Hi, I have been playing badminton for about six months now and my game has improved considerably. Now that I am playing against good players there is one issue I am running into very frequently and that is my inability to switch from forehand to backhand quick enough. Good player gauge my weakness quickly and they smash in my backhand between my shoulder and waist area. I also lose drive rallies if someone drives one in my backhand after couple of forehand rallies. What I tend to do is if I am doing forehand drives and one comes into my backhand, I try to play that with my forehand too hence resulting in a very weird position/shot. This reduces my reach in backhand compared to a proper backhand grip and the shot quality is bad too. I have been doing some wall practice to fix this but this isn't coming to me easily. I have noticed that this isn't a big issue even with beginners and that makes me wonder is there something very obvious that I am missing here. Any tips, tricks or drills that can help me switch grips quickly between forehand and backhand would be really appreciated. Thanks
Isn't the grip the same? The grip for backhand between shoulder and waist is the same with the grip for forehand between shoulder and waist I take Lee jong Bak's teaching: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSEAI7m-bQ8 I think that's the most basic grip, so you actually don't need to change the grip. For me, I just adjust my fingers, If dong forehand I have my index finger pressing more, while if i do my backhand my thumb is pressing more. Maybe your issue is that you try to change your grip into the old backhand grip, which you actually don't need to do.
Fast grip switching is something that needs to be practiced - you don't even need to be on court. To me, it sounds like you are not ready with the correct grip. When you are waiting for shots, you should have some sort of backhand grip. If the shuttle comes to the forehand, just relax the fingers and turn the racket in your hand to get a forehand grip. Once you have played the forehand shot, you need to switch back to a backhand grip, ready for the next shot. Make sure you hold your racket in front of your body, and not too far on the forehand or backhand.
Do you have a panhandle grip? Then I would really understand. Since the basic neutral grip would be easy to transition with
Hold the racquet more loosely. Most people will hold it very tightly after playing a shot and that slows down changing from backhand to forehand and vice versa. A finer skill to learn is holding the racquet within the fingers more and less in the palm of the hand. If the racquet is held in the fingers, you can roll the handle in you fingers much faster especially with the relaxation that MSeeley described.
