As a part of how to improve my badminton skills, I regularly think about what I might be doing right and wrong in my games. What usually happens is that I’ll develop one part of my game while accidentally developing new bad habits in other areas.
It’s part fun, part painful, to accept that I suck in most areas of the game and my competitiveness easily outweighs my skills. But the pleasure of feeling that you’ve improved during a game makes it all worth it, and comparing the progress before and after is fun.
In this article, I’ll show you how I do this self-analysis, what I learned, and questions to ask yourself or clues to look for if you’re interested in doing something similar to develop your own game.
Table of Contents
The results: my worst habits
With that in mind, let’s dive into some of the things I noticed while analyzing my own game.
1. Dragging my non-racket foot
The first thing I noticed was dragging my non-racket foot too much when lunging. You can see it in clips like this one:
Another clue that hints at the same is the ‘lunge tear’ on your non-racket foot. I mention this under the durability section in my badminton shoe reviews so you have a reference point if your footwork skills, like mine, aren’t exactly world-class.
There’s a meaningful difference between certain shoes and how durable they are in the lunge tear area, so here’s an example as a reference point.
2. Spectator syndrome
Do you know that feeling of playing a shot so incredible that you just HAVE to stop and admire it?
I call it ‘spectator syndrome’ and I’ve found myself guilty of that on court. Instead, I should begin recovering in preparation for the next shot. Even a single, small, step in the right direction makes a huge difference when playing the next stroke.
3. Moving too early
In other situations, I’ll over-anticipate what I expect the opponent to do and react too early which makes them change their mind and that catches me off guard.
For example, if I’m playing a net shot on one side of the court, I might take a few steps back as I’m expecting the opponent to either lift or play a midcourt shot over my head that would cause me to fumble.
The fact that my opponent sees that I’m reacting “too” fast, can make them change to a net shot and I’m left with no chance to reach it in time as the momentum of my body is going in the opposite direction.
4. Getting discouraged when I’m far behind
Like many other players, I tend to stop taking the game seriously when my opponents are too far ahead and it feels like there’s no chance for a comeback.
During open mat sessions with a new doubles partner during almost every game, it takes a while to find the rhythm which means this happens regularly.
The fun twist is that I’ve noticed often being able to make a comeback when the opponents lose their rhythm or get distracted as well.
5. Play too many clears and lifts
When I’ve asked better players for their thoughts on what I can improve during my doubles games, the most often thing mentioned is that I play too many clears and lifts.
I’m painfully aware of it and the irony is that I’m doing it because I don’t feel as confident in riskier shots, like a smash, that has a decent chance of hitting the net and causing a lost point.
… And that leads me to the next item on the list.
6. Getting my partner in trouble
Another reason that I like lifting and clearing is that I enjoy frustrating my opponents by returning their smash shots one after the other until they make an error.
The issue is that when it’s been going back and forth like that for a while, opponents tend to switch and target my partner. Since I often play open mats, whoever I’m pairing up with might not enjoy defense as much as I do.
That means I’m often putting my partner in difficult situations that could be avoided.
7. Taking too many big steps
Being late during a rally and attempting to catch up so as to avoid being on the back foot tends to lead me to take bigger steps, like deep lunges, instead of several smaller steps that are faster to recover with.
That also makes it slower and more difficult to change direction last minute in case the shot didn’t come as expected.
If we compare with superstar Lee Chong Wei, who is widely regarded by many as the player with the best footwork and fastest speed ever, we can see that his steps are far smaller and quicker than mine.
How I discovered these issues in my game
Naturally, the first thing we wanna do is fix these problems.
I have ideas on how to change some of them, but not all. Since each one is a habit that needs changing and doing that takes a while, we can speed the process by doubling down on one or two instead of attempting to work on all of them at once.
I’ve found that it’s best to rank them by priority before figuring out how best to improve it.
Instead of continuing with an arbitrary list of suggestions to myself on how to improve these things, let’s dive into how I’ve done this analysis and how you can too if you’d like to improve your game.
Before doing this exercise, I like to record five games that I feel represent my skills reasonably well, meaning that I wasn’t injured or something that would clearly make things different from how I normally play.
This is important as it often shows a different reality than how we feel on court playing the same match.
I’ve also found it important to use recordings that are fairly recent as one of the benefits of having limited skills is that you can improve them rather quickly. But it’s a waste of time to base the analysis on things that might not be relevant anymore or are tiny compared to newer, more impactful habits you have developed in the meantime.
Basing this on five clips is not exactly perfect, but it gets overwhelming to go through lots of video so this has felt like a good balance between being quick and dirty, and noticing habits that happen game after game rather than one-off mistakes.
I then watch each of those games (sometimes more than once) while taking notes. This requires some creativity in terms of judging what the reason you lost the point is.
It might have been something that happened a few hits before the winning shots, or even something as subtle as your doubles partner not rotating or moving enough and leaving a gap open between the two of you that you then have to overcompensate for and cover.
This can get challenging to assess with limited skills as we might not always know what the correct approach should have been instead. For that reason, and because we can’t control what our partner does, I prefer to simplify things by focusing on the few things that happen the most and that I’m able to control in my game.
One example is the number of times I’ve made a service error, hit the net, or out of the court, when I wasn’t under pressure and really shouldn’t have made a mistake. Converting most of those shots into safer choices that just go back over the net without anything fancy can make a major difference and may be easy to improve.
If it happens a lot during the serve, simply rent a court on your own and practice serving for an hour.
Next, let’s look at clues your badminton gear leaves about your bad habits and questions to ask yourself if you’re curious about doing a similar analysis to improve your own game.
How to improve your badminton skills: clues that gear leave about your bad habits
I’ve found that some bad habits are easiest to discover by looking at your gear for clues.
One of the quickest things to notice is if you and your partner’s rackets tend to clash, it might be a sign to improve your communication on court. Particularly if this happens with different partners.
But your racket isn’t the only gear that leaves clues. So do your shoes.
The lunge tear
An example of that is the ‘lunge tear’ on your shoes I mentioned earlier.
It comes from breaking and controlling the movement during a lunge with your non-racket foot and hints that we might be performing too many lunges during games. Some players have worked to become faster or anticipate their opponent’s game quicker, which means they can avoid performing as many deep lunges as slower players.
It could also be that you’re dragging your non-racket foot slightly too much, making it grind more against the floor than usual.
The outsole tear
Another clue is the outsole tear, which seems to come during a similar movement. It also comes on the shoe of the non-racket foot and I’ve found that it can grind the outsole grip away in the worst case, leaving your shoes far less grippy.
Do you play with the right gear?
In fact, not treating your body to the right gear tends to make things harder and more painful than they have to be. That often happens by picking a racket that’s too stiff or shoes that the pro players seem to like without figuring out if they’re suitable for you.
Especially the latter can cause physical annoyance and pain during every step on court. If you play badminton regularly and experience pain or soreness in your legs or feet despite warming up and stretching afterward, consider the following to get a sense of whether you’ve got the right pair of shoes. It makes an unreal difference.
- Have you trained footwork, speed, and anticipation a lot? Or do you need a lot of toe protection like me? (If you’re in doubt, you probably haven’t trained footwork enough)
- Do you land hard and heavily in your lunges? (You might want more padding in the midsole and toe box of your shoe)
- Do your ankles, knees or leg muscles often ache after playing? (You might want to try more midsole cushion in your shoe)
- Do you have a normal, wide, or narrow foot? (Do you often feel fatigued in the side of your big toe when playing in Yonex shoes? If so, you might have a slightly narrower toe than average, like me, and might suit brands like Victor or Li-Ning better)
- Compared to me (check my images or videos), are you the same size body, or smaller or bigger? (If you’re smaller, consider lightweight shoes—if you’re bigger, you might prefer more cushion)
How to improve your badminton skills: questions about your games
In terms of improving your game, I’m not the best person to ask at all levels but I did notice a few things that have helped me improve. Feel free to ask yourself these questions if you’re interested in that too.
- Do you move enough around the court? Do you recover before the opponent hits the shuttle or do you wait until they hit it?
- How many faults do you make hitting the net or out of the court during your average game? (Actually count it)
- Do you mishit a lot and struggle to generate power? (If you’re in doubt, assume that you do—since it’ll be easy to tell the difference)
