Hello and welcome back to badminton insight, in a previous video we've looked
at the AirShuttle and how AirBadminton compares to normal
indoor badminton as we know it. However in this video we didn't go through the
rules of AirBadminton as a new sport so today we're going to go through the
rules, we're going to go through some more recommendations and we're also
going to show us, me and Jenny playing a competitive match against each other.
At the moment the rules of AirBadminton are quite hard to find so we aim to make
these simple and easy for you to follow, and at the end of the video we're going
to give you a third review of what we've encountered after playing multiple times,
so make sure you stay tuned for that! So let's get to it!
Firstly we need to set up our AirBadminton court and there are several noticeable
differences to a normal court. Looking at the dimensions the court is six meters
in width and sixteen meters in length, if you're playing singles then the width is
reduced to five meters and the length remains the same. On this court there are
no tram lines. One important addition to this sport is a dead zone at the net
which measures two meters either side from the centre of the court, and finally
there's a serve marker which should be placed three meters from the dead zone
and we'll discuss this in further detail later. Comparing an air badminton court
to a normal court, the width is 6.1 metres or 5.2 for singles
and the length is 13.4 metres. This means that the playable area
of an AirBadminton court is slightly smaller than a normal court.
There are several rules that are different to normal Badminton as we know it.
AirBadminton has three different formats;
singles, doubles and also triples which we also call 3v3.
We play this quite a lot in training and it's really good fun! We're actually
hoping that BWF implement this into the normal game one day!
So to begin the rally it's really simple, all you need to do is strike the shuttle
behind this service marker and you have to strike the shuttle below the height
of the net. And all you have to do is hit the shuttle into the playable area of
your opponent's side. If the shuttle lands in this dead zone any point of
time then this is out and we're also assuming that this is for net cords as
well. Now we think this dead zone is quite a
good thing because when we were testing the AirShuttle in our previous video it was
quite difficult to control the soft shots and also it takes out the
front court so there's less deep lunges minimising the risk of injury on outdoor
surfaces. Now when looking at 3 v 3, or triples as it's officially called
you're not allowed to hit two shots in a row. This alternate hitting style is
similar to that of doubles in table tennis and is to encourage a movement
and strategy! We like this and now we just need to get four other people to
try it out with us!
Finally the scoring system for AirBadminton
is best of five sets to 11 points, like the BWF are trying to
move normal badminton to - and if a score reaches 10 all you need a two-point
advantage to win the set. And if it reaches 12 all then the next point wins!
So before we start match our have two final recommendations that we have to
take into consideration. Firstly AirBadminton should be played at a wind
speed of up to 12 kilometers an hour. In our previous video we showed that the
ability to play AirBadminton really does depend on the wind speed and today we
have a wind speed of 10 kilometres an hour. And secondly it's recommended that
you have a string tension of 18 to 20 lbs, which is around 9 kilos and we've
done this for our rackets today to make it a real true test!
Now, the BWF do say that you can use your own rackets for this however most
people will have the racket strung over around 24 lbs so they would either need
to restring or have a separate racket to play AirBadminton - so now we're going to play a match...
GAME ON!
So we've just finished playing and it was really good fun, especially as I won! Now
we're going to go through a few things we found when playing a match as opposed
to just doing some exercises. Firstly, drives are really quick and it
was hard to react to a full-power drive, however if you did hit a full power
drive in an upwards direction there was a really good chance of it going out! It
was also frustrating if you hit in net cord and it landed in the dead zone
because we usually really happy with net cords!
We also found it hard to time our overhead shots with our normal technique,
we had to be more cautious with a shorter swing to react to any changes in
the flight of the shuttle. However we did find that whoever was on the attack
usually won the point due to the speed of the AirShuttle, which brings us on to
the tactics of AirBadminton!
So before the match we knew it was going
to be really hard to time on overhead shots however we also found it difficult
to defend, adding this to struggling to lift accurately led to a game of less
lifts and more pushes. Secondly with the new serving rule of being able to strike
the shuttle anywhere below the height of the net we really tried to take
advantage by hitting it at the maximum possible height. And thirdly we actually
found a tactic in our match was to hit down the middle of the court. You might
have noticed we had to put two nets together to reach across the full width
of the AirBadminton court which leads us on to assessing the equipment.
Despite playing a competitive match and following the rules, we believe Air
Badminton is still just great to have a fun hit as needing a net and also
needing court markings makes it a lot less accessible! As Jen just said we had
to put two nets together to cover the court and also we used 53 metres of tape.
What we do know is that brands are trying to put sets together with everything you
need, so watch out for them! Despite rolling it out as a new game, the BWF in their promotional videos have shown people hitting without at net and
without court markings, probably as they know this is going to make it more
accessible as well! After our last video many of you asked us where you can buy
the AirShuttle, so we've included a link below to TRME Sports - a UK company who
are now selling the AirShuttle on a pre-order.
We've seen lots of people commenting
online about breaking strings with the AirShuttle and we've dropped ours to an
unprecedented 20 lbs and no we didn't break any strings, but surely it's
impossible to break fresh strings at this tension right?!
Overall we felt we
got more control playing at a higher tension, all in all the AirShuttle is going
to be more likely to break your strings as it's heavier but it's up to you whether you decide
to risk it or not! After three hours of playing our Air
Shuttle did break as you can see here, however we think this durability is
still quite good compared to other shuttles, and after it broke its did still
actually fly quite well through the air! All of our findings might be different
for different people but we've just reported what we've encountered during
our time playing with the AirShuttle! So before we end this video in our partner
core workout we did our first-ever giveaway for reaching 500 subscribers!
And the winner of that giveaway was Felix so congratulations the Victor
racket bag is on its way to you in Germany! So don't forget to smash that
subscribe button so you don't miss our future giveaways which are hopefully
just gonna get bigger and better! (background noise laughing) If you've enjoyed our video today...
Giveaways which are hopefully just gonna get bigger and better (background noise laughing) if you've enjoyed our
video today please give it a like and let us know in the comment section below
what you think of the AirBadminton rules, see you next Sunday!