Badminton Tips: Maximise Wrist Action, Body Balance, Accurate Shot Placement and More

Here are some useful badminton tips that I would like to share with you.

They are based on my personal experience and advice from professionals.

These little tips and tricks makes a BIG difference in a game!

Let's begin with the badminton tips.

1. Badminton Tips for Good Body Balance

In badminton, extraordinary speed and power are the winning factors.

The key to play with good speed and power is to have extremely good body balance.

Speed: To move around the badminton court quickly, you'll need good balance. If you're too conscious in maintaining your balance to avoid falling down, you'll move slower.

Power: To hit a powerful badminton smash, you'll also need good body balance. Otherwise you'll concentrate on balancing yourself rather than exerting power in your smash.

Click here for tips on maintaining good body balance

2. Badminton Tips for Generating Power

You might hear people say "badminton is all about wrist action".

Beginners should NOT have the mindset of solely depending on wrist power.

TRUE power in badminton comes from both the

• swing of your racket
• wrist action

The more you focus on using your wrist to produce power, the more you'll forego the power from your swing.

This means when beginners concentrate on using their wrist to generate power, they focus less on performing a complete swing.

Hence, they forgo the power of the swing.

Learn the correct techniques for badminton strokes first.

You'll naturally learn to make use of your wrist after you learn to perform the CORRECT technique for badminton strokes.

Beginners should first learn how to generate power from a basic badminton stroke with a complete swing. It's important to perform a full arm swing for your strokes.

Remember, beginners should not concentrate too much on wrist power. The strength of your wrist will develop over time.

After learning the correct strokes, there are a few things that you should do to ensure your wrist action develops over time.

See our tutorial on badminton wrist action.

Maximise your wrist action. That tutorial also highlights the DO's and DON'Ts when developing the strength of your wrist.

3. DO NOT Tense Your Muscles

It's very important that you avoid tensing your muscles during a game.

If your muscles are tensed up, your movements will be restricted.

• You won't be able to perform a full swing if your muscles are too tensed
• You can't perform a good flick with your wrist. A quick "snapping" motion because your muscles are tensed up

Tensing your muscles reduces your mobility and slows you down. The KEY to play good badminton is to RELAX.

You might think that hitting an attacking shot such as the badminton jump smash requires a lot of strength.

A COMMON MISTAKE among beginners is that they subconsciously tense their muscles by gripping their racket too tightly, with the intention of producing more power.

By doing this your smash will not only be weak, you'll also get your technique WRONG when your muscles are not relaxed.

Relax. Producing power in your shots is not about how big your muscles are... technique is more important! It comes from the swinging motion of your arm.

Relaxing your muscles maximises your swinging motion. It also increases the mobility of your wrist.

4. Badminton Tips for Improving Accuracy

Accuracy in shot placement plays an important role in helping you win your badminton games.

Sometimes it's not about the power, it's about accuracy. Good placement of your shots helps you win rallies.

The best location to place your shot is to make the shuttle land as close as possible to the boundary lines of the badminton court.

When you watch international tournaments, you'll realise that players try very hard to make the shuttle land on (or near) the sidelines or baseline.

They're able to do that through high levels of training and practice.

However, there are a few things that you can do to make the shuttle land near the lines.

Click here to for tips on improving your shot accuracy

5. Badminton Tips for Hitting Powerful Offensive Shots

The most powerful badminton shot is the badminton jump smash. Most social badminton players want to learn to hit the jump smash.

Unfortunately the proper badminton jump smash is MORE COMPLICATED than merely jumping and hitting the smash.

Good jump smash technique involves having extremely good body balance, flexibility, and knowing how to use all parts of your body to generate power.

Click here to find out the 6 essential tips to hit a powerful jump smash

6. Hit to Your Opponent's Backhand Area

Generally, the backhand shot is a common weakness among the majority of badminton players (only a handful can hit good backhand shots).

Many people (including some world class players) cannot perform strong badminton backhands.

Therefore, if you have the opportunity, try to hit the shuttle to your opponent's backhand area and force him to use his backhand.

If your opponent:

• Uses his backhand, there's a high chance that he'll return a weak backhand shot. You'll have the chance to strike with a powerful offensive shot.
• Avoids using his backhand; he'll have to move further away from his base to perform a forehand stroke, hence weakening his footwork.

You'll then have the chance to dominate the rally once you interrupt his footwork.

No matter what your opponent's response is, you'll gain some degree of advantage if you manage to hit the shuttle to his backhand area/

7. Get Badminton Tips from Professionals

Having strong basic skills is essential to improve your game. It provides a solid foundation for you to learn more advanced skills in badminton.

It's important that you learn the CORRECT skills from the start.

I came across a good badminton DVD from Peter Rasmussen (1997 badminton world champion) that focuses on teaching beginners the correct badminton techniques.

Some of the content in this website is based on what I've learnt from Peter.

Unlike some badminton coaches, Peter understands the various problems in mastering each technique in badminton and therefore is able to deliver a quality coaching program.

Click here if you would like to read more of my review on Peter Rasmussen's coaching DVD.

If you want to learn the sport seriously, this DVD definitely can help.