Hello and welcome back to Badminton Insight, if you're new here we're Greg and Jenny -
two professional badminton players releasing a new video every Sunday on all things badminton!
Now we're always being asked by people how can i quickly improve my game? Or where am i most
going wrong? And almost every time the answer is footwork. So today's video is the first in
a two-part series on footwork and in this video, part one, we're going to teach you the split step -
a really important area of the game that's often misunderstood or people just completely get wrong
so let's get to it! So what is the split step and how do you do it? Well this is widely debated and
so often taught wrong by coaches and in coaching manuals. Many people call it a preparation jump
but it's not a jump, it's an explosive movement which enables you to change direction quickly
and move with speed to wherever your opponent is hitting to. And it's really important to note
that it's an anticipation movement performed just before your opponent is hitting the shot
to prepare yourself to move in the direction you think the shuttle is going so that by the time
you know where the shuttle is going you've already initiated the movement to get there. So you want to
start with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and you then perform a quick drop like
this, slightly widening your legs. And as you land from this movement you want to keep your knees
bent and your legs loaded and use this energy to spring back and push off in any direction.
And this is the benefit of a split step! Keeping your legs bent also lowers your center of gravity
which really helps your speed and control of your movement. A common mistake we see is
people trying to do this split step with their legs too straight - just look how little movement,
let alone an explosive movement, I could do with my legs straight. And we'll get on to
some more common mistakes in just a moment. Your body weight should also be leaning forwards onto
the balls of your feet, not on your heels like this, and this is so you're quick to push off.
One way of practicing this is to drop off a bench and go to one corner like this
This helps your speed and quick response time off the floor. You can also do it on the backhand side.
And by dropping off the bench backwards to move into the rear court corners.
This helps you understand the point of the movement and that is not a jump or step
like names can suggest. Remember to make sure you're properly warmed up before doing this
and take it slowly to begin with. And if you're not sure on the footwork after the split step
don't worry that's what our next tutorial's on! This exercise as well as practicing the split
step in isolation is mainly just for beginners or young players focusing on learning the
movement. After a certain point you want to get to a stage where you just do this split step without
even thinking about it. It's almost ingrained into your game like changing grips quickly is.
So in reality you should be practicing this split step every time you're on court
as you do it before every single shot you play! For example in this rally Jenny does a split
step movement of some sort before every shot, even though it will look slightly different every time.
And she's definitely not thinking about doing it every time, it's ingrained into her movement
through lots of practice over the years! Once you've practiced the split step in isolation
you can add in a shuttle to start learning how important these micro adjustments are.
Here I'm going to hand feed Jenny to either side - now watch her split step just before she
thinks I'm going to throw it. And to make her continually adjust I can throw it like this.
Now getting slightly more advanced you don't actually always want to split step with your
feet just side by side like this. You'll often see the more advanced players doing directional split
steps and this is to increase their speed into the corners of where they think the shuttle is going.
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. An exercise you can do to
practice this directional split step is to throw a shuttle down to a player, they block it to the net
and you play a net shot off this shot. You can repeat this to get used to the movement
Then the next time the feeder can lift this block to your forehand corner
and you alter your directional split step so that your racket leg is now further back.
And then after this you can feed it randomly like this. This is so they have to choose which
directional split step to do. Also look how the feet don't come together in the movement.
And finally notice how Greg does the split step movement just before I hit my shot.
This leads us on to some key errors people make with a split step. Firstly they often think that
they have to do it and move back to the base at all costs no matter how late they are. No! This is
a complete waste of time and it really infuriates me! As we've said it's an anticipation movement
done before the shot to prepare yourself to where you think the shuttle is going.
And this will be dependent on how well you read the game and also your opponents. For example if
you notice that your opponent always lifts cross from their forehand corner then you might split
this way after playing a shot to the net and not this way which you would usually do. Splitting this
way as we'll show will mean that you can get back to the shuttle quicker and also play a better shot.
As opposed to... However if they notice that you're splitting this way and keep playing
net shots then you will change your split to be ready for this net shot.
Now usually in this situation you play this split to look for this net shot, especially if
you've played a tight net and they're playing the shuttle from below tape as this is the shortest
distance for the shuttle to travel and if they do lift then you've got enough time to get back
and play an attacking shot. But that's probably for another video! Also note there might be
times where you don't do a really obvious split step. For example if you've hit a good attacking
shot from the rear court you might do a running split step into the net to follow up your shot.
Now if you do this split step too soon you'll have to wait to see where the shuttle is going before
you can move and by this time you'll have lost the energy and force created from the split step.
The ideal timing is to start your split step just before your opponent's about to hit it
so that you're ready to push off in any direction as soon as they do hit the shuttle.
Another common mistake we see is people really trying to jump in their split step. This is
incredibly inefficient and massively slowing your movement down plus if you're mid-air when
your opponent hits the shuttle then you have to come back to the ground and then
push off by which time the shuttle's probably already gone past you or landed in front of you.
And yes some players will jump a little bit and others maybe not as much
but it's all about this drop and then moving from the force this drop has created.
And of course make sure you do it at the right time!
And lastly where we also see a lot of people go wrong is having their stance too narrow or too wide and this really limits your efficiency
when you're moving in any direction on the court. This is also heavily linked with what you do after
the split step which we're going to cover in our next tutorial on the basic four corner footwork
so smash the subscribe button and turn the notification bell on so you don't
miss out on that and we'll see you on another video maybe one of the ones we're showing now!