I mean it's not like I'm complete shit. I've been playing for the last 3 years. Not at any competitive level or with any real consistency. Just for school. I'm 17 now. I finally made A-team* last year, and hopefully I'll make it again. Our seasons** are usually 7-8 games, and I'll lose 2-3 of them. It's not like I can't play at all.
A-team is a reference to the level of the individual teams. Usually there are 3 teams - A,B and C. These three teams are divided into 2 parts - Men's and Women's. These two are further divided into 3 parts - Singles, Doubles and Mixed.
A season is generally a single match against each school in the part of our division. My knowledge isn't perfect here, but I believe our division is the part of the city we're in. This part is divided again into 2 parts, basically good and bad ranking. Last year, one of our teams got 3rd, so our school team got bumped up to the good part of the division.
Today I learned otherwise.
My breaks are usually just complete laziness and inactivity. I'm a very lazy and bored guy. I rarely exercise, and when I do, it's never consistent. I'm always out of shape basically, but it never really seemed to matter until now.
I joined one of those badminton clubs. I was always in awe of them. Real courts, good ceiling, only badminton lines. But most excitingly, a real coach.
Schools don't have real coaches, unless you're really lucky. Any teacher that is willing supervises the team. Someimes, a teach will be good, but rarely the case for our school. I don't think I mentioned my school is hardly one for 'top' students. More like bad seeds. It's ranked bottom hundredth in the city out of 700-800.
But I digress. Today was the first lession of 12 at this badminton club.
First off: warm-up. Holy crap. I don't know what's worse, the bloody exercises, or the fact that I couldn't even finish them. I basically got through all of them until the high jump where you jump and kick your ass with your feet. I tried as hard as I could and couldn't lift my feet.
Then it was 10 laps. I didn't think I would have this much trouble running. I could run 4km without stopping just 4 years ago. Now I couldn't even make it 6 times around 3 courts.
Water. As luck would have it, I forgot to bring water. Not really forgot, but left in the car. Meaning while everyone had a nice break, I was rotting away.
Leg movement during high clearance. Oh God. Something new right off the bat. In 3 years of badminton I have never done this. Or if I did this, I was never aware of it. The movement was along the lines of, arms raised, right foot back, left foot raising, feet reverse roles while bird is struck, right foot forward.
First off, never in my life have I felt unable to lift my legs. But after the warm ups, I had not enough energy to do anything more than lunge. That got the coach annoyed while he focused on me for over 5 minutes trying to fix my form.
Arms wide open, elbows above shoulder, racket pointing up and away. Swing. Miss. Swing. Miss. I have never been so frustrated in my life. I don't know if it was just that I was terrible, or just out of shape, but I missed so many clearances today it was embarrassing. My partner couldn't have been older than 14. Actually, no one there was older than me. I was also a head taller than both the coaches. But still, I have never been so mad playing badminton (except once, while giving up a point to a ridiculously bad team). Honestly, I couldn't believe how crappy I was.
And the worst part? I found out I've been holding my racket wrong. Three years of playing. Three years. All useless. But a revelation! It felt so good to swing like this.
In the past, I had a good drop shot and service. But I relied mostly on better placement to win points (and my partner, who could smash). My smash was terrible. I had no power, so it wasn't more useful than a good drive would have been. But I smashed once and could feel it was so much better.
But my backhand grip was good.
We switched to drops last. I haven't been so embarrassed in my life. One person stands by the net. The opponent has to drop from the back, and then a net drop and then back. First off, I gave him two clears in a row, so he ran forward and had to spin back. I did this maybe 10 more times. The coach watched and asked me what I was doing. It was not a good day for my brain.
My partner couldn't drop from the back, which was good for me since I couldn't clear for beans. But that may have just been because I sucked at clearing for him. Oh well.
We switched places, and yes! I remembered how to drop. Yay~ My net drop was atrocious, but I can work on that. At least I still have one weapon. That is, if I don't hit it to the wrong place. I did this 6 times into the other group's area. They stopped playing a few times to see if I still missed it. I'm ashamed to say I did.
After that, the lesson was over. Time for stretches. 35 push ups, 35 sit ups, 35 back ups. I can't even do 35 push ups on a regular basis, so what made him think I could do it after this ridiculous lesson. Sit ups were simple. Back ups were... interesting. Basically you lie on your belly, then put your arms behind your back while someone holds your feet, and try to lift your stomach off the ground. The effect, something like flopping like a stranded fish.
As I'm writing this down, it's been 10 hours, and I can't feel a muscle in my body. I can't move my body. Thank God my fingers aren't broken.
But it's nice to know I'm complete crap. It's good to get a sense of reality. I thought I was decent, but I have long way to go before getting anywhere. Kind of like Starcraft.
It's good to know that if I get through this, I could really kick some ass.
When I won my first and only in-house tournament in grade 9 gym class with a giant smash, I felt my Asian within me coursing through my arms. I knew then that I was destined to develop into a fob for the rest of high school. Badminton helped me get in touch with my inner Asian.
I played 7 years of badminton in highschool/college my coach was good, and holy crap his warm ups/trainings were insane. What you just describe was just basic routine lol
Badminton is so fun, I miss playing it in a team so much
You will learn to love the environment. The competition and craziness in my tennis team is what motivates me. The fact that I want to win so badly also helps, so you should learn to gain that killer instinct.
i stopped training last year, and i got really bad too. i played for the provincial club and man was it intense. i remember doing crazy warm-ups, and crazy cool downs. 4 corners, endless suicides, infinite lunges...skipping. gah. i mean at the time i loved the sport, but the conditioning was brutal, but definitely necessary if you ever had to play several consecutive singles games.
just train hard lol. really the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. the sloppier you are with say footwork drills, the sloppier you will actually play.
also, make sure you have good form. it makes everything so much easier. especially with foot work, everything should come after footwork imo. you can get around the court way way way smoother and more efficiently.
I love badminton, need to find the time to play again and try to not suck balls.
What facility did you go to? I've been to San Gabriel Badminton Club and OCBC to watch games and play around a bit, and everyone around me was definitely a lot more hardcore. I saw a girl no older than 10 in practice - they just continually threw birdies at her and she had to drop them back or clear them back depending on the toss. For every miss was a lap around the gym.
im confused, if you're A ranked, doesn't it mean you're almost elite class having won various cups and shit? It doesn't exactly match with the rest of the blog. I'm C-ranked and I can't identify with any of the problems you're describing...
On January 09 2011 19:02 Shauni wrote: im confused, if you're A ranked, doesn't it mean you're almost elite class having won various cups and shit? It doesn't exactly match with the rest of the blog. I'm C-ranked and I can't identify with any of the problems you're describing...
Nah not really A rank doesn't mean anything at all, it mostly depends on the clubs. I used to be in A ranked (last year) for a club (I was one of the worst A ranks there tho and some of them were really good), and I've never played a tournament outside of school tournaments. I agree w/ the part about the problems though... strange to be get A rank and have problems like that... unless your that rusty or your school team isn't that great... which wouldn't surprise me other wise. Here in Calgary high school teams aren't that great unless you have club players, or this one kid who's a provincial player and he's beast... he's the closest I've seen to the Malaysian provincial players, who would own us 21-0, 21-0 if we played them).
@ Blisse Its good to see someone getting back to a sport. Hope I don't suck when I go back to badminton (school team starts for us next month). Sadly, think I'm gonna fail as I haven't played for about 4 months and the other kids in my team are in the A rank in the club I talked about previously. Though to be honest they weren't that good, and I hope I can still beat them, though I highly doubt I'll make it out of my division (Played singles and I got 3rd last year and I'm probably as out of shape as you xD) nonetheless get into provincials, unless I practice during my exam break T_T. But that cuts into my SC2 training to get to diamond time xD. I'll learn to balance. Good luck getting back into the sport, you'll find it fulfilling when you can beat everyone in your club!
I havn't played serious for days and I was never super good either, just played on school team. Our school is rediculously good though... but who cares.
Keep trying! You're feeling pain which is definitely saying you're getting better
Badminton is fucking awesome, and I haven't even read the OP yet. Just went to the Super Series Finals this weekend in Taipei, Taiwan. Got to see a lot of greats like Lee Yong Dae, Lee Chong Wei, Peter Gade and Fu Haifeng / Cai Yun.
For the OP, I would recommend these videos for technique. They're from the official England national team so it's reliable advice. They helped me a ton when I was learning the basic shots:
There are more (7 or 8) so if you're interested be sure to watch them all.
P.S. They're just called clears, not "clearances".
@The_LiNk - "inner Asian" ahaha nice. It's weird how every badminton team we play is like 90% Asian. Sadly my school team is only like 20% Asian. But that's fine since the school is like 5% Asian.
@Eti307 - 7 years. 7 YEARS. madness. I hope these routines become basic soon, because they are so painful.
@Ryusei-R1 - Yeah I love the environment, since I know everyone's dedicated and wants to get better. But my school team is nothing like that. To be honest, my personal goal is just not to lose dumb points and games. I've gotten really pissed off when my partner and I almost lost to these terrible kids. It was embarrassing, and I never want that to happen again.
@aiffla - so many videos! I got to watch them all. I wish I went to an actual show.
@blabber - some badminton girls are cuter, but I think a lot of them play just so they have a sport or for fun. Not really competitive. Some of the competitive ones I've seen were... eh just to say.
@imDerek - ahaha same here. We played a really good team and the score ended up 21-1. It was very depressing.
@Shauni/Shinshady - Yeah, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Not A-ranked, just on the A-team in the school level. Not a ranking. And my school isn't that great.
@exalted - omg I watched them all too. I try to copy them but like, it's not even close. And it's called 'clears'? oO. I have a huge aversion to that word. Every time I say is it comes out sounding like "queers'. hehe
At the moment every joint in my body hurts. But if this is what it takes to be a better play, I'm totally fine with that. Thanks for the support. I'll update as I go along.
EPT
