If I Could Go To Any Badminton Academy, Where Should I?

Haha… the problem is, that everybody who runs an academy will be convinced they do certain things better than others.

I was lucky enough to be trained by different coaches, most from Germany, but also a former Chinese national player and a Vietnamese coach. My experience is limited, obviously, but it matches what I hear from other people. I’ll just pretend it’s the truth with the way I put it down, maybe that triggers some discussion…

European coaches are more focused on technique and details of it.

Asian coaches will just ignore when you ask for reasons.

Now, that’s blunt statements and having said it, I do value my former Chinese coach a lot. He did not teach me the basics (already knew), but he built on it… and he got me in good badminton shape. However, if you want to learn details about techniques and you like to ask “Why?” questions, a country like Denmark might be better. That probably depends on the specific people who will coach you, but I kinda need to generalize here…

Maybe you’ve seen a video by Badminton Becky (@Borkya) about one of the training camps she organized? That shows mostly what a German (European?) coach would call Old School Badminton Training.

To put my words into perspective, I’m not the best player (the better you get, the more you coach, the more people with more talent and better technique you see), I see myself more as a coach, competitions are fun for me. My technique is good enough, that even a Japanese guy who had a badminton scholarship at University (in Japan) asked me about the technique for some strokes. German as I am, I didn’t only show and explain to him what to do, but also threw in some explanation…. Some of the techniques he asked about was taught by the Chinese coach though.