Jonathan

This is a good topic and warrants discussion.

What I will do is this. I'll watch the responses from other forum members and then write an article to post on my blog. How about that? Perhaps i should look back over the forum as there's so many good posts and re-write them into articles.

Paul

Stuart is right in what he says and that's why i value him as one of my assistants on my residential course at Lilleshall.

One of the key aspects in this topic is the quality of your movement. Good players seem to glide along the court compared to the intermediate player where movement is very stop/start – up/down.

One of the exercises I particularly enjoy doing is asking players to follow certain movement patterns but instead of having a racquet in their hand i give them a tennis ball. This tennis ball doesn't bounce very high. I ask them to bounce the ball as they move.

So what happens? Initially the players struggle because their legs are too stiff and almost dead straight. However, they soon begin to adapt and suddenly they are bending a lot more at the knees, squatting lower and moving so much better – and controlling the tennis ball. I call it moving like a crab.

The motion of squatting lower whilst still keeping your back straight and your head up during these patterns changes the way you move but also changes the way you look. Most players do not control their head very well which results in poor balance, and generally slows down the reactions of the body.

As I said to my student tonight, you look with your eyes, not your head. The steadying of the head and using the eyes suddenly created a position whereby he could move fluently, bounce the ball watching it with his eyes and remain in balance.

Because of this combination, my student suddenly had a lot more peripheral vision and he could scan the opposing court whilst completing the exercise. Before we did this exercise, all he could see was the floor.

If you look at my video on moving backwards in balance, one of the things I am doing is using my eyes well and hence my head is in a good position to allow me to look up but also scan the court and my opponents. If I tilted my head up further I would lose the ability to look at my opponents but i would have an excellent view of the shuttle and the ceiling. My eyes also move a lot faster than my head and therefore a quick scan is all I need to know what my opponent is doing before I switch to looking at the shuttle again.

Whilst Stuart is perfectly correct about practicing to make sure your shots become automated, you can still practice your footwork and head position so you see more of the court. You can do this without hitting a shuttle to begin with but ask someone to an opponent and move on court. See if you can spot their movement whilst travelling to intercept a shuttle. When you can do this, introduce the shuttle into the rally and work on it. Initially ask them to move bigger distances e.g centre court to a corner. Then later, when you get used to the exercise, move on a metre of so in one direction.

There's so many variations on this. Look at my picture with this text. I am lunging at the net. My head is up, I've sat down into the shot and therefore by bottom points towards the floor. My weight is equally spread on both legs. Watch most players lunge and their head is pointing towards the floor, all of their weight is on the racquet leg and they can't see anything. My picture demonstrates that from this position I have excellent peripheral vision and can therefore choose my shot with greater care.

I'll leave it here for now and hopefully remember to write a more detailed article with pictures if I get the time.

Paul

Ed

As always good to see you on the forum sharing your experiences.

If it's any consolation, very few players have a massive smash. The huge power players have three things generally

1) good movement

2) good technique

3) the right genetics

Sadly, we can train movement and technique but not genetics. Either you have the type of muscle fibres that generate power or you don't.

Paul