At the time of filming this video this pair have just won their seventh
tournament in a row with the most recent being the World Championships
They've done it, seventh title in seven tournaments played, now a 35 match winning streak! So what makes them
unbeatable? And what can you learn from their game? Well we actually play Zheng Siwei and Huang
Yaqiong in their seventh match of this 35 match unbeaten run and we've also spent over 20 hours
analysing their game over the last two weeks so after doing all of this analysis we found
five areas that make them unbeatable. And the good news, you can also adopt these which could help to
make you unbeatable too so let's get straight into it! Let's watch some clips of Zheng smashing
Now you might be thinking he's just winning these points because he has a powerful smash and I don't
have a powerful smash like that and yeah he does have a powerful smash but it's not actually that
powerful compared to some other players, the main reason he's hitting an average of 40% more smash
winners than his male opponents is because of the placement of these smashes! So let's watch
these clips again but now looking at where the smashes are going. They're all into the right hip
of his right-handed opponents or the left hip of any left-handed opponents! Yeah this is one of the
hardest places to defend from because it's such an awkward area and you don't know whether to take
a backhand or a forehand so if we were playing against ourselves we would aim for this area here
in a lot of our smashes now let's see how accurate our smashes actually are! Three attempts?
Straight onto the racket!
Now it's easier said than done trying to just start hitting with perfect accuracy in a match
often you completely forget about your Technique and we actually saw this on our recent first ever
Badminton Insight coaching weekend we did where we use these boards for accuracy practice so our
advice would be to start by hitting at around 75% of your power but ensuring you have the same
technique and then you can build it up over time to get to a stage where you can hit with 100% power
and perfect placement like Zheng! And it's not just their smash placement that's really good it's also
their drives and shots from the net so improving your placement to have more success on your attack
is the first piece of actionable advice in this video but there's also a second reason why Zheng and
Huang's attack is so successful, they use a lot of variety so that their opponent doesn't know
where the shuttle is going and this is something you can do too. A great example of this variety
is Zheng's unbelievable stop drop okay maybe this shot isn't something everyone can do but hopefully
you get the point that adding variety and having great placement means that your attack can be much
more successful! Let's move on to our second reason of why Zheng and Huang are so good! You might watch
some players and think how do they always look like they're in the right place at the right time?
and occasionally the opponent might have just hit straight to them but most of the time it's because
they're reading the game, this is something that Huang Yaqiong is especially good at around the
net area she's so good at watching her opponent's position and making a calculated decision of where
to move next! We could show you hundreds of examples of her doing this but to illustrate
our point you can see here that she's making small calculated movements depending on what shot Zheng
is playing and what her opponents are doing and then as soon as she sees a chance she's moving
to where she thinks the shuttle is going before her opponent has even hit it! Of course there will
be times where she moves the wrong way but the beauty of having a partner like Zheng is that
he's usually covering the other side but this is only because because she's made a clear and
obvious move which has sent the signal to Zheng to cover these shots. Unfortunately we can't all have
a partner like Zheng, sorry Greg! But we can all learn to read the game better - it's a skill that
you can improve! We won't go through exactly how to do this because we actually already made an entire
video on how to read the game so we'll include a link to that in the description below :-) Another
reason why Zheng and Huang always look like they're in the right place is because they don't always go
for a winning shot straight away if they're not in a great position they'll avoid the risk of making
a mistake by continually applying pressure and waiting until they're in a really good position
to win the rally. This is something Huang does a lot other than that but it's also applicable in
other areas of the court too! Let's compare Zheng's mid-court to one of our subscribers Dau who
recently sent us in a clip for our subscriber analysis video, here you can see Dau is below
the height of the net but hitting his mid-court shots hard trying to play a winner whereas Zheng
is patient and plays controlled shots waiting for his opportunity where again he sees what's happening
and moves himself into the right position to be able to play a smash winner! Yeah so this is our
next piece of actionable advice as well as trying to read the game better you need to build the
rally until you get a really good chance to hit a winner, we often get excited if we have a small
chance of finishing the rally and try to play a winner but this is often the wrong shot choice
because you're more likely to make a mistake! Our third reason why Zheng and Huang are so good might seem
simple on the face of it but it's a huge area where they dominate their opposition and this is
serving one of the most important areas of mixed doubles. Firstly the runs of points they get when
they're serving is crazy one example is in the quarterfinals of the World Championships against
the eighth seeds Tan and Lai where they were 9-8 down and they won 21-9 and what's even crazier is
that in 10 out of these 13 points the rally length was less than five shots! And something
similar happened against us too we were four love up and then lost a long rally and in what felt like
about 20 seconds we were 6-4 down losing every point within the first four shots of the rally!
Now for our craziest statistic they actually had a run of over six points a huge 24 times in
their 35 match unbeaten streak! Now you might be thinking how do they get so many runs of points
on their serve? Well there are three reasons and the first is the amazing quality of their
serves. Of course they push the limits in terms of the legal height of their serve but also the
best serve in the world is when the shuttle almost dips down as soon as it goes over the
net forcing their opponent to play the return in an upwards direction and this is something
Zheng and Huang do extremely well! The second reason is their consistency they actually don't vary
their serve placement too much hitting to the T or body in over 85 percent of their serves but
although they don't vary their serves much our research found that they made 65% less mistakes
on their serves than their opponents which is pretty impressive however when they do choose
to vary their serve more they both have very good flick serves and drive serves and because their
opponents know this they always have to be on their toes as they know that they can play them
at any moment and often they seem to use these serves at crucial points in the match! And our
third reason is the threat their opponents also feel after the serve and I'm sure we've all played
better opponents where we feel like we have to hit the perfect shot every time and for Zheng and Huang's
opponents they probably feel that if they don't hit a perfect return then it will definitely be
punished and this generally leads them to make more mistakes and I'm speaking from personal
experience here! But it's not only their serving which is consistent it's their return of serves too!
Unlike some top pairs they very rarely hit winning shots on their return of serves
but a positive coming from this is that they very rarely make any mistakes! Of course if you
do a bad serve they'll be the first to punish you but in general they use their returns to
tempt people into playing to their strengths for example Zheng's most common return is down the
middle either soft or hard to try and tempt the opposition to hit directly up to him and Huang's
most common return is a soft net shot to engage the female male opponent at the net, an area where
she's probably the best in the world! Now how do they do this? Yes they're fast out of the blocks
to be able to take the return early and play it in a flat or downwards direction but they also
refuse to lift unlike a lot of us they manage to stay calm and play pushes into space on the
court or net shots away from their opponents! One simple practice you can do to try and put
yourself under this same pressure is to play a match without lifting in the first four shots
you'll be amazed at how many times you just default to lifting whether that's on the return
or the third or fourth shot! Now before we get on to our fifth and final reason why Zheng and Huang
are so good it's important to mention that it's not just these five points that make them good
badminton players they have many other great strengths such as their incredible defense and
consistency. On average they made around 35 percent less mistakes than their opponents in the 20 hours
that we watched and in the match we played against them they only made six mistakes compared to our 22!
But these are attributes you'd expect from any top pair in our opinion their defense and
consistency isn't what makes them the world's best they're just the world-class basics that
you need and this is another tip we can all work on getting these basics better in order
to improve our overall performance! You can apply this philosophy off the court too something you'll
all probably do every day whether you're studying or working is typing and if you can type faster
then you'll get more work done and maybe free up more time to play badminton so you can become more
like Zheng and Huang so if you want to watch a great class to help you type faster then we'd recommend
checking out skillshare who are kindly sponsoring this video we've used this typing class by Ali
Abdaal to significantly improve our typing speed and he actually recommends a website on the class
called 10fastfingers.com if you want to put your typing speed to the test after lots of practice
Jenny is now officially a pro! We've watched so many classes on skillshare helping us to
improve other fundamental life skills like public speaking to try and improve our YouTube videos
as skillshare is a great online learning platform with thousands of inspiring classes and great news
the first 1000 people to sign up using our link get a one month free trial of skillshare where you
can watch as many of these classes as you like and if you decide it's not for you during this period
you can cancel without paying anything so if this sounds like something you're interested in then
again use our Link in the description below to get a one month free trial and thank you to skillshare
for sponsoring this video. Now reason number five Zheng and Huang are so good is because of their speed
especially Zheng, let's just say he's the Usain Bolt of badminton! This speed enables him to place shots
that might get him in trouble but because he's so fast it often doesn't matter so trying to improve
your own speed around the court will not only help you to get more shots back but also help you to be
earlier to shots to give you more chances to win the point I mean we remember watching our match
back against him and he jumped from his forehand mid court to his round the head corner in pretty
much one movement and if you're looking for some ways to improve your speed we've actually done an
entire video on this which we'll Link in the description below we've also done a detailed
analysis of our match against Zheng and Huang on Patreon so if you're interested in getting
access to that plus a monthly match analysis of our Patreon members, monthly update videos and our
friendly Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded people then again we'll include a link
in the description below for you! A quick update a week after we filmed this video Zheng and Huang actually
lost 23-21 in the third set of their eighth tournament so maybe they're just almost unbeatable
but still I'm sure we'd all happily take winning seven tournaments in a row! Anyway that's it
that's it for this video if you've enjoyed it please SMASH the Subscribe button if you haven't
already then Drop into our next video where we'll Serve up some more Badminton Insight :-D Bye!