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Winning a badminton match often comes down to one thing… making less mistakes than your opposition!
If you want to improve your badminton and win more matches, it’s very likely that you will need to improve the consistency of your shots!
In this article we’ll share 8 ways to improve your consistency in detail, and give you our top tips for how to do them well!
Improving your racket preparation will help you to reduce your unforced errors. Here are two common examples of why this is the case:
Waiting with your racket down isn’t efficient because you have to bring your racket up to meet the shuttle. This wastes a lot of time compared to waiting with your racket higher.
By wasting time, it also means you’ll take the shuttle slightly later which puts you under more pressure. It then gives you less options of what shots you can play, and can make you more likely to make a mistake!
So instead, try to keep your racket in around this position when you’re at the net (shown in the photo above).
To learn more about correct racket positioning, check out this article here where we go into a lot more detail!
Here, we’re talking about your preparation just before you hit the shuttle – you want to get into a fixed position so you’re in control of your racket and your body and therefore less likely to make a mistake.
An example of this is when you’re lunging towards the net to lift the shuttle from your backhand side. If you prepare your racket & body as early as possible (i.e. your racket is out in front of you, in a relaxed backhand grip, your non-racket arm is out behind you), then this hugely reduces the margin for error as you’re completely in control.
If you weren’t in a fixed position (so you’re lunging forwards and then trying to get into a backhand grip, and doing a huge swing because you’ve not prepared your racket and body positioning correctly), then you’re much more likely to play a worse quality shot – or even make a mistake!
We don’t mean that you should slow your swing down or have a robotic or predictable technique though!
You might have experienced times when you’ve played badly even though you felt like you prepared really well… And then times you actually played really well when you felt a bit injured or tired.
This is essentially because you had no expectations when you didn’t feel 100%, so were able to relax!
When you’re playing badminton, and you’re not relaxed, it often makes you hold your racket tighter and makes your shoulders and whole body more tense. This then leads to you making poorer shot choices, and playing lower quality shots – all meaning you make more mistakes!
But, feeling nervous & tense is very normal, so here are some tips to help you reduce these mistakes:
The more you think about something, the more likely you will see it – which is known as frequency bias. If you’ve ever thought about something (e.g. a red car), then suddenly you start seeing it everywhere around you, this is what we’re referring to!
So if you’re always thinking about making easy mistakes, then that’s all you’re going to see, which will cause you to tense up even more and the cycle continues.
Instead, change the way you talk to yourself and perhaps have a few words that you say to yourself before each rally, such as ‘stay relaxed’ or ‘over and in’.
💡 If you’re playing doubles, you can ask your partner to help remind you when they see you getting tense, or a coach if they’re behind the court with you, or a friend you speak to before you go onto court!
How many times have you come off court from a match and not even remember what happened because it went by so fast? It’s happened to all of us, but this is why it’s so important to take your time in between points to reset, remind yourself of the game plan and focus on the next point.
To help you slow down in between points, you can take a drink, mop up some sweat on the court or even use a reset cue before you start every point.
As we mentioned in 3), you could also have a phrase you say to yourself, or even a specific action to help you move past the previous point, focus on the upcoming point and stick to the game plan! This really helps you avoid making lots of mistakes in a row which often happens a lot in badminton!
An example of this is former England Men’s Singles player, Toby Penty – he would look up to the ceiling just before serving or receiving the serve, as a reminder to now focus on the upcoming point.
This one is the most obvious, but probably the most important point! Having the right technique is crucial for every shot you play, so if you find you’re making a lot of mistakes on a certain shot, it would be a good idea to check your technique.
For example:
These are just a few questions to ask (either yourself when watching yourself back, a training partner, or ideally a coach!). We also have lots of specific shot technique tutorials that you can check out here!
Trying to play perfect badminton with every shot you play will instantly increase the mistakes you make. We aren’t robots after all, so it’s important to allow yourself some room for error, especially at those tense moments!
Aim your shots just inside the lines and just above the net to increase your consistency and reduce unforced errors!
When you’re trying to get better at something, research indicates that there are 3 levels of progress:
Each of these levels of progress gives you satisfaction but on different time scales. So buying a new racket gives you an instant reward whereas purposeful practice requires a lot of hours before seeing any reward, making it a lot harder to do. This is why a lot of people tend to veer towards level 1, Gear Acquisition!
💡 Buying the latest badminton racket won’t make you world number one, but putting in the hours of intentional practice to become a better badminton player will get you much closer to there!
To get the most out of your training on court, you need to be consistent with everything else in your life too! By this, we mean your daily habits such as your warm up, recovery, diet, sleep and lots more! By developing healthy habits, you create the best environment for you to perform your best in training and competition.
It’s normal to have both good and bad days, but if we can do what we can to prevent these bad days from happening, it might just lead to more good days! Developing good habits is a whole other really interesting topic in itself, and we’d recommend reading the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear to learn more about this!
Now that’s a lot of different tips, but we hope you’ve learned that it’s not only about your technique or hours of practice, but it has a lot to do with your mindset and mental approach too! And if you want to learn how we do purposeful practice each week to improve our consistency, you can watch our full YouTube video below.