We've been playing badminton since we were really young and we've lost hundreds actually probably
thousands of matches! And most of the time these losses have ultimately come down to one thing...
making more mistakes than our opponents! But how do you make less mistakes and why is it that on
one day you play really well and another day you don't? Well we're now going to share eight reasons
why this might happen and give you some simple tips of how you can improve your consistency
and win more matches :) We've all probably experienced nerves or being tense before or
during a match you feel like your feet are stuck to the floor, you're holding your racket so tightly
your shoulder starts to ache - everything just feels off! And this tension can happen for many reasons...
you might think that you've prepared really well so you should be playing better than last week
or you just really want to beat that guy because he's in the team ahead of you and then you play
terribly and make loads of mistakes! Badminton is such a mental game and we're not robots on the
factory line who can perform the same tasks day in day out without ever making a mistake sometimes
when you've trained well a week you've eaten well and you've slept well you played bad but other
times when you've had a terrible night's sleep and you're a little bit injured you play really well
well this is strange but it's basically because you have no expectations and you just relax
but how do we avoid making mistakes when you are tense and nervous? Two things we would say
apart from to relax that's pretty obvious is to firstly focus on enjoying the game and remind
yourself that that's why you play! This is so important right from a beginner to advanced level
and it's certainly something that we still remind ourselves of before nearly every match we play
and the second which is more technical is to start by focusing on moving your feet
and the rest should hopefully follow! Generally when you're tense the first
thing you do is stop moving so rather than focusing on everything you're doing wrong
moving your feet is a good place to start. We actually want to do a whole video dedicated to
dealing with nerves so keep an eye out for that in the future! Now the next mistake leads nicely
on from this and this is thinking too much about your mistakes it's well known that if you think
about something you're more likely to see it more and this is called the frequency bias for example
you think about buying the Victor Thruster F and then you start seeing them EVERYWHERE
So if you're always thinking about making easy mistakes then all you're going to see are easy
mistakes causing you to tense up and quite possibly make even more as a result! Yes so instead
be positive and change what you say to yourself it might be something extremely simple like over and
in or you might remind yourself of your strengths for example I always remind myself to keep using
variety in my overhead shots and not just smash everything! Yeah and not enough people do this so
it's really important to keep reminding yourself of these things in between points otherwise before
you know you've lost five points in a row, and this brings us on to our third common mistake
How many times have you come off from a match and thought what happened there? That went by so fast
and I can't even remember most of the points! Don't worry it's definitely happened to us too
this is why it's so important to take your time in between points to reset, remind yourself of the
game plan and focus on the next point :) Yeah and there are a few strategies you can use to help
slow down in between points such as take a drink, mop up some sweat on the court or use a reset cue
like our good friend Toby Penty does - as you can see Toby looks up before the start of the point
to remind himself to focus on this upcoming point not the previous one and to stick to the game plan
These techniques can help you to avoid making lots of mistakes in quick succession which happens so
much in badminton! Now getting technical our fourth way to avoid making lots of mistakes is to improve
your racket position in your preparation. There's actually two points to this, firstly and quite
simply if you're waiting for the shuttle with your racket down here then you have to bring it
from here up to meet the shuttle which wastes a lot of time - it will mean that you're going to be
taking the shuttle slightly later which puts you under more pressure and means you're more likely
to make a mistake! Getting this point right also gives you more options of what shots you can play
from down here you can only play a lift or an upwards shot whereas from here you can
play downward shots and drives this means your opponents can't step forwards like they might if
you're taking the shuttle late which can often put you under more pressure again causing you
to make a mistake and it's important to mention here that sometimes we get into these positions
and think oh my gosh I'm so early and have so many options and then you panic and hit it into
the net and this is where you need to have clarity of thought and not tense up! The second point looks at
your preparation just before you hit the shuttle - you want to try and get into a fixed position
so you're in control of your racket and your body and therefore less likely to make a mistake. If you
look at the difference here you'll notice we are reducing the margin for error by getting into this
fixed position before hitting the shot and it's a lot more accurate and consistent as a result
and this is for most shots you play just make sure you don't misunderstand this and slow your swing
down or have a robotic or predictable technique! And there might also be times where you make a
mistake because you want to play a certain shot but you're just not technically good enough to
play the shot so point number five is the most obvious, but probably also the MOST IMPORTANT and
this is poor technique! Yes your racket positioning can come into this like we've just mentioned but
technique covers every shot you play mistakes on your serve for example can come down to how you
hold the shuttle or having a big swing and it's the same as your overhead shots if your racket is
facing the wrong way or your feet are in the wrong position and your feet being in the wrong position
is actually a common problem it's so common we're actually very close to including footwork
as a standalone reason for being inconsistent but at the end of the day footwork is part of
your technique and we've already covered a lot of different techniques on our channel if you want
to watch them after watching this. So mistake number six is trying to play perfect badminton
aiming every single one of your shots to hit the line or just go over the net instead you need to
allow yourself some room for error just think, would you rather hit nine lifts out the side
or back and one perfect lift into the corner or ten lifts landing around here every time?!
Of course the better you get the less room for error you give yourself. We still don't aim for
the lines do we? No we aim just inside to give us some margin for error and sometimes you might feel
like you're not trying to play perfect badminton but you're still making easy mistakes and this
might be due to a lack of purposeful practice. When you're trying to get better at something
research indicates that there are generally three levels of progress. Level one is gear acquisition
such as buying a new racket, level two is learning such as watching our youtube videos and the third
is deliberate practice which is actually putting in the work. Each of these levels of progress gives
you satisfaction but on different time scales so buying a new racket gives you an instant reward
whereas purposeful practice you generally have to put in a lot of hours before seeing a reward!
But everyone likes to see instant progress so a lot of people suffer from gear acquisition syndrome
but unfortunately buying loads of new rackets isn't going to make you the next world number one
compared to if you actually put in the hours to become a better badminton player and we get loads
of messages saying things like thanks for helping me improve my game and win more matches but whilst
we love these messages it's not us that's doing this, it's you! You're the one going out and putting
in the hours of practice to implement what you might have learned when watching one of our videos!!
We as professional badminton players have always known the importance of purposeful practice
but we were recently reminded of this importance when we were watching a skillshare class on how
to build habits that last by Thomas Frank a few months ago where he outlined these three levels of
progress. This class had so many useful pieces of information that are related to becoming a better
badminton player and we came away from watching this class feeling really inspired so we wanted
to share it with you all and this video today is actually sponsored by skillshare so if you want to
watch this one hour class then click the top link in the description or the pinned comment below :D
Skillshare is an online learning community with loads of inspiring classes and the first
1000 people to use our link will get a one month free trial to skillshare where you can watch any
of their classes and if you were to decide after your free trial that it's not for you then you can
cancel with no charge but with so many helpful classes being added regularly we think it's
a great place to learn and develop both new and existing skills. Yeah and by joining with our link
it really helps us to be able to continue to make these videos so thank you in advance and thank you
to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. Okay so you now understand the importance of purposeful
practice but how do you actually do it? Well one exercise we've incorporated into our training
almost every week for the last several years is an exercise called 25's. This is where you choose
an exercise and you hit 25 shots in a row but if you make an easy mistake you go back down to zero
This adds a bit of pressure which hopefully is similar to the pressure you'd feel in a match
REMEMBER you need to practice to perform! The exercise forces you to be consistent if you get
to 24 shots and make an easy mistake you don't want to be trying to hit perfect shots in your
second attempt because you'll probably be pretty tired by this point so here are some examples
of exercises you can do in 25s and remember consistently putting in the work is what's going
to help you improve your consistency over time - you can't just do one training session with purposeful
practice and expect to be consistent afterwards! And to get the most out of your training you need
to be consistent with everything and this is our eighth mistake, being inconsistent! Let us explain
that a bit further as you're probably thinking of course a mistake of being inconsistent is being inconsistent?!
Well here we're actually talking about the consistency or sometimes inconsistency
of your daily habits this includes things such as your warm up, your diet, how much you sleep plus a
lot more and being consistent in these can reduce any external variables that might impact your performance!
Exactly! As we mentioned before you'll have good days and bad days but if we can just do
what we can to reduce the reasons why we have the bad days then it might just lead to more good days,
there's no point eating a salad and going on a run the day before a tournament when you've
just eaten pizza and ice cream and not trained for the last week!! And this all comes down to
developing good habits and this is a topic we're both really interested in! Atomic habits by James
Clear is a great book for anyone looking to build good habits and there was actually another great
lesson in the Skillshare class by Thomas Frank all about habit building so don't forget to check out
that class on skillshare, we really recommend it!! Now please give the video a like if you're
going to use one of these eight tips to help you become more consistent and don't make the mistake
of not smashing the subscribe button if you haven't already and we'll see you on another video :-)