4 Ways To Become A Better Singles Player

In this video we share both technical & tactical advice for 2 subscribers, and also you! 🏸 Go to https://surfshark.com/badmintoninsight for an extra 4 months of Surfshark at an unbeatable price!

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Giving you an insight into all things BADMINTON!

We’re about to analyse two subscribers playing 
singles and give them both technical and tactical advice to help them improve their game. This is Antoine from France who’s in the yellow t-shirt Now, Antoine is good. He’s got nice smooth 
footwork and we’ve seen him play some great shots But we’ve got one technical and one tactical 
tip for Antoine that will hopefully help him get to that next level. Yeah. And we’re going to 
start with our tactical tip. When you’re playing a match, it’s really important to try and quickly 
recognise shot patterns from your opponent. Here, Antoine’s opponent is targeting his round the head corner a lot. In this 5-minute clip he sent in, his opponent cleared or lifted to this corner 
35 times, which is a huge 80% of the time! And he only hit to the forehand corner 9 times. 
So, just 20% of the time. Yeah. But Antoine only hit an attacking winner once out of these 35 
shots, which was also off a pretty poor lift, so he should have finished this one. The other 
34 times, he just dropped or cleared it. Now, if we told Antoine or you that your opponent 
was going to hit your round the head corner eight out of every 10 lifts or clears, would 
you do anything differently? Well, ideally, yes. The first thing you’d do is try and anticipate 
more and then have an explosive push off backwards. Like we mentioned earlier, Antoine has nice movement. He’s doing a directional split step and he’s edging on this side of the court because 
his opponent is also on this side, which is very good! But we never see Antoine anticipate and then 
really explode backwards so that he can reach the shuttle earlier and play more aggressive shots. 
Yeah. Let’s compare this to pro player Chou, who’s really good from his round the head 
corner. From similar lifts, he’s often trying to tactically anticipate it and then explode from 
this push off to play an attacking shot. Now, the second thing Antoine could do slightly differently 
is experiment more. As we mentioned earlier, Antoine pretty much only ever hits drop shots or 
clears, but as he’s hitting so many shots from this corner, then he can try experimenting more, 
maybe with straight slices or stick smashes. But to be able to do this, he needs to make a slight 
adjustment to his technique. Yeah if we look at his upper body here, his legs are in the correct 
sidewards position, but his hips and his chest are already facing the net. And this means Antoine can’t rotate his upper body, and he can only use his arm to generate power. And this is why he 
only ever played clears or drop shots. To do a cross court smash, you need upper body rotation to create the power. And if you’re playing a straight slice whilst facing the net, you’re likely to 
over rotate and hit it out the side. So again, you need to have some upper body rotation. So 
instead, for Antoine, as soon as he pivots, he needs to make sure he also positions his 
hips and upper body to face sidewards. So, linking this all together, the fact that Antoine 
only hits drops and clears from this corner is probably why his opponent kept hitting it there. 
Because if he’s not getting put under pressure, then we can see why he kept hitting 80% of his 
lifts and clears here. Yeah, makes sense. Now, before we move on to our next subscriber, Aeyan, we want to share a couple of drills to help Antoine and you if you feel like you’re being targeted in 
your round the head corner! The first one is nice and simple, getting someone to lift multiple 
shuttles just to this corner. This is a great drill for focusing on the technique and footwork 
and also playing different, more attacking shots. You can then move on to a two-shot combination 
where the feeder hits one shuttle anywhere on the court first. Then you hit this back to the 
feeder and they then lift your round the head corner. This makes you have to move from different areas on the court and make the necessary small adjustments to get into the right position. 
The feeder can change the height of their lift, sometimes lifting high and other times lifting 
flatter, you therefore have to adjust your movement and also shot choice accordingly! And 
make sure you have a slight pause after each shot to allow yourself some time to reflect. 
Okay, let’s move on to Aeyan from Canada who’s in the black shirt. Now again, Aeyan has some great aspects to his game, but similar to Antoine, we’ve got one technical and one tactical point that 
will hopefully help him get to that next level. Let’s start with a technical tip this time. So on 
this overhead shot here, Aeyan is holding his grip quite high up the racket. You can see the rest 
of the grip below his hand here. Now you might be thinking there’s not much difference between 
holding the racket here and here, right? Well, actually there is. First is that you’re not 
striking the shuttle quite as high as you could be, which would help Aeyan to create a better angle on shots like this. Yeah and secondly, holding the grip lower down creates a longer lever, 
which helps to create more power. Think of it like a golf swing – you’d generate a lot less power 
if you held the club at the bottom, compared to at the top! Yeah and if you compare Aeyan to the top 
players in the world, you can see they’re holding their grip much lower down. Now, we actually 
recently had a question in our newly revamped Badminton Insight Club, aka our Patreon membership link in 
the description below, about how you’re supposed to transition between these higher grips and these lower grips. Well, it’s a difficult skill to get to grips with, but one you need to get right! For 
this, you need to have a loose grip to start with, and then as you’re moving to the next shot, 
you quickly move your hand up or down the grip. If you’re moving your hand up the grip, then you 
almost let gravity do the work. And if you’re moving it down, then you need to do a shuffle like 
this. And you might think, how do I have time to do that? But remember, you need to make these 
changes when you’re moving long distances. So, you’ve got a decent amount of time. Now, if you 
don’t have a loose, relaxed grip here, it’s almost impossible to do. It will feel weird having pretty 
much no grip of the racket for a split second, but over time you’ll do these transitions without 
even thinking about it. Yeah. And having a loose grip is equally important for changing between 
the grips. Here you use your index finger and thumb to roll the grip in your hand and then 
you use your other three fingers for support. Okay, let’s move on to our tactical tip we have 
for Aeyan. Firstly, look how much his opponent is moving during these shots. From this angle, you 
can see he’s hitting pretty much all of them from this zone here. Whilst this does mean that Aeyan 
isn’t making any unforced errors, it is making it quite easy for his opponent as he’s not making 
him move. Yeah and if we compare this to the zone that the top players in the world hit into, 
you can see their zone is often much bigger. So whilst we wouldn’t necessarily recommend trying to hit perfect shots on the line straight away, it’s definitely important to utilise more of the 
court. One practice to help get used to this is four corners. Here you hit 30 shots, ideally in 
a row, to a feeder who stands in one corner. This is quite hard, but it really trains you to be able 
to play accurately from any position on the court. Once you’ve completed one corner, you then move on to another corner until eventually you’ve covered all four. This is a practice that can be 
used effectively at all levels from 10-year-olds to beginner adults to pros. You just need to make 
sure that you’re doing it with real purpose. Yeah, we’ve seen pro singles players from countries 
like Japan, China, and Denmark all doing this practice. And if you want to see pros 
putting these practices into action, we’d strongly recommend watching them live. 
Oh, what? What if I told you I’ve been using And that’s it for this more in-depth 
subscriber analysis. If you now want to learn some more ways to level up your singles game, then we’d recommend checking out this advanced tactics video here! And of course, if you haven’t already, 
make sure you SMASH the Subscribe button! Bye, bye 🙂