Hmm… Well I'm not a specialist but I'll give you my opinion.

All my smashes are going straight forward “because I'm not able to give a direction to them” like Taufik Hidayat who is very deceptive and everything. It is too hard to do so when I need to focus on my arm movements. The only variation that you will find in my smashes are the angle. It's still hard to do but I'm trying to improve that point because I think personnally that it is very effective.

I don't jump when smashing. I've tried to learn that but it looks so painful so I prefer to stay on my two legs when smashing haha.

So why do I give angles ?

I'll first divide the court in 4 main areas.

Area 1 : From the net to mid-court area.

Area 2 : At the back of the court when you're on your forehand

Area 3 : At the back of the court when you're in the middle

Area 4 : At the back of the court when you're on your backhand

In area 1, big angles are appreciated. The distance the shuttle has to do in order to pass the net is normally short enough for your smash to keep enough power to do its job. What I want is to decrease the time of reaction of my opponents and to avoid my smash to go outside (yeah that happens when I'm smashing when being in area 1). If you can smash straight to the body of your opponents, it is good as well for the same reasons. In this area, I can try to gain direct points from my smashes.

In area 2, it is still possible for me to generate a lot of power as I play with my forearm but it is nearly impossible to give a nice angle as in area 1 because of the distance between you and the net. So my smashes tend to go flat as I want my shuttle to pass near the shoulder of my opponent. On that position, you'll play mostly on the backhand of your opponent (except for a lefty) so he will have a chance to send your shuttle back. But if the shuttle arrives near his shoulder, he will lose that advantage and will mostly have a weak reply. That will give your partner or yourself a chance to fight back.

In area 3, my shuttle is aiming the backline when I'm smashing. I'm trying to confuse my opponents by smashing down in the middle. There will be indecision between them :”who will defend ?”. Ok that doesn't work all the time but it is not possible to give much angle as the shuttle will probably go into the net. Here a jump smash could help for the angle but I would aim the same target, the backline.

For area 4, I will post later as it is difficult to explain.

Most of my smashes will be executed with my whole arm with the rotation of the shoulder etc except in area 4.

Hope it's not too hard to understand. If it is the case, feel free to ask me to give more explanations. For now, I'm thinking about what to say for area 4. Or if you think I'm not answering to your questions, please just tell me.

Jonathan

Matthew Seeley said:

It should be possible to hit to about the waist height as well?

 

Everything is possible haha. To tell you the truth, I'll use whatever works to gain points haha. But why do I prefer to aim the shoulder. But I observed that it gives me a higher percentage of success.

When you're at the back of the court, there's some distance between you and the net. Aiming the waist is only possible if you give some extra angle to your smash if you compare with the shoulder. The net will most probably interfere and you'll lose a point by committing an error. Moreover, aiming waist when your opponent knows you're going to smash, will give your opponent a chance to defend.

My concern with constant shoulder height smashes, is that they may be countered with a good crouch defence from your opponent (where they crouch low and wait with their racket up in front of them, ready to attack your smash). However, with good variety, and placement, im sure you will keep them guessing 🙂

 

Yeah you're right. That's what I'm afraid about as well. For now, I have two solutions. What I'm doing is being ready to move forward to catch the shuttle back if my partner is not able to do it or letting my partner do the job.

 

Involving my partner is still difficult as he may not know what's going to happen. So my first line of defence in that situation is moving forward and try to send the shuttle back. I'll mostly go for a net shot.

 

If the opponent counters with a net shot again, I'll be there to fight at the net. If he lifts the shuttle, my partner will become the smasher.

Look forwards to hearing about area 4! It can be very tricky trying to explain these things in words 🙂

 

You're right haha.

Thanks for contributing 🙂

 

You're welcome.

 

p.s. I agree about jump smashes! Very tiring looking!

 

It also requires you to be behind the shuttle quickly. Depending on how high you can jump (correctly) you have to move fast to be in position and then jump-smashing.

 

For that part, I'm too slow. I can move quickly enough to get behind the shuttle and smash when being on my two legs but if I have to add some more seconds to jump, it's too late. That's why the jump smash is not one of my weapons of choice. The only thing is that gives you more power and more angle to your smash that can help in the tactics I'm using.

 

Jonathan 🙂

 

Well, I never jump (or hardly a few cm above the floor). Had a few knee injuries long long time ago, and right now I'm too old to do this.
Doubles : my smash is not the most powerful in the club (but I'm working on it), but what makes it effective, is the movement I do. I guess you call it scissor kick (racket leg behind to generate power, turning the body into the shuttle flight (corkscrew), hitting the shuttle with stretched arm and ending on the non-racket leg). But, I do this for all my overhead shots: clear, drop, and smash (or at least I try very hard to finetune this technique). So my opponents only know what's coming when the shuttle already left my racket. In MD&MX your partner needs to be a bit aware of this, for this can lead to misunderstanding, since you nearly automatically do a step towards half court.
I usually go for the tramlines (both sides), and when the shuttle keeps coming back, I go for the middle, all steep angled. Not for the body, don't know why, maybe to be sure I will still be welcome the next time (and not for apologizing ).

Sadly, I'm not that effective in singles. I'm rather know in the club for being a good MD & MX player, but it seems I have no plan whatsoever for a singles game. When I smash in singles, it is usually cross, the steepest possible angle. Maybe I should go for the flat smash from time to time, could gain points (or games !) with that.
Cheers, ED

For area 4, there are three situations.

The first one is the easiest to handle with. I'm already in this area and I can smash with my forehand so nothing difficult here as you can imagine.

The second situation is a little bit more tricky. I'm moving from the middle (area 3) to area 4. That means I'm quite close to that position. What I'm doing is jumping on my left leg and smash but I have to bend my body as well. Hard to imagine I know but I've no video for that one. I was told that can generate more power by jumping on one leg. Ok, I can't prove it but I know that works, I can still smash with my whole arm.

The third situation is the most dangerous for the player. It's moving from area 2 to area 4.

In this video, you'll see the opponent of chen hong moving back in area 4 and bending his body to hit the shuttle. Ok he's not smashing, neither am I. This is the only situation where a “real smash” is really impossible for me. The best I can do is using the power I can generate by moving my forearm and wrist. Thanks to the armchair exercices of Paul, I've improved that a lot (THANK YOU SO MUCH, PAUL). I'm always smashing straight forward as said before. The goal here is not gaining a point but I'm just trying to get out of that bad situation. The most difficult is moving quickly, bending and hitting the shuttle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

Pfiouh, finally I've described everything haha. Hope you have understand my point of view. If I learn something new, I'll share it 🙂 .

Jonathan.

Matthew Seeley said:

Hi Jonathan!

 

The second situation in area 4… is that like you are hitting the smash whilst in the air?

My left leg is sticking to the ground haha so I don't know if we can really say “in the air”.

You take one step with your left leg and then leap out to the side to smash?

Hmm… I'm not sure here. For me, it includes only one move, the leap and the landing on the left leg. Ok maybe I don't understand what you mean but hope we can make it clear.

Likely you are not doing a scissor kick but a “block” jump, so your left foot remains at the “back” of your body at the start and at the beginning (your feet don't swap positions). Is that sounding familiar?

I have to check that again…will provide more infos later. What do you mean by “sounding familiar” ?

 

Whilst performing the jump, you would have to arch you back a bit towards your backhand corner to give your arm freedom to swing towards the shuttle.

Yeah, you describe it better than me with my poor English.

 

What you are describing from that video about Chen Hong and Chen Jin (i think) is that Chen Jin is forced to play a very deep “round the head” shot.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..pKMSgLl2iI

 

This video is of lin dans smashes. At 0.14 lin dan plays a smash from a similar position. So it should possible… but i wouldn't recommend trying too often! Perhaps you should ask your partner to come out and help you when you have to play from deep forehand to deep backhand corner?

 

Hmmm I don't know. It is easier for me to move from area 2 to area 4 than moving in the center to cover the front when my partner has to deal with the shuttle. We are quite weak with our backhand especially me so this is my solution. I really need to train a lot to improve my game…I know that but one step at the time. 🙂

 

Thanks for posting! You did really well explaining a difficult position!

You're welcome. Now, I'm expecting people to give me advices to progress haha.

 

Matt