Hi all,

I am searching for in depth technical descriptions of strokes and footwork technique. Can be text, can be videos.
I have read the BWF1 manual but to my opinion it is way to general and vague, it needs much more detail to focus on and coach on.

Like why can a 10 year old talented girl hit 3 cross clears after each other, while some male adults struggle while they have much more power?
Of course it has also to do with timing but also technical skills.

What are the common pitfalls in strokes and how to observe/correct them (like for example a according to BWF1 coaches manual good dropshot, but shitty quality due to a drag of the elbow down during the hit or first going way to high due to the angle of the racket face). So focuspoint should beside all the general movement also be on the elbow and the racket face direction. These 2 are quite trivial I would say, but there are much more, less common, details which I would love to learn.

I can read/listen to English without a problem, other languages I most likely need a translation for maybe losing some details but could try.

Regards!

I had this same question to the lead coach on a coaching course.

In general, it is far harder to go through all the combinations of why a stroke is wrong compared to teaching the right stroke. If you observe carefully, how many people can you see have a different overhead action and body position. Adults can understand the technical side of a stroke but cannot reproduce them consistently. Usually they think ability to understand a stroke means you can reproduce it easily in a few lessons and faster than kids. Adults also like spend their time playing matches more than patiently practicing strokes.

Compare that to children's training where most of the session is on training and a small amount of playing matches. Then you start to understand why adults get stuck on their improvement.

The process of understanding all the small details of inefficiency involves a lot of observations and always asking why. Experience is a big factor and attending a coaching course in person is also very helpful. One of the main objectives of the coaching course is to teach you how to recognise inefficiencies. It can't teach you everything - that's where time and experience comes in.

My own experience is learning the techniques first myself - footwork and stroke technique. I didn't actually coach in person because my job is too busy. But when my own child started attending regular training, I took a much more active approach to observing the training, strokes and how the coaches trained the kids. Then I would look at other adults training (lots of amateur adults in HK do training with a coach) and observe how they differ. I have also been courtside at international tournaments and you definitely can observe and learn different things with that perspective.

Your location says Nederlands. I would say also go to the Dutch Junior tournament and spend 8-10hours a day each day watching the players. It's very tiring but it's rare to get this type of high quality junior tournament in the tournament calendar. There's quite a lot of variation in the players and you can observe where some players have weaknesses and then compare with the best juniors in the world (China and Japan), especially when you have a European player against Asian opponents. For example, I saw two lower level WS players. I don't think their skill was too different but one girl couldn't rally! She could hit one shot but always made a mistake on the next shot. I don't know whether it was nerves or basic training skills weren't high enough. I learnt a lot by actually being there and watching live close up rather than watching matches on YouTube.

There are only two other junior tournaments you can consider attending at the same level of international representation are German Youth International and World Junior Championships. China junior players only attend four international junior tournaments a year - Dutch and German Youth, Asia Junior and World Junior Championships.

It’s hard to say a stroke can be perfect.

There’s a China singles coach called Sun Jun (he’s the coach of Shu Yiqi right now). When he was a player, his strokes don’t look as nice as some other players. But the quality of his shots was very high and he could reproduce it consistently. He became world champion

Personally I don’t use the words perfect or wrong when describing strokes or coaching. I use the words “standard” or “inefficient “ or point out advantages and disadvantages of people’s technique. I don’t coach small kids / beginners but people who already can play.

Another time I was teaching a couple of adults. We were discussing overhead and I was describing the opening of the shoulders for overhead smash. I said YouTube videos rarely mention the role of the left elbow and arm movement to help generate elastic stretch and add to the smashing whiplash (I found two). We did some practice and our session ended. A few weeks later, I met one of the guys again and asked him if he could apply anything from our session to his game. He said he could definitely feel more power in smash.

Lower BWF courses provide a structure. Their aim is probably to make badminton more popular with beginners and springboard good beginners into an intermediate level. I imagine level 3 courses would likely have the finer details that you want.

Jep exactly the same as I do when I coach adults, you can "debate" a bit more easy than with the kids.

The stupid thing is that BWF1 is aimed to teach starters, including kids: the most difficult and most important group to coach well. Somebody once said to me: unlearn a "wrong/inefficient" thing takes 10 times more time than learning it correctly from the start.
Of course the last finetuning etc. is something else but the "basics" should be sound, I notice currently that I feel not adequate enough for that (while still knowing and investing more than a lot of other youth coaches in my area.....)

What I heard is BWF2 is focusing on annualplans etc with really limited time for strokes, so more management/logistics than sports. They assume you know how to execute a stroke. So either you where a high level player who knows how to do it, or good luck with massive amounts of self study and first search for the info. And of course it makes sense, if you need to squeeze a BWF1 in 4 days, including a test/welcome/etc you are left with 2.5 to 3 days. Besides it is for everyone so no prerequisites, so with a bit of bad luck with your group it is even less. That's the second reason why I am searching.