Today we're going to answer some of your most asked questions while taking you through our
typical training day! We're sharing everything from how we handle pressure, if YouTube is
distracting us from reaching our full potential as players and if we make more money from
badminton or YouTube AND there's also a giveaway so stay tuned!
So we're on our way to the first training session of the day and our first question is this year you were able
to start playing in more World Tour level events and play against the world's best, what
do you think you've learned over the course of the year? And I'd say I think we've learnt
just to go for things and not be scared and this applies both on and off the court so
on the court you can't be scared of who you're playing especially if you're playing high
level opponents you've still got to go for the shots and take the risks on the court
and yeah this also applies off the court we found out about one week before the World
Championships that we could go and play and of course we said yes and we went for it! Okay
next question how do you handle pre match pressure against much higher ranked players?
Well firstly I would say there's not much pressure you've got to do what you normally
do formulate a game plan, play to your own strengths and obviously assess it as it goes make
sure you're not trying to play too tight and make too many mistakes and we actually had
this last week in the Hylo open we played much higher ranked opponents 11 in the world
Got and Lai and we went on there and took it to them and managed to win!
Wow
You've always got to get serve and return in!
Okay so we've just finished our first session of the day it was a good session we did some
3 V 2 practices as well as some 2 v 2 practices focusing on defence and our next question
actually leads on from this so it's how do you defend a powerful smash? Well we've actually
done an entire video on this but some simple tips firstly ideally you've hit a good lift
so it gives you more time, secondly you have your racket out in front of you so that you're
already ready and thirdly you need to have your shoulders facing the smasher with your legs bent!
Do you have some tips to play with your wife or husband? I played with my wife since I met
her on a tournament but after six years we had to stop we're not able to play together
without a clash! And this is a question we surprisingly get asked a lot and we've got
two main tips to hopefully help you with this - firstly communication is so important so talk
with each other and decide what you want to hear and also what you don't want to hear
as often you're quite a bit more open with each other if you are in a relationship and
secondly it's really important to remember that they are hopefully trying their best
they're not trying to make loads of mistakes and annoy you on purpose! And while we're on
this topic what is your favourite thing about playing with each other? For me I'd say we're
very lucky that we get to see each other every day and also travel the world together I think
it's also winning together you know knowing that you've put that hard work in and when
you have the good results it is a very nice feeling!
Okay so now it's 12 o'clock and we've got three hours before our next training session
so usually we'd spend time preparing and editing our YouTube videos but for now let's answer
some more of your questions! Particularly in the early days how did you make ends meet
financially? Training takes a lot of time so having a full-time job while aspiring to go
pro sounds quite impossible! Yes, very difficult. But because and it's unfortunate that badminton
doesn't have as much money as other sports but you've got to do what you've got to do
and we had a lot of jobs yeah we had a lot of part-time jobs so I did Deliveroo Domino's
and work for the national Federation, Greg did coaching, stringing and I actually also had
a full-time job for one year so that was a very tiring challenging year! A typical day was
like training seven till nine am I'd go to work nine to five and then we train five till
seven and yeah as I said very tiring but yeah it shows that even if you work full-time you
can be a professional badminton player! The idea would be to be spending our evenings
recovering ready for the next day's training to match maximise our performance and our improvements
but as Greg said you've got to do what you got to do sometimes and the next question
links on from this which is how do you manage your time in all of the tight schedules of
training and other things? And our answer sounds quite simple but it's just being organised
and planning ahead so we kind of know exactly where we're going to be on each day of the
week yeah make the most of those 24 hours in a day! The five P's - Prior Preparation Prevents
Poor Performance boom! Okay let's move on to a few quick fire questions! Okay Greg would
you rather have Lee Zii Jia's power or Anthony Ginting's speed? I'm going to say Lee Zii Jia's power!
Yeah and I'd go for the speed, Anthony Ginting's speed! Who are the most difficult opponents
you've ever played and why? I think we'll both agree on this one correct me if I'm wrong
but we're gonna say Zheng Si Wei and Huang Yaqiong who we played in Thailand a few months back it
was like playing three if not four people they were very quick, they had Anthony Ginting's
speed that's for sure and that's why we do practice like 3v2 we did this morning! Yeah!
Do you ever think you'll run out of video ideas? No! No we've still got hundreds of ideas
in the bank and I just want to know who needs more retakes for the scenes? Probably me but we'll let you guys decide!!
My head was like Churchill! oh that was terrible most of the
That was terrible!
most of the points are won ble ble ble ble
this style of video In the future so if you ble
Okay so we've just finished our first session come on focus
We hope you've enjoyed it ble ble
that's right now we've got four that's right, that's right now
we've got four that's right now we've got four key points, that's right, one more!
And our last quick fire question when are we getting married? This was a popular question in this
q and a wasn't it but also we did mention it a little bit in our previous q and a so that might
be why we are getting married we have a date in July 2023
So as we're sat here doing some badminton Insight work in between our two training sessions we thought we'd
answer this next question which is does running badminton insight distract you from achieving
your full sporting potential? And in all honesty no I don't think it does we've always both
liked having something else to do alongside our badminton whether that's part-time jobs
or now it's this Badminton Insight YouTube channel maybe it does sometimes impact our recovery
rather than spending our evenings just sat watching TV and completely resting we're up
editing these videos, preparing these videos but no on a whole I don't think it does and
I think actually more often so it helps us with our badminton and this brings us on to
our next question as someone asked has making videos helped you with your own game and if
so what were the most useful videos to make? So as I just said yeah I do think it's helped
our game and the most useful video we've definitely made was the analysis of Zheng Si Wei and Huang Yaqiong
where we both spent over 30 hours analysing their game!
As professionals do we still frame the shuttle? I can definitely say yes we do there was a lot of frames this morning
and I'm sure there'll be a lot this afternoon! Any thoughts on that Olympic bronze medalist
Chris Langridge? I definitely framed it a lot not gonna lie! A lot of people do, a lot of miss hits
everyone frames it! I think you gotta accept that and move on! Yeah, it happens to the best of us!
and while we wait for our next set we actually had a question as to why we don't high five in between points
yeah a lot of people do but we tried it and it's just not for us really! Yeah that's it!
And training is finished for the day, that was a good match play session! Okay so next
question I'm doing out here because apparently the light looks really good so this is
how can we as a community help to increase badminton's profile in this country? So obviously
we're going to answer for England because that's where we live so firstly we'd like
to have a National Badminton League which we used to have we think that's definitely going
to help a lot and also make the Nationals more of a spectacle we've just actually
been talking about that! So we just got back from training and we spent the whole of the
car journey thinking about the question we just answered and not just how to make badminton
more popular in England but also the rest of the world and we've actually written out
about three A4 pages of notes on that so that's probably going to be for another video so
stay tuned for that because as we've said on the channel in the past growing the sport
of badminton around the world is a huge passion of ours! Now we have three more questions and
then the giveaway announcement! Question number one I watched your first YouTube video and
the difference in quality from then versus now is amazing from the content to the speaking
skills to the editing, how did you improve so quickly? Does Jenny do all of the editing?
Firstly thank you very much very nice of you and yeah I pretty much do all of the editing
and we know our videos were absolutely terrible at the start but how did we improve? Yeah I
mean I can't even watch our videos our first videos now maybe our first year but we improved
by watching a lot of content on how to improve speaking in front of a camera and one bit of
content in particular that we found very useful was a class on public speaking by Alex Leon
on skillshare who are actually sponsoring this video yeah one of the most helpful tips
we learned from this class was how to use pauses but maybe not like that! Yeah and there's
also a great lesson on how to um eliminate um filler words but I don't think we've mastered
that yet! But in all seriousness skillshare is a great online learning platform with thousands
of classes and we've watched so many over the last couple of years which have all helped
us to improve our YouTube videos from learning how to edit to how to be more productive and
we've also learned how to type faster so that we can reply to more of your comments yeah
so if you want to explore these classes and invest in yourself then check out skillshare
where the first 1000 people to use our link will get a one month free trial so make sure
you check that out and thanks again to skillshare for sponsoring this video! Okay next question
do you earn more from badminton or YouTube? Well we technically make a loss on badminton
because of the cost of tournaments if anyone saw our Vlog from Japan then you know quite
how ridiculously expensive those flights were so I think the answer is technical YouTube
yeah YouTube is definitely profitable but we also do spend a lot of time on it! Do you
get recognised outside tournaments? Well now we have 250 000 subscribers which is unbelievable
we are actually crazily getting recognised more and more and the crazy ones are like
in airports, in restaurants, Ikea it's honestly mind-blowing isn't it?! Yeah even on the streets
every time when someone comes up to us and says hi and says they watch our videos
we walk away and we're just like wow that is such a surreal experience yeah so if you do
see us definitely come up and say hi! Last question and this is can I have a free racket
well you can but only if you win the giveaway yeah so that brings us on to the giveaway
and why are we doing this? Well the title of this video we have reached 250,000 subscribers
a quarter of a million people and we've done giveaways to celebrate lots of our Milestones
here on YouTube and as we've reached a quarter of a million people we want to do another
one and what can you win? Well we have a huge bundle of prizes for one lucky winner and
this includes a limited edition Lee Zii Jia coded Victor Thruster Ryuga which I will personally
string for you, this special edition racket bag, yes, this also special edition rucksack
this lovely Victor t-shirt, a towel to dry yourself - always useful! Some socks also always
very useful some grips also very useful our Badminton Insight bottle yes and all the downloadable
products on our website, what a prize! And how do you enter? Well it's very simple and completely
free all you need to do is like this video subscribe to our channel and comment on this
video with either your favourite video of ours that we've done so far or a video you'd like
to see from us in the future, and that is it it's a worldwide giveaway so anyone can enter
and it will close on Sunday the 11th of December so you can get your prize in time for Christmas!
We'll announce the winner on our YouTube Community Tab and also reply directly to your comment
yeah and please be wary of any spam in the comments our account has a verified tick and
we won't ask for any payment, shipping is completely free and you don't have to pay for any of
the products and thanks to everyone who sent us in a question we had a crazy amount and
some were so good that we've saved them so we can do an entire YouTube video on them
in the future! Yeah and thanks also to each and every one of you that have supported the channel
over the last two and a half years it's been a crazy ride and hopefully we can continue long
into the future and lastly don't forget to enter the giveaway! Bye :-)