Have you ever felt like your opponents kept playing returns into your backhand corner and
you just couldn't do anything about it? Well we've felt this before but after implementing three
simple things this almost never happens anymore so in this video we're going to share these three
things so you can also stop this situation from happening to you! Let's get straight into it
Tip one is for your partner to vary their serve and more importantly serve to a place where
it's almost impossible for your opponents to hit this hard return so if your partner is serving
to a right-hander from the right side of the Court serving to their backand here means their
natural swing is to hit the shuttle straight which is directly into your backhand but if
your partner serves across their body to their forehand their natural swing is to hit the shuttle
cross court which then goes to your forehand serving to this specific place is really hard
for them to play a good shot to your backand and a quick bonus tip is that if you also lose a lot
of points on your backhand side in rallies you can use this same principle start hitting
to places where it's harder for your opponents to hit to your backand AKA down your forehand
side and although we're focusing on doubles in this video this tip also applies to singles
Now returning back to the serve placement and there's two important things to note one is that you need
to look at how your opponent is setting up to receive the serve as this could change a lot
of what we've just said. So we've just shown the returner setting up like this but if they set up
more similar to this then serving to the t means their shot is actually more likely to go cross court
to your forehand and two it's important to note you can actually tempt your opponent to play down
your backand side either by serving low out wide to the tramline as the most likely reply would
be a straight push up the line or by serving to the T like we discussed earlier but if you're
going to do this serve to the T you probably need to change one thing which brings us on to
our second tip the second thing we implemented is is so simple but it almost completely eliminated
this scenario and this is to think about where you're standing when your partner is serving
For most people it's in the centre of the court with their feet an equal distance each side of the
middle line now this isn't wrong but our second tip to make sure you can get this hard return is
to move your starting position slightly over to your backhand side but this is where communication
is important because we'd recommend telling your partner that this is what you're going to do and
then they cover the forehand side after their serve we're not saying for your partner to come all
of the way out here because this would leave a huge gap for your opponents to play a simple net shot
if they did lift over your partner's head you should still be able to get this as it's on
your forehand side which if you're watching this video is likely to be better than your backhand!
So if this scenario is happening to you by you and your partner slightly moving position and
you're now only looking for the backand side then it will look like this you might also be
wondering how far back should you stand? Well we'll answer this in tip three playing the right shot
So if your opponent is often hitting a really flat return then you can stand further forwards to be
able to intercept and play an early backhand. A soft shot to the middle from here is often a good shot
because the returner can't easily reach this as they have to change direction of movement and it
also creates indecision. Another good option is to hit it over them if they're staying in and looking for this soft shot.
Now there's one big mistake we often see people people making which prevents them
from doing this and this is not having their racket ready yeah we often see a lot of you
waiting with your racket down here and we used do too but this means that your racket has a further
distance to travel to the shuttle this usually means you can't intercept it and instead you
have to turn and play a late backhand which is what we're trying to avoid so having a better starting
position will hopefully help you with this and get you out of the habit of automatically turning
to player backhand! Now if your opponent's return is higher you might have time to play a round the
head shot which will be way more effective than a backhand from this position if they play a really
high lift then you'll have time to play a scissor kick but this probably isn't the situation you're
struggling with and probably not the reason you've clicked on this video instead what we're talking
about is a quick flat lift into the corner. If your opponents are playing this return more frequently
then we'd advise moving your starting position back and because you won't have loads of time
what we suggest doing is a round the head jump out smash we've done an entire video breaking down
this jump out smash so we'll link that in the description below if you want to check it out
after this these tips especially the last one have helped us never play a really late backhand on the
third shot anymore but what if they don't work for you well you might need to improve two things
firstly you need to improve your backhand strength meaning you can generate enough power to ease some
of the pressure for that we'd recommend watching this video here where we share some tips for you
to maximise your backhand power and second you need to improve your explosive strength and speed to be
able to move to the shuttle as efficiently and explosively as possible for this we'd recommend
checking out our badminton specific weights programmes which will link in the description below
That was a bit of a shorter video but it's a really common issue that a lot of you guys have asked
about so we hope you found it useful and if there's any other specific questions like this
that you want us to make shorter videos on in the future then do let us know in the comments
below and lastly if you've enjoyed this video please make sure you 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 :-)