How to get good at badminton. This is something that I would hear all the time as well as ask myself. So after learning and training all these years, I’ve built Get Good At Badminton for this sole purpose.
There are so many specifications in badminton for how you should play but let’s break it down into one article.
Proper Technique
For the sake of length in this article, I won’t be going in depth into how to do each specific part. You can check out other articles on getgoodatbadminton.com to learn specific things. For now, let’s jump into the technique.
Technique is the most important part of badminton. It’s also the most information dense. There’re all sorts of definitions on how you’re supposed to hold your racket, swing forehand, backhand, how you position arms, etc. If you don’t have the right technique, it will keep you down forever.
Look through our articles or get a private coach to refine your technique. Then practice it everywhere. Practice holding your racket at home, find an open space to practice swings, etc. Then when you go on an actual court, and practice with a shuttle. Be sure to check that your technique is correct while playing and that you don’t revert back.
The right technique must become second nature.
Footwork
Another basic of badminton is your footwork. Proper technique won’t matter if you can’t reach the shuttle in the first place. For footwork as well, you want to make sure you’re doing it correct. Are you taking lunges with your dominant for net shots? Are you shuffling towards the back?
Once again I recommend looking through our articles or hiring a private coach.
You may have the proper footwork but you want to build up speed and stamina. This is what’s going to separate your game from other people’s game. Having the speed allows you to reach all the shots and having stamina allows you to maintain that speed through your matches. You will become extremely tough to play against if you’re extremely fast and have stamina. You’ll basically become someone with impenetrable defense and also deadly offense with the speed and you’ll be able to maintain that with the stamina. Here’s how you can become like this.
Some training methods you want to incorporate are pointing, front and back, side to side, and many more. I have an article on this website all about getting good at footwork called Badminton Drills and Exercises to Improve Footwork.
Quality and Diversity of Shots
Your quality and diversity of shots will determine heavily on right technique. This why having the right technique is a must have to increase your badminton skill. Once you have good basics in footwork and technique, it’s time to perfect your drops, smashes, clears, net shots, drives, and more.
Having a diverse set of shots will allow you to play many different strategies. You don’t want to just keep clearing over and over again or dropping over and over again because your opponents will catch on and take advantage of that. Learning how to do different types of shots will come from technique and adjusting your power.
The second part is quality of the shots. As a beginner or intermediate player, you will likely have bad quality shots. For example, your drop might be too high and the opponent net kills, you hit your smashes out a lot, etc. The quality of your shots comes with time and practice. A drill that is very good is having a coach feed you shuttles and you play a specific type of shot. If you don’t have a coach or someone skilled enough to do feeding drills, you can just rally with limited shots with a friend.
Strategy
So you have good technique, good footwork, and good shots. Are you a good player now? Well yes but we can take you up to another level. In this world there are countless amounts of players who have good technique, footwork, and shots but what separates players from each other is strategy. No player is perfect and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to you to avoid their strengths and play to their weaknesses.
A few basic strategies, you can immediately apply to your games are diversified shots and pushing to the backhand. Diversifying your shots is the most basic strategy; this is also known as, make people run. This is extremely good for exposing people’s weaknesses at the start and it also tires them out which will weaken their footwork. But sometimes you also want to hit to the same place a few times because then they’ll start adjusting to that position which gives you other openings to strike on. Another strategy is pushing a shot towards a person’s backhand. This strategy is very good because people’s backhands will always be weaker than their forehands. Most of the time, players play a backhand drop which you can capitalize on.
There is only one way to practice strategies really. You first learn the strategy by watching people play or reading up on it and then you put it into practice by playing games. This will only come from experience and the more you play, the better you will become.
Badminton is not just a physical sport, but mental training as well.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Practice, practice, practice. You’ll hear this everywhere. The truth is that to get good at badminton (or anything really), you must practice and to get better fast, you must practice a lot. A good training amount for club players are about 3 times a week with 2 times being the bare minimum and 1 week being good for casuals. When you practice, make sure you consider all the above. I even suggest getting a private coach or take classes of some sort to make sure your technique and footwork is correct but also to give you an opportunity to practice seriously.
I highly recommend checking out the Badminton Skills Checklist for more information on what to practice.
There’s even more you can do such as play in tournaments but it all sums down to play a lot of badminton. So I’ll stop now and wish you luck on your journey. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below and good luck in your games.