The forehand drive do it well and it will drive your opponents mad so in this video we're going
to teach you everything you need to know including how to create maximum power and where to hit it to
and at the end of the video we'll also tell you when to NOT play it as this is where a lot
of people go wrong, so stay tuned! Before we break down the technique step by step we need to answer
one of the most common questions - should you have a big swing? Well there's no simple answer to this
for beginners or kids it might not be possible to drive without a big swing as they've not got
the power or timing just yet and also in certain situations a big swing is actually more beneficial
like when you have lots of time but we'll come back to this later in the video. For most of you
having a shorter swing on your drive will steer your game in the right direction but why is this the case?
Well there are three main reasons firstly if you have a big backswing this takes time and
you then have to strike the shuttle later but with the short backswing you meet the shuttle earlier
meaning you have more options of what shots you can play and it gives your opponents less time
to react. Secondly a big swing often leads to a big follow-through so by shortening your swing you can
reduce your follow through and be in a better position for the next shot and we call this a
building shot and this is what the best players in the world do so well! It's often not easy to
hit a drive winner if the shuttle is around the height of the net and if you hit hard it's likely
to come back hard so by playing a building shot with a short swing and follow through this can
help you be ready faster and also set you up to have an easier shot next. Thirdly if you have a
powerful drive with a short swing you can then easily make it more powerful by increasing the
size of your swing - it's a lot harder doing it the other way around. For these three reasons
we're going to focus on how to drive with a shorter swing so let's break it down step by step
Firstly you need to be in a loose forehand grip and you also need to be relaxed in your
forearm and shoulder. If you're not and you find it really difficult to create power
with a short swing then this might be why! If you're really tense then you have to use your
entire arm to help create power forcing you to use a bigger swing and for those
wondering you can also use a panhandle grip for the forehand drive and we'll get on to when you
do this later in the video! Okay let's drive this video forwards and move on to step two
When the shuttle comes towards you you keep your shoulders and hips facing forwards and then as you
step out to the side or step forwards you should bring your elbow back a little bit whilst also
slightly bending your wrist back. Bringing your elbow back allows you to have that short backswing
to help create power but there will be times where you don't have the time to bring your elbow
back and instead you create the power with just the squeeze of the grip! This is a really short
swing which is again often used as a building shot and if you don't bend your wrist back then
your racket will be facing down and sidewards which is not where we want the shuttle to go!
Bending your wrist back also helps you to hit the shuttle cleanly and means that you don't slice a
drive which massively helps both your power and control so you're in this position you
then accelerate your elbow forwards then bring your hand forwards and snap your wrist and then
finally you squeeze your grip as you strike the shuttle and it's important to mention that this is
all done very quickly after each other yeah it's not one continuous motion of your whole arm coming
through at once it might not be obvious but after coaching a lot of players them actively changing
this has massively improved both their power and control! The third step is the footwork and the
most important thing you need to do is step into the shot with your racket leg but let's break the
footwork down further so first you need to do a split step and then step out or forwards. As your
racket foot is about halfway through this step you should now have completed step one and half
of step two as a quick reminder your elbow should be back a little and your wrist also bent back
You then bring your elbow and hand forwards like we mentioned in step two and then you ideally want
your racket foot to land literally milliseconds before you squeeze your grip and strike the
shuttle this enables you to be in maximum control of your body and you can also use this extra force
from your step to add more power into your drive. Now ideally you want to be stepping forwards into
the shot which can also intimidate your opponent helping you to play more effective softer shots
but we know stepping forwards isn't always possible and sometimes you might need to step
out to the side and this is where the panhandle grip comes in useful this is because having your
thumb on the side of the grip like this improves the control of your shot from this position
Step four in this process is to think about where you're hitting your shot to as we've said in many
videos in the past sometimes it's better to hit a shot with 80% or 90% power and perfect placement
than a hundred percent power but straight to their racket yeah for example as you can see
here I'm hitting my drive with 80% power ensuring that it goes flat over the net and putting Jenny
into an awkward position however as you can see in this example I'm hitting with a hundred
percent power but as I have less control my shot has gone slightly upwards onto Jenny's racket
and she can put me under pressure straight away and don't worry if you get it wrong occasionally
even arguably the best mixed player of all time Zheng Siwei did in the final of the Olympics
Obviously hitting with a hundred percent power and control is ideal but this can be quite hard to do
So good places to hit the forehand drive are straight down the tram line to the middle to
surprise your opponent if you're playing singles or to create indecision or set up your partner
in doubles or cross-court but a warning if you play it cross court and you don't time it right then it
could end in disaster! Instead we'd recommend only driving cross-court when you're above the height
of the net because hitting cross is the longest distance so this gives your opponent the most time
to react so hitting cross court when you're not in a threatening position is one situation when
you shouldn't hit a drive but there are a few more. Think of it like there are three choices
which are determined by where the shuttle is when you're about to hit it the first option
is where it's very high above the net and you can try and win the rally here you would use a bigger
swing to help you generate extra power. The second option is where the shuttle is around net height
if your opponent is in a good position then you might choose to play an 80% building drive to set
yourself up for the next shot as we discussed earlier this seems to be what the Olympic
Champions were discussing in the Olympic final so the final option is where you shouldn't hit a
drive and this is where we see a lot of people go wrong if you're hitting the shuttle more than say
20 centimeters below the height of the net it's often a good idea to try and play a softer shot to
make your opponent's move or to lift it and give you time to recover but of course if there is a
gap on court to drive into then this still might be the right shot. So we now want to share five
practices that every level of badminton player can do to help you not only perfect the technique but
also get used to making the right decisions! The first one is hitting individual shuttles this
is a great practice to focus on the technique and timing of the shot if you don't have someone that
can hit shuttles accurately at you they can throw them from the side it's not as realistic but it's
okay for developing your Technique. The second practice is simply driving back and forth with
your partner for sets of around 90 seconds you won't be able to step into the shot as much here
because it will come back very quick but because of this you'll be able to work on generating power
with a shorter swing and whilst we're practicing our drives we wanted to share something that used
to drive us mad the fact that we couldn't watch any live badminton and watch the best players in
the world doing drives but thanks to Surfshark VPN who are kindly sponsoring this video we can now
travel the world in one click and watch any Badminton match we like and if you don't have a partner but
you still want to practice your drives our third practice is wall hitting here you should aim
slightly higher up the wall to get into this drive position if you're hitting a wall when trying to
find your favourite shows on Netflix like the US office then you can use surfsharkvpn to
access different content libraries from around the world. Wow the wall always gets it back! So to make
sure you always get it back you can do our next practice Drive rallies with two shuttles which
is again great for shortening your swing as well as practicing your accuracy under pressure and
another thing that drives us mad is when we look at flights to tournaments and then we look again the
next day and there's nearly doubled in price so to stop this happening to you you can again use
surfshark VPN before we share our final practice we wanted to share that you can share surfshark VPN
with one subscription you can have it on unlimited devices so you and all of your friends can benefit
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no risk in trying it out we'd highly recommend it and thanks again to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring
this video and enabling us to continue to make these videos for you! The final practice to make
it match realistic is to do a two-shot combination two examples are to do a smash then drive or a
backhand drive to a forehand drive. Hitting back to your partner after the first shot helps you to
understand the time you'd have in a game and make the necessary adjustments in your movement you can
of course always be practicing your drives in more open routines like rear mid which we've shown in
our 10 best one v one routines video which we'll link here for you and if you've got to the end of this
video and you now want to perfect your backhand drive we'll link our tutorial on that here for you
and lastly as always if you've enjoyed this video 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 :-)