[MENTION=7]Cheung[/MENTION] - Please advise: It would seem that her foot position is "good" if she was well behind the shuttle in plenty of time and therefore moving forward into her shot. But if she were still backing up, would you not think that foot position would be very hard on her knee?
I think it's a very natural way to move if you're attacking the shuttle and using this position for adding more power. By the body position judging in the picture, you can state she is well behind the shuttle as she should be. I see the Korean and Japanese ladies doing it most of the time when they are smashing from the rear court.
This is a little deliberate. It's the same reason you have the back foot side on during a lunge. It helps to protect and reduce strain on the achilles tendon. You get better stability this way too.
Female hips are more internally rotated than males, so you'll quite often see this in females when they're about to throw hard by transferring their body weight into the projectile. For the same reason, you'll never ever see a male doing this...
she is well behind the shuttle (from the posture). Although the foot is not pointing out 90 degrees to the side, I think it is still acceptable. Another person may disagree. 'If she were still backing up.....', but she is not.
i think pointing outward is better because: 1. it is more effective. 2. it is more efficient. 3. it helps prevent injuries. In short, it is biomechanically better.
you can't compare (from your pictures) because the shuttle path is different and the shot is different. What you have done is try to extrapolate one certain shot to another shot - it doesn't always work like that.
the Wang Lin footwork is absolutely correct for those two shots she is playing. The shuttle is struck much lower and out to the side. Her sideways stability will be much better.
I thought for safety the toes and knee should always point in same direction. I can see this in effect in all pictures here. I tried knee and toes in opposite direction when skiiing once. Not recommended!
pcll99 those are all completely different shots... we don't even know which direction they're coming from and which direction they want to push off to ... you can't compare them at all! but one thing we all agree on, is that during the lunge like lcw, ld and peter gade is doing here, they knee and foot should be in the same direction as the lunge, and the knee should not go past the ankle that cl shot is not a lunge!
Yes, you are right. The above shots are not all the same. My original points were these: (1) My argument is that your feet should point outwards at all times, irrespective of where the shuttle is coming from and where you want the shuttle to go. (2) if you agree with my point (1), what the two Japanese girls did were doing was biomechanically not right. In the short run, it is not energy efficient. In the long run, they will injure their knees (and probably Archilles tendon too). (3) The degree/extent to which your feet should turn outwards will depend on where the shuttle is coming from and where you want the shuttle to go.
you know that Wang Lin already retired early because of twice ruptured ACL tendon...bit unfortunate. I take your point that many times the foot should be placed facing outwards but I don't think every situation is like that.
Although it's true... almost if not all the shorter Japanese female players do this inwards toeing in smash preparation before they transfer their body weight with hip and shoulder rotation. Only exception is Sayaka Takahashi and that's because she's one of the taller ones. The Chinese female players don't do this much because they're all taller, so they don't need to transfer body weight as much into this smashes. The Indonesian female players are just as short as Japanese, but they don't in toe much. My guess has already been mentioned a few posts ago. Females tend to have more inwardly rotated hips than males, so that's why we never see this in shorter males. And I'm guessing also that Japanese female players are more prone to this also because Japanese females are taught from young to walk more lady like with in toed gait and sit in the W position on the tatami mat, both of these which accentuate more hip internal rotation.
