Couldn't agree more with the above! It has been such a privilege to attend a dedicated coaching weekend with so many eager and willing participants (plus the awesome coaching team 🙂 ). In general, amongst the coaches, we can't believe the progress we see! I am not talking 2 whole days, but just the difference we see after an hour or two on a topic. The participants really do give it their all, and reap the rewards! A privilege to be a part of it!

I think the overhead preparation session we did with the advanced group at the last advanced weekend (a while back now) was one of the most interesting things I have seen. I am sure that there were at least a couple of “advanced” players who started that session thinking “this is beneath me”. However, by the end of it, every single one of the players agreed that the consistency of their shots had improved, and instead of hitting every shot “well”, they hit every shot with increased accuracy, consistency and power. I seem to remember that almost every single player from that session highlighted that session as the highlight of their whole weekend.

I think the great thing about a dedicated block of time to learn and practice is that you quickly realise how good you could be, if you were to practice with intent more regularly. As an example, I played a tournament recently. I played a few matches a day across saturday and sunday, with the occasional chance to knock up in between matches. By the final match after two days, I was moving faster than ever before, hitting shots harder and with more accuracy than I thought possible, and nearly won the mixed doubles, losing narrowly at the last hurdle to a Hampshire County 1st player – something I thought beyond me as I had to beat many good county players to get that far. And all of this, simply because I was immersed in the badminton and practice for longer than normal, and I was trying to compete rather than just enjoy a social session.

I like this topic 🙂