Hi,

as I know Paul is very busy, just thought I'd give you some thoughts to go on:

The better your technique, the more the racket will be doing a lot of the hard work for you, so improving your technique is always a good idea!

In general, the more relaxed you are, the more likely you are to be able to generate racket head speed, as tense muscles are actually restricted in their movement and hence this leads to less racket head speed.

Doing some of pauls armchair exercises, particularly regarding the putting a cover on the racket (and a weight in the end maybe) will help you to swing faster, as by comparison, a normal badminton racket is very easy to swing.

On this note: Whilst being very careful to do so, you may consider doing some heavy racket training, where you practice playing specific shots, typically power shots like smashes and clears, or very quick shots like drives and net kills, but with a racket a little heavier than normal, such as a training racket or a light squash racket. As with the previous recommendation, this will help you develop some more explosive strength, which will make it easier to generate quick racket head movements.

Hope that gives you a little bit to go on.

Matt