So many people are using the wrong wrist movement in badminton causing them to lose power, control,
consistency, deception and also at times actually cause some pain but what if we told you that the
solution to this doesn't come from your wrist at all? Yeah instead it actually comes mostly
from your fingers and thumb so in this video we're going to share why your wrist isn't as important
as you might think, why your fingers and thumb are important and crucially how you can use them
to improve these areas of your game! Let's start with an example imagine writing just using your
wrist rather than actively using your fingers well this is essentially what a lot of players
are doing on court! Playing badminton, like writing, becomes much easier when you use your fingers and thumb!
So firstly let's talk about generating power as this is perhaps what a lot of you are
most concerned about for example in your backhand lift or drive bringing your wrist back like this
and then snapping it forwards isn't actually what generates the power and it's probably giving a lot
of you wrist injury injuries! Sure you need to use your wrist a little but by keeping your wrist much
flatter you can use your thumb to squeeze against the wide part of the grip and accelerate into the shot.
By keeping your wrist flatter and squeezing your thumb you can see it also engages your
forearm much more which helps you to add power! Secondly, having the wrong wrist movement or just
using your wrist too much hugely decreases both the control and accuracy of your shots in darts
the difference between hitting a triple 20 or just one comes down to such small minuscule movements
they're barely using their wrist and relying on their index finger and thumb to create ultimate
precision so in badminton we need to become experts at using our fingers and thumb to get
maximum control and accuracy! Of course badminton isn't exactly the same as darts as we're often
moving our whole body but what we found is that generally the less your whole body is rotating the
more important it is to use your fingers and thumb and this is because you don't have the momentum of
your body rotating into the shot. Take the backhand serve for example when you're just stood there and
it's literally illegal to move your feet as you hit it here you need to rely on using the squeeze
of your fingers and thumb to not only add accuracy but also power into the serve, especially if it's
a flick! Now it's important to mention that you do still need to use your fingers and thumb when you
are rotating for example when you're smashing or hitting a late backhand you use your fingers
and thumb at the final stage of the shot and this helps your accuracy and power but your fingers and
thumb aren't the main component instead it's the combination of all factors such as your rotation,
footwork, swing speed and timing! Okay moving on players who overuse their wrist really struggle
to change between the different grips quickly especially between a forehand and backhand yeah
using your wrist too much means that you have a bigger follow through and often means that
you can't change your grip in time for the next shot for example if you hit a forehand drive like
this you then won't have enough time to change into a backhand grip so you have to stay in the
forehand grip and you then need to use your wrist to create any power in the shot rather than using
your thumb. I'm sure we've all seen players who do this and you might be one of them but don't worry
we're about to give you some solutions which will hopefully resolve this problem :-) Yes so in general
the more you use your fingers and thumb the better you can change between the grips and this will
therefore help your power, control, accuracy and of course your consistency but how do you actually
use your fingers and thumb? Well let's move on to that now! Firstly we need to mention that although
we've said fingers and thumb together throughout this video so far there are actually shots where
you don't really use your thumb and it's more just there to create a good grip and ensure you
don't drop your racket... however you do use some finger squeeze in every shot in badminton this is
something the best players do really well whether that's in their overhead shots using the squeeze
to add power and deception at the last moment or improving the accuracy of their neck kills and
what you'll probably notice about the pros they almost always have a relaxed loose grip until
the shuttle hits their strings but why is this important? Well if you have a racket in your hand
and we tell you to twist the racket you'll almost definitely do this by using your fingers and thumb
and not your wrist and this is the quickest way to turn your racket and you've probably done it
by holding the racket lightly and not gripping it tightly now doing this brings us on to our four
ways to easily practice using your wrist fingers and thumb correctly our first practice can be done
at home so you should have no excuses not to do it and this is a progression from what we've just shown
so for this you should have a racket in your hand and you simply practice changing between a
forehand and a backhand grip and squeezing to hit a shot. This might seem basic and maybe even boring
but it's a great way to practice not only changing between the different grips but also keeping your
fingers and thumb loose and then squeezing them to recreate that feeling of adding power into the shot!
You can do this whilst imagining hitting neck kills, drives, lifts or net shots okay let's go
back to the hall! Our second practice again seems quite simple but it's so effective here you need
a shuttle and you're going to hit the shuttle up to yourself while seeing how short you can
make the swing whilst getting as much height as possible. We'd recommend doing it on the forehand
side then backhand side and then alternate between the two. This will really encourage you to use your
finger squeeze and also your thumb when you do it on the backhand side as you can see we're barely
using our wrist here and a key tip is that if you do find yourself reverting back to using
your wrist when doing this practice then don't hit the shuttle as high as this will give you
less time and almost force you to use this shorter more efficient action! Our next practice is on court
and here you want to work on the different shots and skills that you regularly play in badminton
starting below the height of the net you can experiment with using your fingers and thumb to
generate power and control in your lifts we know a lot of people struggle on the backhand side in
particular so one way to improve this is to take these three fingers off the racket for the entire
duration of the shot, this gets you used to using only your thumb and index finger and once you can
do this you can add the three fingers back on to help add a little more control. You can also
practice your net shots experimenting with how much you need to squeeze your fingers and thumb
to hit a tight net shot from various positions. It's important to mention that we'd advise doing
this practice with some movement don't just stand still as this isn't what you'd be doing in a game
adding in footwork provides you with momentum that naturally adds some power into your shot so
it's important that you get used to this! Yeah and hitting your shots with a completely straight arm
is another common mistake we see when playing net shots and also mid court shots - you'd never
write with a straight arm or throw a dart with a straight arm! Having a slightly bent arm brings
you contact point closer to your core which is a stronger and more balanced position this means
you can adjust your positioning without disrupting your momentum and you can therefore better control
your shot! That's right so after this you then want to experiment using your fingers and thumb in the
rear court or in other the shots above the height of the net. One example is that attacking punch
clear where you might show that you're going to play a drop shot and then a lot of the deception
comes from squeezing your fingers and thumb at the last millisecond and if you want to watch
our entire step-by-step tutorial on this shot we'll link it below. Yeah and another example is
a smash experiment with how much and when you need to squeeze your grip and what you should do with
your wrist just look at how relaxed Praveen Jordan is in his grip as he's preparing for the smash
again we've done an entire tutorial on this which we'll link below! Our fourth practice is a single
shuttle exercise where you have one person at the net tapping the shuttle down to the other person
who's defending this is a great exercise as both people are constantly using the fingers and thumb
and if you're not then it's not going to work! So for example if you hit a shot in defence and
use your wrist too much then your racket swing will end here rather than here and this means
you'll have a longer distance to get your racket back into its ready position and you'll be under
more and more pressure and therefore not able to keep the rally going. Not having this floppy wrist
is quite hard to do though especially if you're under a lot of pressure as you don't have much
time and you can panic it's something we still remind ourselves of regularly! So hopefully you
now know how using your wrist fingers and thumb in badminton can help you to generate power,
control, consistency and deception and also eliminate any wrist pain now we have one final point that's
really important if you want to perfect the use of your fingers and thumb and that is to reach
out your index finger and press the like button on this video! But in all seriousness we hope you've
enjoyed this video, we've covered a lot and we hope that some of you are still watching - if you are
then please leave a hand emoji in the comments below and lastly don't forget to SMASH the
Subscribe button if you haven't already and we'll hopefully see you on another video very soon, bye :-)