Seven days ago we found out we're playing in the World Championships in Tokyo and we're leaving in
two days time! We weren't expecting to play we were halfway through our 12-week training plan so that
we could play our best badminton in seven weeks time and not seven days time! Also we'd actually
just had a week off so we had to come up with a new plan of how we can improve the most in just
one week of training! So after doing this for the last seven days we're now going to share our three
best tips to help any of you that have a big tournament coming up that you want to
quickly improve for, tip one is to focus on what is important. There's a well-known principle that says
eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your actions, so what we spent the last
seven days focusing on is the 20% of our game that wins us 80% of our points. We won't go
into too much detail on exactly what this is as we don't want to give away too much to our opponents
in case they're watching but for example you might think that you have a really weak backhand clear
so in your one week of training you spend all of your six hours of on-court time practicing this
but in actual fact your backhand clear might only lose you one or two points in every match
and yeah you might have improved your backhand clear significantly but you'll have spent
so much time and energy on it that you'll have neglected other areas of your game that
are probably a lot more important and could win you lots of points! Badminton is all about having
confidence and if you don't manage to improve a minor weakness like this then you'll be a lot less
confident when it comes to a match. Your technique is developed over many weeks, months and even years
so trying to change something like your backhand in just one week is also very difficult and this
is similar for your fitness which brings us on to our second tip of How To Improve In Just One Week...
Okay being honest there have been lots of times in the past where we didn't feel like we were
quite ready for a tournament so we trained like crazy in the last week or two trying to get as
fit as possible doing extra runs, extra bike sessions or extra time on court but this is
honestly such a big mistake! More often than not it meant that we either went to the tournament
with some small injuries or we were just really tired, or even both! The good news is that we've
learnt from our mistakes and we're going to share them so that you don't make the same mistakes too :D
So what we've been doing over the last seven days is short quality sessions,
again you're not going to improve your fitness in seven days but you can go into the tournament
feeling sharp and the following types of sessions are going to help you achieve this... so in your
on-court training sessions we'd recommend doing sets of no longer than 60 or 90 seconds
and having a focus on things like having a short swing, playing your shots with quality and moving
your feet fast. And in your match play sessions we'd recommend getting in the mindset of competing
playing a best of three set match to 21 like you would and as we'd always suggest treat your match
play sessions like the real thing. We always want to practice to perform and the more you practice
under pressure the more comfortable you'll be when it comes down to the real competition! Then in your
gym sessions we'd recommend doing more explosive exercises like box jumps or weighted badminton
lunges, again these should all be short sets of no more than six to eight repetitions - you don't want
to be tiring yourself out too much! One final focus area especially for doubles players is to do serve
and return practice. We've said in lots of videos in the past just how important serve and return is
in fact in our data of over a thousand doubles rallies 59% of these were worn or lost in the first
four shots. Practicing this area doesn't even take much physical energy so you should definitely be
adding it into your one week of preparation yeah we found that practicing our serve and return quality
and consistency right before a tournament really helps to boost our confidence in the matches
so we hope this tip will help you too! Of course we need to say that to actually make significant
improvements you need a lot longer than one week, especially for technical and physical improvements
and this is why we suggest focusing quite a bit on the tactical elements of your game! Now as we've
just said you don't want to panic that you have a tournament or important match coming up and start
over training but our third tip helps you solve this problem and we'd recommend it to everyone
and this is putting your feet up and watching badminton something we do all of the time so we're
now going to share three ways of how we watch badminton to maximise our improvements but first
we need to find a good match to watch! Did you know that when you sit down to watch a badminton match
on youtube either live or a replay but can't find it this is because it's been geo-blocked? And if
you're fed up of this really annoying situation then you need to use a virtual private network
known as a VPN. The VPN we use is Surfshark and we're delighted to say that they're sponsoring
this video so Greg is going to spend the next 20 seconds showing you how easy it is to use
So the first thing to do is spend less than two minutes signing up and downloading the app on
as many devices as you want and that's it we're ready to start! As you can see we're currently
in the United Kingdom so to connect to a country that doesn't geo-block matches all we need to do
is scroll down to say Canada and bam we can now watch any badminton match we like! There's lots
more benefits though; firstly you can use it to watch shows on Netflix or Disney that might be
blocked in your country, personally we've used it a lot when we're abroad to watch the US Office
You can also use it on unlimited devices which is amazing and it encrypts your data and location
which is especially important when you're on a public wi-fi! Now we've got an unbelievable offer
for you, if you use our link in the description below and enter the code badminton insight you
get a huge 83% off and three months for free! That works out as £1.69 or about two dollars
a month - they're practically giving it away! And even if you don't enjoy it they offer a 30-day
money-back guarantee, so again top link in the description below to get this jaw-dropping offer :D
Now we have three reasons watching badminton can help you to win more matches. Firstly, by watching
better players you can see what they're doing that you can try and copy and add into your own game,
we do this all of the time! Secondly we'd advise watching footage of yourself playing well
if you don't have any videos if you're playing well then try to think back to one of those times,
hopefully there are some! Here you should try and recall the feelings you felt in that moment
and this method of visual imagery is a powerful tool used in sports psychology
and it's something we both use. It helps us to remind us of our strengths and it again
gives us confidence! Lastly if it's possible we'd advise watching your opponents either on video
which we do or in person and try to pick out their strengths so you know what to avoid and
also their weaknesses so you know what to target! This is something we always do before every match
we play and we'll definitely be doing it again in Tokyo next week! Speaking of which we've got
a plane to catch and we're of course going to be vlogging our time at the World Championships so
keep an eye out for that and SMASH the subscribe button if you haven't already so you don't miss it
and finally don't forget to check out Surfshark and we'll see you on another video very soon :-)