I can never get my opponent's smashes back
How am I supposed to reach those drop shots in time?
Do you ever feel like that too? Well being in a defensive position
in singles doesn't have to mean that you lose the rally and there are a few key things that we often
see people doing wrong yeah so in this video we're going to answer five of the most common singles
defence questions. Four are technical and one's tactical and these will hopefully help you improve
no matter your level! Firstly it's important to mention that there are three different types of
defence defending drop shots defending smashes and then when you're late in the rear court and the
shuttle is behind you but we're going to be talking about the first two in this video so the first
common question is what should your ready position be? Well we have three key points to ensure you can
not only get the attack back but also play a good shot and first is your racket positioning
a common mistake we see is people preparing to defend with their racket outstretched in front
of them and we can see why people might want to do this as they want to take the shuttle as early as
possible but because the attack is often coming so fast having your racket out like this is putting
you at a huge disadvantage as you can't react in time and your first movement then has to be
you moving your racket backwards this wastes time and means you're actually more likely to play the
shuttle later or just not get it at all so what should you do instead have it out to the side of you?
Well no because this would make it hard to retrieve a shot to the other side as you can
see here world number one Victor Axelsen has his racket arm elbow roughly in line with his body
and his racket head is down by his knees this is because the most likely shot is downwards so it's
most efficient to have your racket already down at this angle. For Viktor to reach the shuttle
this then means all he has to do is reach out his arm and staying on the topic of defence
preparation you should ideally be in a neutral bevel grip and similar to the racket positioning
this is to be as efficient as possible because you don't have time to change between grips
for example if you're stood in a completely forehand grip like this and it goes to your backhand side
then it takes too long to switch to the correct grip and you're then much more likely to make a mistake
okay we've covered how you should stand but let's move on to our next common question
where should you stand to answer this let's watch Kento Momota who at his best was one of the best
defenders in the world almost every time he lifts his base position slightly moves over
to the side that his lifted and this is because the hardest shot to get back is a straight smash
as the shuttle has the shortest distance to travel and you therefore have the least time to react
so hopefully that's debunked the myth that you need to return to the absolute centre of the court
every time it's also important to mention that your positioning will depend on two more things
one is the quality of your lift if you've hit a good lift your opponent is more likely to play a
drop shot than a smash and you can anticipate this and move your positioning forwards or if
your opponent is in a really threatening position you might need to move your base
position backwards to give yourself more time to react and two is knowing your opponent's favorite
shots if you know they love to play a round the head cross-court smash then you might not move
your base position to cover the straight and instead have a more central position moving on
to our third question which is asked the least but probably the most important and that is what's
the correct footwork for defence but that's a big question so let's break it down into some smaller ones
firstly when should you do your split step? As you can see Kento Momota starts his
split step before his opponent has hit the shuttle but by the time he lands the shuttle has
been struck and he knows which direction to move so that when he lands he can quickly push off in
the right direction we've actually done an entire video on the split step because this is a crucial
aspect of the game so we'll link that up here and also in the description below if you want
to check it out at the end of this video one of the most important things we say in that
video that we want to repeat here is that you shouldn't jump up in your split step it's not
a jump as you can see Kento's feet are never more than one to two inches from the floor
secondly should you always do a split step even though you don't have much time? The simple answer
is yes the split step enables you to push off explosively in any direction which is extremely
important and even though you might think you don't have enough time to do the split step
as we just mentioned you should be initiating this before your opponent has hit their shot so
you definitely do have enough time and one of the most common mistakes we see is people with their
legs too straight in both their preparation and when they're moving to the shuttle a low centre
of gravity helps you to move faster and be more in control of your body helping you to play a better
quality shot okay so you've prepared correctly and done an explosive split step but one question that
comes up repeatedly how do you know which side to move to? Well mostly you only make the decision
once you can see where your opponent has hit it it requires a good split step as we've mentioned and
also good reactions but it can be further helped by the ability to anticipate where your opponent
is going to hit it a lot of the time you'll be able to watch your opponent's body and Racket
positioning to give you an indication of where they might be hitting to and you can therefore
start moving your bodyweight in this direction this however becomes much harder when you play
against better players who can play multiple shots with the exact same technique so it's all well and
So it's all well and good to get to the shuttle but there's not much point if you then play a rubbish shot!
So our next common question is how do you actually play high quality shots? Well we have four tips for you first
is that like you shouldn't do a jump in your split step you also shouldn't jump out to the
side of the court like this to reach the shuttle instead you need a step or lunge as this means
you have more control of your body and therefore racket secondly you don't want to lean too much so
that your racket arm is really far away from your body as you can see here Viktor's arm and leg move
out at the same time and always stay a similar distance apart this is helping his control and
therefore shot quality our third tip is that your racket arm should be quite straight to maximise
your reach and then as you're striking the shuttle it's not a big arm movement instead you need to
bend your wrist to be able to angle your strings upwards and hit the shuttle over the net and the
fourth tip is to not land your foot too early as otherwise you might have to stretch to reach the
shuttle making you collapse your core and lose control of your shot you want to land your foot
just before you strike the shuttle now we've not talked about what shots to play when defending
in singles as that's really a separate video on Singles tactics so if you want that video in the
future leave a racket Emoji in the comments below! We do however want to give you three exercises to
put these tips into practice to help you improve your defence the first practice to get the
technique right is throw downs and there are three progressions you can do the first is focusing on
one side retrieving either drops or smashes or both you can then progress to alternate sides
and then random feeding
next you can do a two shuttle combination where you hit any shot to the rear court such as a clear
or flick serve and then practice retrieving their drop shot or smash finally you can do a more open
routine where you're defending against two feeders one at the back and one at the front this is a
very common exercise used by singles players to practice being under pressure and working on your
shot quality and length which is very important when defending! Like we said at the start of this
video having a good defence to withstand your opponent's attack is crucial and if defending
against attacks is important to you you might also want to consider improving your defence against
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to continue to make these videos and speaking of risk if you like to take some risks in your
game and often find yourself needing to dive we actually made an entire tutorial on how to dive
last year it's one of my favourite videos as I'd never dived before so I learned with you in that
video we'll link to that here if you want to watch it after this and lastly don't forget to SMASH the
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