Badminton Tips and Tricks #7 – How To Improve Control

Whether you’re playing net shots, smashes, drops, or clears, no matter how much power you have, you won’t win any games if you miss all your shots. Control is absolutely crucial to one’s ability to play accurate badminton shots. Here are badminton tips and tricks #7 on how to improve control.

Doing Badminton Drills

One of the best ways to improve your control is to do badminton drills. There are many badminton drills for different badminton shots which I’ll link some here that you can do to improve your badminton skill. Focus on the shots that you have trouble with. For example, if you’re bad at drop shots, practice drop shots more.

With badminton drills, you want to try and make each shot as accurate as possible. This is also a time where you can test your limits. With net shots, for example, see the minimum amount of power you need to get the shuttle over the net.

It’s all about consistency. The more good practice you put in, the better you will be in general.

If you ever watch pro players do drills, all their shots are incredibly controlled and accurate without fail. There was a clip of Viktor Axelsen on Instagram actually showing Viktor’s net shots, and he was able to hit every single one of them!

With badminton drills, you can also do things like set goals on where to hit and how many. Examples include trying to net roll the shuttle five out of ten times or putting up pylons to try and hit by smashing.

General Playing

Drills are by far the best way to improve badminton skill in general, but playing games all the time helps as well. You’re basically trying to get as much badminton playing time as possible.

There is something called implicit learning, and something called explicit learning. The difference between the two is that implicit learning is when you’re sub-consciously learning while explicit learning is when you’re mechanically thinking about how to improve.

The idea of general playing feeds off of implicit learning. Basically, if you just play badminton, you will automatically be improving sub-consciously. It is why people always say that players that start young are destined to become good. The younger they start, the more time they use as implicit learning. Most younger players don’t usually spend all their time specifically training certain aspects; they want to have fun!

General playing works better though when a player already has decent technique. Then all the player is doing is learning what kind of touch to put on the shuttle to give it good accuracy. Less experienced players may just find themselves making the lousy technique a habit, which in that case, general playing can significantly hurt your ability to improve.

Hitting The Shuttle Up And Down

One of the first things coaches make us do when we start playing badminton is to hit the shuttle up and down and try to keep it up for as long as possible. Over time as we gain experience, we become able to keep the shuttle up forever.

That’s because we are gaining control over our racket and the shuttle. We can keep it up longer because we know exactly where it’s going up and where it’s coming down.

With this activity, just grab a racket and hit the shuttle up and down. If you’re a beginner, I highly recommend you hit it up really high with either your forehand or backhand.

As you get better, add variations such as switching between forehand and backhand and then also start hitting it at lower heights. When the shuttle doesn’t have as much height, it will come down faster, making it more challenging to hit it.

As you get even better, start to add variations such as slicing. When you give a spin to the shuttle, it becomes even more difficult to hit back because to hit it accurately and consistently, you’ll need to hit it right at the tip. If you hit the feathers, the shuttle will likely end up somewhere that you’re not expecting so doing this definitely takes a lot more skill.

I like this drill because it’s something that you can do just about everywhere. All you need is a racket and a shuttle and a little space.

If you feel like you want another challenge, try doing this outside with the wind. If you’re used the shuttle going straight up and down, doing it outside will test your reaction speed. It won’t necessarily improve your control much, but your footwork and reaction will improve.

Holding The Racket

Has anyone seen the anime, Haikyu?

Well if you haven’t, it’s an anime about volleyball with the main character being this short guy who’s aspiring to become one of the best spikers. The anime is pretty motivating for badminton players too haha…

But what I want to talk about specifically from Haikyu!! is the scene where an old coach tells the kid to be entirely in sync with the volleyball and to do that, he must hold the volleyball everywhere; when he goes to school when he sleeps, etc.

You can do the same thing with your racket. Hold it as much as possible and spiritually make it a part of you.

Walk around everywhere with the racket and make random swings etc. It’s all about getting the feel of the racket.

Conclusion

I hope that there were some badminton tips and tricks in this post that helped you out on how to improve badminton control. Remember that consistency and focus in practice will always lead to better playing.

If you would like to look at more badminton tips and tricks, check out this link here.

Badminton Tips and Tricks

Any questions? Any suggestions? I’m happy to listen to them. Write it down in the comment section below and have a great day!