In the last two years we've analysed over 60 hours of our subscribers playing badminton at a variety
of levels and in those videos we kept seeing six mistakes that players were making at the net so in
this video we're going to share these six mistakes and more importantly what you should do instead
the first Common mistake is only hitting straight shots when you're taking the shuttle at the net
height or lower this is something we see players do at every level and I still find myself doing it
too but why is this such a big mistake? Well there are two main reasons firstly it makes your shots
from this position really predictable this means that your opponent can prepare their body and
Racket position before you've even hit the shuttle and secondly it doesn't make your opponent twist
and turn at all humans are fastest when moving in straight lines hence why the 100 meter race is
done on a straight line and not round the bend but what we're not saying to do is now start playing
everything cross-court this is often too risky so what should you do instead Jenny well we're going
to recommend a really underrated and underused shot a half turn to the middle. From a position
like this where your opponent is anticipating a straight net shot you can use this half turn to
make them change direction this might not be a winning shot but it will certainly make it
harder for them and often means they can't put you under as much pressure! Okay let's move on to
our second mistake standing too close to the net but this isn't as simple as you might think!
Yeah we have four reasons why you need to avoid doing this firstly if your opponents hit it hard it's
much more difficult to react meaning you're more likely to miss time the shuttle and make a mistake
or just miss it completely as you can see here I'm stood on the service line and can only get around
50% of Greg's shots back! Our second reason is that it's harder to see what's happening whatever
device you're watching this video on bring it right up to your face firstly hello this is
probably a bit too close for comfort but it's also harder for you to see what's on the screen this is
a similar concept on the court if you're still too close then it's harder to see what's happening
The third reason is a big one and this is that being too close means you can only cover the soft shots
in front of the service line your partner then has to cover everything else on the court making it
a lot harder for them and even if you think your partner is way better than you and basically wants
to play singles it's still not the right thing to do this links nicely onto our fourth reason which
is that standing Too Close shows a lot of space on the court to your opponents and makes the game
feel really easy for them okay hopefully you now understand why standing too close to the net is
bad but what should you do instead? Well firstly you can stand a little bit further back because
as you can see Greg is feeding me exactly the same as before but I can now get 95% of his shots back
with almost no mistakes it's now much easier to react I can see what's happening on the court I'm
not just covering the soft shots and I'm making it look like there's less space to hit into and
an added benefit is that it's much harder for Greg to twist and turn me when I'm further back
because I'm now moving forwards into the shot rather than sidewards like I was before but as
we said earlier it's not as simple as this and exactly how far back you should be depends on
a few things if you or your partner plays a soft shot and your opponent is taking the shuttle below
the height of the net then you can move your position forwards to around the service line
this is because the likely shot is either a soft net shot or a high lift but if you or your partner
plays behind the service line then we'd recommend standing further back this is because it's more
likely for your opponents to play harder flatter shots and you're therefore in a better position to
intercept these and potentially help your partner out! As you can see from this diagram your partner
now has much less to cover than if you just stayed on the service line in all scenarios and we'll be
talking more about which side of the court to move to in mistake 6 so stay tuned for that! So moving
on to the third common mistake trying to play a winning shot too early this is potentially the
biggest reason players make mistakes at the net often you see the shuttle in the air and your eyes
light up you see the glory but the reality is you don't always get that early enough to play that
winning shot! Because you think you're going to get there early enough to go for the kill you have a
big swing and by the time you've done this you're actually not taking the shuttle where you thought
you would be and you end up hitting the shuttle into the net or out the back of the court I'm sure
many of you can relate there will also be times where you fully commit to a winning shot like a
net kill hit it over and in but it goes straight to your opponent's racket or even worse upwards so
you and us need to get better at recognising when the opportunity is there to go for a winning shot
and when it's not, this is what the better players do really well they play a shot that still applies
pressure but enables them to stay on balance and because they're on balance they can place
this shot really well setting either themselves or their partner up to win the rally on the next shot
this is something you can definitely do too but your shot placement is really important it does
take practice and one practice you can do is where a feeder plays a shot to you about half a meter
above the net you come in and play this pressure shot back at them they then try and get it back
and then finally you go for the winning kill so that's the key you don't always have to fully
commit to a big winner sometimes a shot with a little bit less power or a little bit of a shorter
swing can be much more effective as it prevents the risk of making a mistake and a lot of the
time you'll win the point on the next shot anyway! Now next on our list of net mistakes is waiting
with your racket down by your ankles believe us there are many culprits of this around the world
we've even seen people checking their watch at the same time! There are a few reasons as to why
having your racket down is bad it again slows down the time for you to react to shots meaning you'll
either take them later or even not at all it also makes you look less threatening to your opponents
you'll be surprised how many points you might win solely because you look like you're ready
for their shot so what we would recommend instead is that as soon as you see your opponent is about
to hit their shot you start getting your elbow up so you're roughly in this position but as
we've said in a previous video you don't want to have your racket up too high doing this can make
your arm really stiff and tense which reduces your power and if your opponents hit a shot at
net height or below you then have to bring your arm a long way down which wastes time and also
reduces your control! The only times where you can get away with having your racket low is if you
have lightning fast reactions along with great racket speed and the ability to read the game
really well but unfortunately most of the people in those 60 hours of matches we watched haven't
been blessed with those skills they haven't put in the thousands of hours the pros have or they
haven't watched enough of our videos we're not sure which! The next mistake we've seen a lot of
players make is not changing between the grips quickly enough this skill can be the difference
between taking the shot early and timing it well or completely mistiming it but the good
news is that it can easily be improved the main mistake we see people make is not switching to a
backhand grip when they need to let's show you a quick example so here Jenny is playing net
shots on the backhand side but in a forehand grip and for her the quality is bad but when
she switches to the correct backhand grip you can see that the quality drastically improves
now for kills and interceptions you actually want to be taking most of these in a forehand
grip as it's generally easier to create power and control but just not when it's really far over
to your backhand side so how do you improve this skill of changing between grips quickly well you
change your grip with your fingers and thumb so if you're playing with your fingers and thumb tightly
wrapped around your handle it's going to be really difficult to change grips mid rally so you need
to be relaxed and loose look how easy it is to turn the racket with a loose grip compared to a
tense grip you can practice simple grip changes anywhere and it will really help your handling
of the racket in a match we've actually shown seven levels of practice you can do to improve
your grip changes on a previous video so we'll link that at the end of this video for you!
Doing these will help you change between your grips both quickly and instinctively in a match which
is really important now on to mistake 6 staying in the middle of the Court this makes it both
frustrating for you because it's difficult to reach a lot of shots and also frustrating for
your partner because they have to cover both sides meaning it's also much harder for them
So what should you be doing instead? Well the answer to this like a lot of situations in
badminton is it depends let's go through two simple scenarios that often happen in a match
scenario one is when your opponents have lifted and your partner is in position at the back and
hits a good straight smash the likely shot from your opponents is a straight block but if you
stay stood in the middle then either you or your partner will have to take the shuttle late whereas
if you moved over slightly in what we call a Channel attack you would be able to intercept this
shot and hopefully win the point or as we said in mistake 3 play a shot to set yourself up to
then finish it on the next shot but this situation will be very different if your partner was under
pressure in the rear court and this we're calling scenario two yeah so instead of standing slightly
on the same side as your partner you'd now stand slightly to the other side this is because your
partner is probably going to play a slightly worse shot and therefore your opponents are likely to
be more able to step into to the shop and the Gap they'll see is Cross Court to the opposite side of
your partner we're getting quite technical now but because of this slight difference in contact Point
your partner would have a lot less time to move to this cross-court shot and therefore it's your job
to move out and try to intercept it and this is why you want to already be a little bit towards this side
those are just two scenarios and again the advice changes depending on where the previous
shot has been played from and also what shot has been played. A lot of this decision making of where
to move to comes down to your ability to read the game and one way you can improve your ability to
read the game is watching top level badminton matches to see what they're doing unfortunately
many top level badminton matches aren't available to watch live in a lot of countries but luckily
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this video and if after watching this video you've realised that you need to improve changing between
grips they will link that video here for you and lastly don't forget to SMASH the Subscribe button
if you haven't already, give the video a like and we'll see you on another video very soon :-)