Having good footwork not only helps you to be faster around the court
but it also helps your efficiency which means you don't get as tired
Increased speed and you don't get as tired? Sounds like a win-win but footwork is one
of the hardest things to get right especially if you've developed bad habits over the years
yeah so in this video we're going to give you five actionable tips to improve both the speed
and efficiency of your footwork and we'll also give you some practices throughout
that we regularly incorporate into our training as professional players so let's get to it
Okay so let's start at the beginning of your movement and that is the split step. We see a lot
of mistakes with this but we're going to share the three biggest mistakes that are critical
to get right if you want to have smooth speedy footwork! The first common mistake is standing
with your legs either too straight or too narrow whilst you're waiting to split step. Having your
legs too narrow makes it difficult to generate any power or explosive energy and having your legs too
straight means that your center of gravity isn't low enough a low centre of gravity is so important
as it increases your balance and stability and you're able to change direction faster! This is
why formula 1 cars are so low to the ground and are able to change direction at speed a lot better
than say a bus! And before we tell you what you should do instead it's important to make sure
that you're not doing the second common mistake which is jumping when you do your split step
yeah this is a huge mistake because you're wasting a lot of time in the air and in some extreme cases
if you jump too high your opponent might already have hit their shot when you're still in the air
and if you jump up you then still need to land and push off and because of the huge downwards
force this jump has created it will make your next movement slower. So getting your split step
right is the first step to hugely improving the speed and efficiency of your footwork!
You should have your legs slightly bent and your feet should be slightly wider than shoulder width
apart and having your legs too bent or too wide or even doing both together means most of your weight
is going through your quads rather than your calves glutes and quads and not using all of these
muscles makes your next movement a lot slower! And as your opponent is just about to hit their shot
and we're talking milliseconds here you should quickly drop like this slightly widening your feet
so that you're ready to push off out of this step as soon as you see where your opponent has hit
their shot. Our third and final split step mistake is that we see a lot of people split step in the
wrong direction but we'll talk more about this a little later in the video! Okay so the split step
is phase one of the movement, phase two is actually moving to the shuttle and lots of you out there
could be reaching the shuttle much faster if you took bigger steps which is our second tip. As you
can see here I'm reaching the shuttle slightly earlier because I'm taking bigger but less steps
this might only be a fraction earlier but if you add this time onto every shot in the rally
and this time compounds then look how different the rally could be...
Now we have one very important tip to help you take these bigger steps and that is to use the
power in both of your legs this is where a lot of people go wrong they just let their non-racket leg
almost completely relax behind them, just imagine Usain Bolt trying to push out of the starting
blocks by just using one of his legs he wouldn't have gained anywhere near as much momentum and
speed! Or imagine trying to drive a car with only three tyres working it wouldn't be very fast right?
Anyway we hope you get the point, you need to use the power in both of your legs now if you've
developed this common bad habit of only using your racket leg to move around the court it might
be quite difficult to change at first and you'll probably find your non-racket leg getting very
tired and end up reverting back to your old ways! So one way to combat this is of course to do more
on-court training but we'd also recommend doing badminton specific weights training and this is
where we talk about the sponsor of today's video, ourselves! Only joking but we do actually have
eight weights programs and two circuits available on our website which are designed specifically for
badminton players to improve their speed power endurance and efficiency around the court
yeah these programs include over 100 different exercises which all have video demonstrations
so if you're interested in improving your badminton then we'll include a link in the description below
okay so now we've helped you with your split step and the movement to the shuttle but what happens
when you actually reach the shuttle? Well our third tip is all about the timing of your lunge
which is mainly used at the net and at the mid court. Where we see a lot of players go wrong
is landing either too early or too late and doing either of these means that you're much more likely
to make a mistake on your shot so let's show you what we mean and why this is a mistake that you
need to fix! So if you look closely you can see that I'm landing way before I've hit the shuttle
this is bad because if the shuttle doesn't end up coming to exactly where I am then I've got to
either lean to reach the shuttle and I'll be off balance or I could be too close to the shuttle
which again reduces the control of the shot but it also impacts my recovery for the next shot as
I'm moving further than I have to! And if you look closely again you can now see that I'm striking
the shuttle whilst I'm in the air and therefore landing after I've hit the shuttle. This isn't
great because I have less control of my body and racket especially if I'm moving at full speed and
I therefore have less control of my shot! So that's what you shouldn't do and if you've not guessed it
by this point what you should do when lunging is land your front foot just before you strike the
shuttle, again we're talking milliseconds here, this gives you control over both your body and
racket enabling you to play better quality shots in probably over half of the shots you play!
There might also be times when you land at the same time as you hit it, such as when you're taking it early
in the mid court and obviously there are times where you don't lunge such as in defence or in
most rear court shots but we're not talking about them here. So how do you fix your foot timing? Well
to know if you're actually landing at the wrong time we'd advise you to film yourself playing and
slow the clips down when you're playing shots in the mid court or the net. If this is you you need
to start changing your habits! You can start by getting someone to throw shuttles to you at the
net like this where you don't move too much and you solely focus on landing at the right time, from
there you can add more intense fast movement to the shot which better replicates a match scenario
Now let's move on to our fourth tip, getting smooth footwork I know you can't see it but trust me that
was smooth! Many of you will have watched players like Lin Dan or Lee Chong Wei almost gliding around
the court with it looking completely effortless, yeah we remember watching Lin Dan hundreds of times
and thinking how can he look like he's not moving fast but he's almost always in a good position?
Well one way to get smooth footwork is to adjust the speed of your recovery so that you never fully
stop as this is where we see a lot of people go wrong! You shouldn't hit your shot rush to
recover and then completely stop. This means you've lost all of your speed and momentum making you
much less efficient. Instead what you should do is adjust your recovery so that you're almost flowing
around the court and you carry your momentum into your next movement and our second tip to help
you get smoother footwork is to make sure you're doing directional split steps and not always split
stepping sideways! So for example if you're in the middle of the court and moving to your forehand
forecourt corner you would split step like this to make your next steps both easier and faster.
But which way should you do this directional split step? Well as we said on a previous video...
The direction in which you split your feet either racket foot in front or non-racket foot in front
determines which way you think you'll be moving. We also showed a few different practices in
that video to help you improve your directional split step so we'll include a link to that in the
description below but we have another practice recommendation to help you get smooth footwork
although some of you might not like this but if you are serious about improving your footwork
then it's unfortunately necessary and this is practicing shadow movements. Every top player
will have done hours and hours of this growing up because building these good footwork habits are so
important but to ensure you're actually building good habits you need to focus every time you do
this shadow. Slow the movements down if you need to at the start making sure you're implementing
all of the points we've discussed so far and then you can build up speed over time! The more
you do this the more these movements will become ingrained into your muscle memory and this will
enable you to repeat them time and time again in a match without even needing to think about it
So we'd recommend starting with really short sets like 10 shots and you do 10 rounds. Doing this just
a couple of times a week can definitely help you make some of these necessary footwork changes and
it only takes about two minutes, yay! And one more reason as to why pro players like Lin Dan always
look like they have smooth footwork is because they have great anticipation on court which is
our fifth tip for you! In badminton you can be in great shape but still be slower than someone in
terrible shape this could be because they have good footwork but also the ability to correctly
predict where the shuttle is going. So to improve your anticipation you need to do two things;
Firstly you need to look at your opponent's body positioning, are they in a good position and likely
to play an attacking shot? Or are they defensive and taking it late meaning the shuttle is likely
to travel in an upwards direction? And secondly you need to see where their racket is facing is
their racket head fixed and moving in a straight line across their body indicating that they're
going to play maybe a cross-court shot? You need to be able to analyse both of these to anticipate
what your opponents are going to do and therefore adjust your positioning to be faster to their shot
An example from the world of singles is that you might play a good net shot on your backhand side
and see that they're taking it late and likely to play a net shot back you therefore don't
move all the way back to the centre and instead you stay close in with your racket leg in front
so you can get to their shot earlier and hopefully win the rally! In this situation you can also know
that if they do play a lift over your head it probably won't be that good because they're taking
the shuttle low down and therefore you'll still have time to move back to it. A doubles example
aside from serving to certain areas and looking for certain responses is that you can notice your
opponent hitting the shuttle just below the height of the net with a straight arm and a short swing
here you would move forwards and therefore play a much better shot than someone else that
waited to move until their opponent had actually played their shot as we said the slower player
that anticipates well will still be faster to the shuttle than the speed demon that doesn't
anticipate at all! A bonus tip for you is that it's also really important in both singles and doubles
to play shots that limit what your opponent can play. All the best players are great at this and it
really helps them to be quicker on court as they can almost forget about moving to a certain area!
Improving all of these points we've mentioned throughout the video means that your footwork
will be faster, more efficient and also you won't have to think about it as much during a match
and this means that you can focus on other things like your shot choice and if you want to learn
more about shot choice and how to play these shots to get certain shots we've done a whole video on
this which you can watch here and if you want to learn more about the basic footwork patterns
in badminton we'd suggest watching this video here > Lastly we'll include all of the links we've
mentioned throughout the video in the description below and if you found this video useful then
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