
footwork I know you can't see it but trust me that was smooth! Many of you will have watched players
like Lin Dan or Lee Chong Wei almost gliding around the court with it looking completely effortless,
yeah we remember watching Lin Dan hundreds of times and thinking how can he look like he's not moving
fast but he's almost always in a good position? Well one way to get smooth footwork is to adjust
the speed of your recovery so that you never fully stop as this is where we see a lot of people
go wrong! You shouldn't hit your shot rush to recover and then completely stop.
This means you've
lost all of your speed and momentum making you much less efficient. Instead what you should do is
adjust your recovery so that you're almost flowing around the court and you carry your momentum into
your next movement and our second tip to help you get smoother footwork is to make sure you're
doing directional split steps and not always split stepping sideways! So for example if you're in the
middle of the court and moving to your forehand forecourt corner you would split step like this
to make your next steps both easier and faster. But which way should you do this directional
split step? Well as we said on a previous video… The direction in which you split your feet either
racket foot in front or non-racket foot in front determines which way you think you'll be moving.
We also showed a few different practices in that video to help you improve your directional
split step so we'll include a link to that in the description below but we have another practice
recommendation to help you get smooth footwork although some of you might not like this but if
you are serious about improving your footwork then it's unfortunately necessary and this is
practicing shadow movements.
Every top player will have done hours and hours of this growing up
because building these good footwork habits are so important but to ensure you're actually building
good habits you need to focus every time you do this shadow. Slow the movements down if you need
to at the start making sure you're implementing all of the points we've discussed so far and
then you can build up speed over time! The more you do this the more these movements will become
ingrained into your muscle memory and this will enable you to repeat them time and time again in
a match without even needing to think about it So we'd recommend starting with really short sets
like 10 shots and you do 10 rounds.
Doing this just a couple of times a week can definitely help you
make some of these necessary footwork changes and it only takes about two minutes, yay! And one more
reason as to why pro players like Lin Dan always look like they have smooth footwork is because
they have great anticipation on court which is our fifth tip for you! In badminton you can be in
great shape but still be slower than someone in terrible shape this could be because they have
good footwork but also the ability to correctly predict where the shuttle is going.
So to improve
your anticipation you need to do two things; Firstly you need to look at your opponent's body
positioning, are they in a good position and likely to play an attacking shot? Or are they defensive
and taking it late meaning the shuttle is likely to travel in an upwards direction? And secondly
you need to see where their racket is facing is their racket head fixed and moving in a straight
line across their body indicating that they're going to play maybe a cross-court shot? You need
to be able to analyse both of these to anticipate what your opponents are going to do and therefore
adjust your positioning to be faster to their shot An example from the world of singles is that you
might play a good net shot on your backhand side and see that they're taking it late and likely
to play a net shot back you therefore don't move all the way back to the centre and instead
you stay close in with your racket leg in front so you can get to their shot earlier and hopefully
win the rally! In this situation you can also know that if they do play a lift over your head it
probably won't be that good because they're taking the shuttle low down and therefore you'll still
have time to move back to it.
A doubles example aside from serving to certain areas and looking
for certain responses is that you can notice your opponent hitting the shuttle just below the height
of the net with a straight arm and a short swing here you would move forwards and therefore
play a much better shot than someone else that waited to move until their opponent had actually
played their shot as we said the slower player that anticipates well will still be faster to
the shuttle than the speed demon that doesn't anticipate at all! A bonus tip for you is that it's
also really important in both singles and doubles to play shots that limit what your opponent can
play.
All the best players are great at this and it really helps them to be quicker on court as they
can almost forget about moving to a certain area! Improving all of these points we've mentioned
throughout the video means that your footwork will be faster, more efficient and also you won't
have to think about it as much during a match and this means that you can focus on other things
like your shot choice and if you want to learn more about shot choice and how to play these shots
to get certain shots we've done a whole video on this which you can watch here and if you want
to learn more about the basic footwork patterns in badminton we'd suggest watching this video
here > Lastly we'll include all of the links we've mentioned throughout the video in the description
below and if you found this video useful then SMASH the subscribe button if you haven't
already and turn the notification bell on so you don't miss out on our future videos and we'll
hopefully see you on another one very soon, bye 🙂
