Have you ever had an easy opportunity at the net but messed it up? Of course you have we all have
but what if we could tell you that in this video we can give you some tips so that you never miss a
shot like this again as well as telling you how you can finish off even more shots of the net
well that's what we're going to do so let's get to it! So firstly footwork is really important
in these shots, we often see people make mistakes because they get too close to the net and become
tucked in meaning they either can't adjust their positioning quickly or are too late
onto the shuttle and they're therefore unable to play the shot effectively
you should also always lead with your racket leg and then also allow enough room between your body
and the shuttle so that your arm's not too bent or too straight when you're hitting the shuttle. It's
likely that you'll need to move quickly to the net to make sure that you're playing the shuttle above
the height of the net and therefore in a downward direction and whilst doing this you need to remain
in control of your body! Having this control of your movement and being in the right position will
allow you to do everything you need to do with your racket which we'll go on to now! As we often
say in our videos, as soon as you see your opponent is taking the shuttle below the height of the net
you need to get your racket up as they physically can't play their shot downwards having your racket
already up and ready means you don't waste any time lifting it up before playing your shot and
this therefore enables you to take the shuttle earlier and this is really important for the
netkill so now you're in the right position with your racket up we need to look at how you approach
the shot and your shot execution yes so if it's an easier netkill and you have a little bit more time
then you can afford to have a bit of a bigger swing to help you generate the power and get
over the top of the shuttle and this is really important to ensuring that the shuttle doesn't
go out of the back of the court and to do this you need to use your wrist to snap over the top
as you can see here but make sure your swing isn't too big as this is where a lot of people go wrong
again having a big swing can often mean you reach your contact point later and end up
hitting it out of the back of the court or even letting it drop so late you hit it in the net!
It's really important to use your fingers and thumb to generate the power in this shot and
not just your whole arm so you use your fingers to generate most of the power on your forehand side
and your thumb to generate most of the power on your backhand side
to be able to use your fingers and thumb effectively like Greg's just shown
you need to have a loose grip on your approach to the shot as this enables you to make any small
adjustments that you need and then upon impact you simply squeeze your grip to create the power
having this short swing and rebound action that we're showing is also really important to prevent
you from following through in your shot and hitting the net which is of course a fault!
It's also important to have this rebound in case your opponent somehow gets your kill back
and what about the footwork for this easy kill? Well you can use a jump but we'd recommend more
of an explosive step or lunge doing this movement might mean you're slightly less explosive
but you will have more control of your body moving like this rather than moving up and down as you
do on a jump! You can also recover better with this footwork as you're committing slightly less to the
shot and we're going to discuss the jump footwork more as we'll be using it for the next type of
kill now you might be thinking should I hit my kill straight or cross? And there's not really a
right or wrong answer but people do tend to prefer hitting cross as that's more of a natural swing
but if you can we'd recommend learning both so if you need to you can target the gap in
the court or the weaker player in doubles and you might also have to slightly change
your grip from a forehand or backhand grip to a bevel grip to change the direction of the shot
Now what about if you have less time because your opponent's played a shot that's tight to
the net? Well here you would use a different type of shot with a shorter swing and often less power
with the shuttle landing around the service line it's what we call a brush off this is
because you're gently trying to brush the top of the shuttle so it goes downwards and over the net
you would have a forehand to panhandle grip on the forehand side brushing it from right to left if
you're right-handed and left to right if you're left-handed and on the backhand side you would
use a backhand grip again and gently brush from left to right if you're right-handed and right
to left if you're left-handed and on these shots you really have to try and come over the shuttle
now we used a lunge for the easy kill but you might have noticed that we've been using a jump
for this brush off this is for a couple of reasons first you can commit a hundred percent to the kill
in anticipation of it not coming back and it's also more of an explosive and threatening movement
but it is harder to get the timing right for this footwork you need to time your jump so
that you're at your peak height as you strike the shuttle you definitely don't want to be traveling
downwards as you hit it as it's more likely to go in the net! Of course in a match you've got
to make a split-second decision as to which shot you're going to play so we're now going to give
you three practices that will help with this and also help you improve your technique!! The
first practice is where you get someone to hand feed you or racket feed if they're able to this
exercise focuses on practicing your technique and movement to the shot and of course make sure you
practice both your forehand and your backhand side you can then progress to playing a net shot first
to set up the kill and this is a great practice to improve your movement, timing and anticipation! The
feeder throws a shuttle in and then hits the next shot back anywhere across the net so you have to
be ready and get used to looking at their racket positioning and where the shuttle is likely to
go! Using the whole of the front court also gets you used to changing your grip quickly. If you
find that you struggle to racket feed the second shot you can throw it in like we're showing here
Now as with most practices we show we're always trying to progress them into more realistic and
match-specific scenarios so for the last practice we have one defender in the middle of the court
who is hitting up to the worker and then when the time is right the worker can practice their net
kills the defender should also play some softer shots to bring the worker closer to the net and
possibly set up their brush offs. In this practice you really get used to watching your opponent's
racket and judging the flight path of the shuttle to make a decision of what shot you should
play from this and if you want more multi-feed exercises that you can do to practice your game
including your net sharpness then we have 27 different multi-feed programs on our website
we'll include a link in the description below. Now what happens if you don't have enough time
to take the shuttle above the height of the net like we've shown in this video? Well if you want
to learn how to play the perfect doubles net shot then check out this video here
or if you want to learn the three different types of net shots you can play in singles check out
this video here! That's it for today's video if you've enjoyed it please don't forget to give
it a like, SMASH the subscribe button if you're new to the channel and we'll see you on another video :)