Hi all I read somewhere here someone observed players using their Backhand to hit some Forehand shots and I was trying this out the other day. It seemed like I was able to generate more speed when doing so. Not useful for smashes or high clears but seemed to be much better when trying to do an eye-level shot to the backlines. Was also quite easy to determine direction of shots. Tap-drops were also much easier. Is this expected? Both my wife and I were quite surprised by it. Also, do I risk injury doing this?
It is seen more often in doubles games receiving a smash or drive. Advantage is that you do not have to change grips so speeding up the stroke. Kills off the net can also be done - you have to use an inside to outside motion. But we rarely see top players use it in this fashion.
Its a single swing action to use backhand on the forehand side. If the smash is further out into your forehand, it will be trouble. Backhand will be using thumb power for net kills.
Yeah, definitely a no-no if the shot requires a straightened arm but I'm trying this out for shots that's about 1 foot or nearer to the head and seem to be quite comfortable and efficient. Thanks Cheung. Yeah, maybe I should correct myself, I do use the backhand most of the time for high clears from smash defense.
What you're describing works because of finger power and because forearm supinators are more explosive and powerful than pronators.
I'm liking this more and more the more I use it. And yeah, the more I play with it, the more I find myself discovering different angles, speed, directions. Very very useful
Yes, really. That's why screw threads are designed to turn clockwise to tighten. Taking into account the 90% of the population that is right handed, of course.
Hold on, do you mean playing backhand on the racket side of your body, or using a backhand grip to hit forehand?
Assume that top of your head is 12pm, right hand is 3pm, feet is 6pm and left hand is 9pm. If the shuttle arrives at 1 to 2 pm, instead of just playing a forehand return, to reverse the hand to a backhand return, with the thumb facing the back.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8401799/ pronation strength was exceeded by supination strength within all three handle adaptations
It also stated about the wrist position, I think this is the problem. Maybe in badminton, we can exert more power from pronation than from supination, purely because of our wrist position.
I also think I read somewhere that maximum torque changes (and the relative strength of pronation/supination) when generating torque against resistance vs no/little resistance e.g. max torque when trying to over-tighten a screw is different than a backhand shot, say, where there is little resistance against the supination motion [MENTION=57143]visor[/MENTION] only two of those three are statistically significant - you forgot to include that in your quote That paper cites two references that 'disagree': http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16713846/?i=2&from=/8401799/related The greatest peak torque strength for both male and female participants was found during resisted pronation in the supinated position. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14656682/?i=3&from=/8401799/related In the absence of grip no significant difference was found between supination and pronation torque in neutral position. and one that 'agrees' http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12121684/?i=4&from=/8401799/related The results revealed that supination torques were stronger overall with a mean maximum value of 16.2 Nm recorded for the forearm 75% prone. Mean maximum pronation torque was recorded as 13.1 Nm for a neutral forearm with the elbow flexed at 45 degrees.
[MENTION=7]Cheung[/MENTION] While you're here, what's your understanding and intuition tell you on this?
I don't have an opinion on it. It's something I haven't given much though to before. Perhaps you and Amleto can cook up a qualitative systematic review. I suspect many articles will have some bias one way or another. Probably, there won't be power analysis performed and design issues. A bit too deep to go into study design faults for this thread. I do agree that the numbers in each study will be smaller than RCTs. Articles of no difference will be difficult to find as these will rarely be published.