I had minor ankle injury, it prevented badminton for 6 weeks. My buddies were training hard playing singles against each other during this time. Myself as a player, well I'm kind of short (5'8'')sadly but I can keep losing fat and gaining maybe dash speed, and cardio, and more power still from gym training. At least I hope so. My opponents tend to be the tall ones at about 6'2'' NOW I SUCK AT BADMINTON we play as three guys, once a week together. If there's two of us only, then we play normal singles. when there's like three of us, then we play with 2 vs 1 for (single player hit doubles borders, against the two players, whereas the two players hit against singles borders against the single player, got it?) Then we rotate who is the single player. we're all amateur, but the one guy,advanced skill, has really gotten into really good shape so he's gotten better at cardio definitely. He moves like greased lightning really... His brother, the second guy, intermediate skill, has gotten better at racquet skills and shots, but I can't judge his cardio so much. Then there is myself, I've gotten into better shape, I've lost some fat thusfar (still lots to lose!!!) and gained strength from gym, but my raqcuet skills and footwork is abysmal. My cardio has proven to be improved, strange as it may sound. I was doing gym training and walking exercises thusfar, and now I can start running and playing badminton etc as the ankle is healed. Also leg strengthening exercises will follow at the gym, to strenghthen the foundation of the ankle. So what happened yesterday? (lol I hope my buddies arent following the discussions here btw ) I was getting kind of owned by: -realy good net play, shots from back or center, just slipping past the net incredibly close (danger with net faults and not able to lift shuttle) -my basic overhead shots sucked. I couldnt get good distance on them no matter how hard I hit those shuttles. -it almost feels like I had bad timings, on the shots, so that I don't seem to hit the sweet spots so well... -This is really strange because my powerlevel has improved because of increased gym results! IT MUST BE BECAUSE OF TECHNIQUE RIGHT? -my backhands sort of sucked as well -smash was ok, when I had opportunities -abysmal footwork, probably because of the six week long break due to ankle injury I guess I must hire a trainer to go over the basics again right?
It sounds like you're just rusty. Give it time. Everyone goes through it but you slowly regather your form
you probably don't need a trainer if you were good a few months ago. You should just train a few times rather than play games so that you can get back into a rhythm.
Even if you hadn't injured yourself and had taken 6 wks off, your first few times off will be like that.
You need to do shadow drill. Isolate each movement and do plenty of those. It draws you away from having to focus at various technique at the same time (hand-footwork-positioning). Start by doing shadow drill for clear, overhead, drive, lift. To improve your lift, shadow drill against a wall, start slow and try to get your racket head as close as possible to the wall (without touching the wall and breaking your racket). The key is to do it slow and use your wrist. Imagine the initiation, contact, and follow through. Get a friend to spot your technique, or record yourself playing it. It doesn't always look like how you would have visualise it
Dude I said 6 weeks break not months, but yea maybe I should find more playing partners in the local area and see if I can arrange for more matches per week, like at the university or something? Alternating and finding new opponents probably helps also rather than playing against the same old guys every time right?