Badminton Secrets

[This is Chapter 8 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

Now you have a choice.

You can take what you’ve read, think well that was a nice read, close the
book and never think of it again, except as a fond memory that you once
read a book that can one day improve your badminton game.

Or you can give the secrets a try.

The very last secret that I will leave you with, which isn’t really a secret
at all but we all need to be reminded of now and then, is the following:

Nothing happens unless you take action.

And that’s really the biggest secret that anyone can tell you. Take
consistent, directed action towards a set target and you will get there.

The route may be windy, you’ll undoubtedly get blown off course once in
a while, but as long as you keep taking action with your end in mind, you
will improve your badminton game more than you ever dreamed possible.

The best of luck, and thanks for reading.

[This is Chapter 7 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

There is an activity that we do in coaching during goal setting that
develops a level of enormous potential in your life, and it can, along with
all the other techniques described in this book, be brought over to
badminton.

That activity is to always start from a position of having absolutely no
limits to the possibilities open to you.

By that I mean do not limit yourself at the beginning by negative beliefs
about what is possible, or what you are capable of.

You must assume that anything you want to do, you have the potential to
do.

Anything, I hear you say!

Well, I should clarify and say anything that is humanly possible!! You are
not going to win the Olympics Men’s Singles title if you’re a 60 year old
woman!

But if someone on the planet has done it before, then physical limits
withstanding, you are capable of doing that also.

You start off with having no limits to what you wish to achieve.

Then you decide what it is that you want to do.

This can be as ambitious as you like of course, because in the first step
we have agreed that there are no limits to what you can do.

And now that you have got what you really really want to achieve, THEN
we can go about the practice of getting you to believe that you can
achieve it.

This is the order that you must do these in when deciding what you want
to achieve.

So if you could achieve anything in badminton, what would it be? If
failure were not an option, what would you do?

Take your time on these two questions, the first answers are rarely the
ones that we end up going with. The questions should throw up some
interesting dilemmas if nothing else!

When people are asked this in relation to their life in general, the
immediate answers are often of the following variety: be a millionaire, be
famous, sit on the beach all day. But when they think about what they
REALLY want, then it becomes a bit different! Being able to sit on the
beach all day may sound wonderful, but after the first month or so you’ll
be looking for something a little more challenging!

Now take what you have come up with, and consider it already happened.

How do you feel? Does it fill you with excitement, you can’t wait to get
started right now on using this book and getting where you want to go? If
not, then keep thinking until you do find something that moves you like
that!

If you have what you really, really want to achieve, however big it is,
now I’m going to let you in on probably the last secret.

The secret to getting it is to believe that:

• You deserve to achieve it
• You are capable of achieving it.

Rate yourself at this moment in time on the two points above.

How much, on a scale of 0 to 100, do you think you deserve to achieve
your goal?

And similarly, how capable do you think you are of achieving it?

Now here’s the plan.

Work on increasing both of those scales, because the nearer to 100 on
each one you get, the more likely you are to achieve.

Normally, as we work towards achieving something, each scale goes up
as we get positive results, until it is high enough that we are able to
achieve it.

But if you can convince yourself that you both deserve and are capable of
achieving your aim fully, you will find yourself getting there a whole lot
quicker!

Let’s take an example.

An average club player, playing in his club’s second team, say, decides
that what he really really wants to achieve is to represent his county.

He convinces himself that he deserves to play for his county by asking
himself ‘what would make me deserve to get in that team?’.

And his answer is ‘if I gave everything I had, trained hard and in the best
way and never gave up, I would 100% deserve to get in the team’.

So he has his own personally-defined boundaries for the first point. Now
he knows that as long as he gives everything he has, he totally deserves to
get into the county team.

Secondly, he asks himself if he has the ability to get into the team. Well,
going by his current second team standards, no he doesn’t have the
ability.

But, that’s not the question. The question is, how much does he believe
that he IS CAPABLE of getting into the team?

Well, he’s been the same standard for a while, but he’s read this section a
few times, and is coming to accept that it is physically, and mentally
possible for him to get into that team.

And slowly a little light goes on in his head, the clouds of doubt that were
there earlier had anyone suggested that he could play for his county begin
to disappear and he realises, it’s possible that he could play for his
county!!

Aha, now we’re getting somewhere!

With that revelation, the brain subconsciously starts thinking of the ways
and means necessary to get there (need some coaching, need to train more
frequently, need to put to use the techniques in this book (sorry, couldn’t
resist that last one!)).

First comes belief, then answers.

So there we have it. Just to recap, begin by assuming there are no
boundaries to your potential. With this in mind, decide what you really
want to achieve, more than anything else in badminton. Then, find
yourself a mentor, someone who has achieved something similar to what
you want to do.

Next, ask yourself whether you deserve to achieve this, and what you
would need to do to convince yourself that you 100% do deserve it. Then
ask yourself if you yet believe you have the potential to achieve it. Push
that belief up until you truly believe it is a possibility. Because I’m telling
you, it will be. We are capable of a lot more than we think.

By now you should be pretty motivated (if the goal was good enough). So
take that momentum, decide what your first step is going to be, and
congratulations, you are ready to take your badminton to a whole new
level!

[This is Chapter 6 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

Imagine a baby learning to walk.

It has seen adults walking, and with their encouragement tries to do the
same.

The first tentative step, and the baby falls down in a heap.

Then, it tries again and again, until finally it makes that first step, and
everyone cheers and says what a clever baby it is, and the baby is happy
and continues to walk for the rest of its life.

Now the mere fact that pretty much every human being on the planet can
walk proves that this must be a rather successful way of doing anything,
and we are going to take this and put it into a badminton context.

Let’s take each bit of the above story one at a time and build a ‘success
formula’.

“It has seen adults walking…”

Number one most important fact. The baby knows what it wants to do; it
knows its outcome.

Do you have a vague idea about “getting a bit better at badders”? Or
rather do you have a goal of “by this time next year, I want to be the best
player in my club”?

The baby knows exactly what it wants to do, it wants to copy all the big
people!

And so do we, so decide now what it is that you are aiming for. This can
be at any level, whether it’s to be able to backhand clear from one end of
the court to the other, or to be able to smash like your favourite world
badminton player, but whatever it is you have to know clearly in your
mind what you are aiming for.

“…and with their encouragement tries to do the same.”

Ah, the encouragement of others!

We spoke in the first ‘secret’ about playing around the best players that
you possible can, which of course leads onto the first part of our success
formula here.

But equally important is to have a good set of people supporting you,
encouraging you, being completely on your side.

This may be your coach if you have one, a parent if you are young, or a
partner or whole team.

Think for a moment who the most important people are in your game,
from an encouraging and discouraging point of view.

Who do you play best around?
Who do you play your worst around?
Who inspires you, and who seems to deflate you (not necessarily on
purpose)?

Often this leads to some pretty interesting answers. Whether it’s the
realisation that the pressure a parent is putting on you makes you play
worse, or a certain player who you are in awe of makes you lose all your
confidence it’s all gathering that evidence that we talked about in secret 2
and finding out what works and what doesn’t.

So we know where we are going and we’re starting to surround ourselves
with people who really want us to win.

“The first tentative step…”

The baby takes action!

It tries something, it gets out of its comfort zone and attempts something,
anything that could start it on the road to walking.

This is the first thing you must do to achieve anything – try! Don’t worry
if it doesn’t work, just get out there, be proactive, and do something.
Whatever it takes to set you off towards the goal that you are aiming for.

So of course, the first thing to do in a badminton context is hit that
shuttle. Or play that game, or join that club.

Then we get…

“…and the baby falls down in a heap.”

A result from your action. An outcome. Something happens.

It may be bad, as in the case of our poor baby, or it may be good. For our
purposes it really doesn’t matter, the important thing is that you get that
result.

So say you’re practicing your smashes, you’ve decided what your aim is,
you’ve taken action and hit the smash and now you’ve got a result (smash
goes into the net, say).

Let’s go back to the baby…

“Then it tries again and again, until finally it makes that first step…”

Now I’m not going to say to you, right the next step is that you keep
hitting a smash until you get it right.

That would be simplistic, and wrong, and if it was that easy then whoever
practiced the most would be the best player, and we all know that’s not
always true.

Because what the baby is unconsciously doing is noting what didn’t work
the first time, making an adjustment and trying again. It’s thinking well
last time I fell over backwards so I’ll try the same thing but lean a little
forward (in fact not even thinking it, this is the bodies natural learning
methodology).

So it adjusts, tries something else. That produces another outcome.
So it adjusts again. And keeps going until it gets to its goal.
Which is exactly what we must do on a badminton court. Treat every
shot, every rally as all that it really is, an action followed by an outcome.

Then, take the outcome, say ‘that’s interesting’, learn from it what you
can, and try again.

That is why practice is so important but as we said below, not just
repeating the action, but learning from what has gone on beforehand, and
adjusting each time until you get to where you want to go.

“…and everyone cheers and says what a clever baby it is, and the baby is
happy and continues to walk for the rest of its life.”

That is you winning your tournament, or your league match, or beating
your opponent in a friendly.

Using this process will give you confidence to take to the next challenge,
it will stop you quitting when the going gets tough (because your reaction
will simply be ‘that’s interesting’), and it will give you the motivation to
keep on going until you achieve all that you can dream of in the sport.

To summarise, your success formula that I now give you to use as you
wish has the following steps:

1. Decide what it is you want to do.
2. Take an action towards achieving that.
3. You get a result, or an outcome.
4. Observe that outcome, what caused it.
5. Take another action, with a slight adjustment based on what you
learnt on the first action.
6. Get another result, take another action and so on.
7. Then, after a certain number of actions you will reach where you
were aiming to go.

The beauty of this success formula is that as you get more experience
behind you, subconsciously there will be more feedback that your brain
can call on, more variables in the formula if you like, and your ability to
do whatever it is that you are trying to do will rise exponentially! Or in
other words, each action you take will have more impact on what you are
trying to do than the last one.

[This is Chapter 5 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

Mental preparation.

Doesn’t it send a chill down your spine?

Where to start? What do I do? What does it mean??

Well, panic not, for I am here to help you through it.

Just as all top athletes work as hard on the mental side of the game as the
physical, if you are serious about taking your badminton to the next level,
or just want to get an advantage over your next opponent, it is essential
that you get into a habit of mentally sitting down and preparing yourself
for each game.

Did you ever have an exam or a test where you have left all the revising
to the last few days, and you feel that you’ll never get it all done in time?

You find yourself outside the exam hall revising up to the last minute,
while all the best students, who you know will get better marks than you,
are sitting quietly and confidently just waiting to go in?

It’s all about preparation.

A great many games are won before the players have set foot upon the
court.

The levels of confidence of the players make such a big difference to how
a match pans out.

And what’s the best way to have confidence in a match?

To be as prepared as you can possibly be, that’s how!

We are going to go through a four-step process that will mean you’ll step
onto the badminton court in the most positive, confident state of mind
that you can be.

You will only get good feelings whenever you play badminton, or even
think about badminton. Not only will it take your play to new levels but
your levels of enjoyment will go through the roof!

It is a very simple process that need not take any more than 10 or 15
minutes, but if repeated on a consistent basis, will get firmly ensconced
into your subconscious and set you up for each time you play.

To begin, as all good mental exercises do, you need to find a place that is
quiet and you will not be disturbed in. Say a bedroom, or a quiet room in
your house.

Try to find somewhere that is comfortable, but not necessarily where you
would do other activities.

For example, maybe you watch TV lying on your bed facing one way.

Well, we want your preparation place to be different, maybe lying facing
the other way, or sitting on the edge of the bed.

Wherever you decide, associate that place with comfort, safety and most
of all think of it as the place from which you are going to change your
whole game of badminton.

Start by getting comfortable and relaxing your body by taking a couple of
deep breaths.

With each breath, feel good feelings going through you, from the top of
your head to the tip of your toes. This is your time, and nothing from the
outside world can harm you.

Firstly, spend two or three minutes thinking of everything that you have
to be thankful for in your badminton game.

That you have the privilege of playing the game in the first place, your
continuing fitness and freedom from injuries.

Maybe give thanks for your last win, or the people that you get to play
against.

You can give thanks for the people who organise everything whether it be
a club, or league, tournament or team (or just you and a friend hiring a
local court).

Just spend this time in silent gratitude, thanking the world (or a religious
figure if that is your belief) for giving you everything it has to allow you
to enjoy and be successful in badminton.

This will hammer into you the fact that it is not our right to play
badminton, but our privilege.

And coming from this perspective, rather than taking as read that we
should be winning and focussing on the negative things that happen when
we lose, we come from a positive state of gratitude for being able to play
the game, and build on top of that a positive state of even more gratitude
when we start to win games. But this time, when we lose, we are still in a
positive state, in fact if you can be thankful for the lessons that losing
gave you, you are most of the way there to being a better player!

How many champions do you see who say afterwards ‘of course I won,
there was never any question that I wouldn’t’ (and mean it!). Not many.

Compare that to winners who give thanks to everyone and everything that
got them to where they are. They believed that it was possible, even
likely, that they would win, but still are humble enough to be grateful for
what took them there. That is the kind of attitude that we are aiming for
here. An attitude of gratitude if you like.

The next two steps bring together two techniques that you may already be
using to great effect, namely visualisations and affirmations.

Spend two or three minutes relaxing and visualising yourself on court
playing in exactly the way that you would like to. Imagine winning the
games against your great rivals, beating people who at the moment it only
seems a dream that you could even get a point off!

As with all visualisations, make the colours bolder, make the pictures as
clear as you can. Imagine them in three dimensions and everything large,
as though you are right up next to what you are imagining.

And of course, hear what you would be hearing, clearly and loudly. Feel
what you would be feeling, the positive emotions of knowing that you are
playing just how you would wish to play. The elation of winning, how it
feels when that last shot is smashed at your opponent’s feet.

At the end of the visualisation period, repeat to yourself the affirmation ‘I
am becoming a better badminton player’ over and over, each time putting
real feeling into the words. It is this emotion that will connect with the
subconscious and really make the difference.

Move your body as you say the affirmation and feel the intensity of the
words, in whatever positive way you can. What will your posture be
when you are the wonderful player that you are becoming? Smile, maybe
clench your fist in the air, whatever it takes to put yourself into that state.

And finally, the fourth step is to show gratitude again, but this time to
thank the Universe for that which you have just visualised.

Give thanks for the unbelievable play that you are now capable of (at
least in your mind!), for the winning of that tournament, for beating your
former rival to game love.

These are only examples of course, what you give thanks for will reflect
what you visualised in the second step, which of course is personal to
what your ambitions and dreams are in the game.

That is the beauty of this simple little four step process, that shouldn’t
take you long, but if repeated in the same place as often as is possible
(daily would be ideal), for as long as possible (it’s said that it takes 21
days to form a habit, whether that’s true I don’t know, but if you can do it
for 21 days every day, I think it should become a good, positive part of
your daily routine!), it will give you a personal blueprint for success.

This is not me telling you how to play a certain shot, it’s not me giving
you specific instructions on how to play, it’s taking what you want to
achieve and making it a reality.

It’s you preparing yourself to go onto court safe in the knowledge that
you are ready for whatever the game may throw at you.

Even if you do lose a game that you should have won, the picture of you
playing how you really want to play will still be there in your mind and
will give you the motivation to carry on and work through the inevitable
setbacks that will occur.

[This is Chapter 4 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

When I was young I had a terrible tendency to worry.

I’d be on court, playing a match, and those little Gremlins would be
there… ‘what happens if I lose’…’what if I get injured’…’what happens
if I embarrass myself’, even worrying about after the game, maybe
shaking hands or giving in the score, or how bad would my opponent feel
if I beat him…

I think you get the idea!

And of course this had a detrimental effect on my game, especially if I
was losing. This seemed to give the Gremlins even more encouragement
(‘Why did I do that’, ‘I’m rubbish’, ‘I told you so’ etc).

Maybe the gremlins don’t manifest themselves to you as worry, but fear.

Fear of your opponent, fear of losing, fear of winning even?

Or they may appear as any host of other negative emotions, such as
jealousy, guilt, anger to give just a few.

Everyone has these little creatures in some way or another and not only
can they make you play badly, but they also decrease your enjoyment of
playing – now THAT’S a serious issue!!

It wasn’t until I read an old book by Dale Carnegie, ‘How To Stop
Worrying And Start Living’, that I managed to overcome these feelings
of worry that were holding me back in life in general, and of course adapt
them into my badminton play.

The techniques there really made me realise how futile all of these
negative emotions really are, and at the same time how easy it is to avoid
them and stop them taking control of your game.

Because at the end of the day, you are physically on court, exactly the
same as anyone else.

It is the emotions that you are feeling that put you apart from the next
person.

And the good news is that you have complete control over what emotions
you ‘allow’ yourself to feel.

Where is all this taking us?

In the book, he talks about living in ‘Day-Tight Compartments’.

This means that you shut off all bad thoughts and worry about what has
gone on before today.

And with similar definiteness you give no anxiety or negativity to the
actions of what will happen tomorrow onwards.

You put all your focus on the day that you are living now, for that is the
only day that you can truly influence at any one moment.

Imagine a giant rubber coming along and rubbing out all of the things that
you carry with you from the past, freeing you from their burden.

Imagine the same rubber taking all of those concerns that you have about
what could happen in the future and rubbing them out so that you don’t
have to give any emotional energy to them today.

Then you are free to concentrate on what you need to do today, ready to
attack your tasks with relish, safe in the knowledge that nothing from the
past or the future can hurt you.

Like all techniques, it takes time to really get into the habit of thinking
this way, but with tiny incremental steps in the right direction, it is
amazing what can be achieved.

Taking this one step further, and more into a badminton area, consider the
notion of living in ‘point-tight compartments’.

Imagine each badminton point that you play you start completely fresh
(well, mentally anyway!).

You are not affected by the anger of your previous mistakes. You are not
concerned that it is 14-14 in the final.

Of course you are aware of all these things, and you are using all the
relevant information that you have acquired from them.

But as far as those pesky Gremlins are concerned, whether they are
represented by worry, or fear, or impatience or whatever, each one
doesn’t survive over to the next point.

And when you cut off its air supply, or that which the Gremlin needs to
survive, ie you consistently thinking the same emotion point after point, it
has no means of staying around, and pretty soon those Gremlins will
become extinct!

So how should you be thinking?

If there is going to be some room where all those negative emotions used
to be, we’re going to have to fill them with something (nature abhors a
vacuum!).

And, yes you’ve guessed it…

Positive emotions!

If you concentrate on the Gremlins, they will win and adversely affect
your play. But on the other hand, if you concentrate, or focus, on
something more positive, and do this on a consistent basis, there will be
nothing to hold you back.

How do you do this?

All will be explained in the next secret…

[This is Chapter 3 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

It’s really rather amazing how the speed that you can make the shuttle
go can make such a huge impact in the game.

Over the years, it’s generally accepted that deception and deftness of
touch have been left behind and overtaken by the sheer speed and
accuracy of shot.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that if someone came up to me and said
that I had 5 minutes to improve their game, the technique that I am about
to show you would be the one that I would demonstrate.

It’s by no means a new or revolutionary technique, but its effectiveness is
immediate.

Let me explain what it is.

Before you go out on court, we are going to pump up your muscles a bit.
I mean mentally of course!!

Before I tell you how, I’d like to tell you of a party trick that again is
quite common, but demonstrates well the principle that we’re going to be
using.

It involves two people. First of all, person A holds one arm out in front of
them. Person B puts two fingers on their wrist and tries to push down,
whilst person A is trying to resist with all their might.

It’s a struggle, but eventually B manages to push it down.

Then person A goes through an exercise very similar to the one
below, puts their arm outstretched and again person B tries to push it
downwards.

But the arm won’t go!

However hard person B pushes, the arm stays where it is!!

Then, person A does the opposite of the exercise below, put their arm out
again, but this time despite A trying his hardest to stop B pushing his arm
down, it goes down like it was as light as a feather!!

I actually first saw this trick when I was doing a fire walk for charity in
the motivational session that they had beforehand and everyone in the
room (including myself) was amazed!

So here’s how to achieve superior strength (it actually works best if
someone else reads out the instructions)…

Sit down somewhere that you won’t be disturbed, get comfortable and
relax.

Close your eyes, and picture an image in your mind’s eye of yourself, as
you are now.

Observe what that picture looks like, what colour it is, is it in three
dimensions, where in your mind do you see it?

Just spend a moment really looking at it.

How bright are the colours (if any)?

How in focus is the picture?

Is it a moving picture, or still?

Is there any sort of frame around the picture?

Are you looking down at the picture, is it in front of you, or to one side?

Now focus in on the muscles in your arms. Imagine them getting bigger,
stronger. See them bulging.

Say to yourself ‘I am strong, I am powerful, I am mighty.’

Keep saying those words, and as you do imagine your muscles getting
stronger, your whole arm getting more powerful.

As you see your body, the picture is becoming clearer, more vivid. The
colours are brighter and it is closer to you.

You can hear triumphant sounds as you grow larger and larger,
outgrowing the room that you are in, and your muscles become solid, like
steel girders, all the while saying ‘I am strong, I am powerful, I am
mighty’.

See what it’s like now to survey the world from up high, your arms strong
and powerful, as though they are made of metal.

As you keep saying those magic words (I am strong, I am powerful, I am
mighty), see yourself going onto your badminton court, towering over all
the players, picking up your racket.

Practice some smashes, all the time making the picture clearer, colours
brighter and all of it more exciting.

Make the smashes spring off your racket at 100 mph, going so fast that
they make a hole in the floor. Feel how it feels for your steel girder of an
arm to hit that shuttle.

Hear yourself saying the words, feel the feeling of elation as the shuttle
leaves your racket, see through your own eyes how your body looks, now
in splendid three dimensions, like the clearest of movies, bright colours
and everything dazzlingly new and intense. Again, look at your muscles,
see how solid, how impressive they look.

Now clench your fist, feeling power going through your whole body like
a massive bolt of lightning, and clear your mind of everything.

Just imagine a blank white nothingness.

Welcome back!

So how was that exercise? The first time I did it, just before I went on
court, I was amazed at the results.

Suddenly, when I smashed, it really did feel that there was a steel girder
where my arm used to be! I even thought I heard the metallic noise that
that would make!

And while my smashes didn’t quite make a hole in the ground (!), they
certainly had an immediate impact on my badminton, and as a result of
course, an immediate impact on the number of games I won.

This exercise is best performed as near as possible to going onto court,
and as you will find out in the bonus book “How To Get 92% Of Your
Badminton Serves In …Guaranteed!”, by clenching your fist at
the end you are ‘anchoring’ those strong and powerful feelings so that
anytime on court that you clench your fist in exactly the same way, the
same feelings will return.

If you find that this exercise doesn’t seem to be having any effect, you
need to repeat it, concentrating on making the picture that you see more
vivid, really overpowering so that it is etched into your mind, turn up the
volume of the sounds that you hear, and feel the feelings even more
intensely.

[This is Chapter 2 of my book "Badminton Secrets, 7 Steps To Getting the Edge Over Your Opponents", now available free on badmintonsecrets.com!]

Now I’m sure that if I asked you what skills a badminton player needs
to be successful, you could list a great many (that’s why we love
badminton so much!):

• Speed
• Strength
• Stamina
• Suppleness
• Hand-eye co-ordination
• Tactical awareness
• Accuracy

I would like to add one to that list, a characteristic that all top players
have by nature, and one that again comes from your love of the game and
the desire to be the best you can.

That skill is observation. Taking in what is happening in a game,
observing all of the tiny little factors that go into determining who comes
away as winner, and who comes away as loser.

Everything that happens to us is observed by our subconscious. It is the
conscious that has the unenviable task of deciding what it wants to take
notice of and put to use.

It sifts out millions of things all the time, only remembering that which it
thinks will serve it.

But how does that help us in our quest to win more badminton matches?

Just by knowing that

1. Observation is a skill.
2. It is a skill that can be developed, and
3. It is a skill that will win you more matches, more often,
you are better equipped than probably 99% of players out there.

Sure, the top players do this automatically, over years and years of
practice.

But we are going to cut all that out and use the power of observation
NOW!

From now on you are going to go about the job of winning more
badminton games with the dedication and attention to detail of a
detective.

Choose your favourite.

Sherlock Holmes? Miss Marple? Hercules Poirot?

During a game, you will be keenly watching, looking for any evidence
that can help you clue together what it takes to win more matches.

There are three aspects to this observation, that if combined will give you
the ability to control matches, always know what happened when you
lost, and more importantly what happened when you won – so you can do
more of it!!

Number one is observing your own actions.

This is the secret of success – the better you are at observing the
outcomes of your actions, the better you are at adjusting them to what
they need to be for you to succeed.

I’ll repeat that.

“The better you are at observing the outcomes of your actions, the better
you are at adjusting them to what they need to be for you to succeed.”

That net shot worked, but the last one didn’t. What was the difference?

You play better at the end of a game than at the start. Why? What is it
that makes the difference?

Some days you can do backhand clears for fun, other days you feel like
you’re learning from scratch again (this is one I particularly can associate
with!). What are you doing or not doing on the days that it works?

One side benefit from this self-observation is that the act of observing
yourself takes the focus off your potential for mistakes, making you play
automatically a whole lot better!

To illustrate this, let me take you back to my soccer days.

The coach had set us a challenge to kick the ball into his hands, from a
suitably challenging distance away, and over an obstacle if I remember
rightly.

We all lined up and one by one, everyone had their turn to get it slap bang
into his hands. And lo and behold, not one of the passes hit its target!

It was getting quite amusing just how bad the kicks were, and the coach
was getting more and more exasperated (which of course made it even
funnier!).

He eventually got us to stop the exercise, and got everyone to stop trying
to be accurate, and to just observe what was happening with each kick.

And of course, we all breathed a sigh of relief at not having the pressure
of trying to get it inch perfect, and, you’ve guessed it, most of us got our
kicks right where we wanted them to go!

This is very useful to remember in a badminton match when every shot
seems to be going wrong. You are not only trying to observe to learn
ways of winning the game, but you’re also observing as a way of
returning to your natural, relaxed game.

So a player can become adept at what’s going wrong and right in their
own game, but that is only half of the battle (or rather a third – it’s a three
step process remember!).

The second step is taking notice of your opponent, what they are doing
and thinking.

Where are their strengths and weaknesses?

Do they stand far forward when receiving serve?

When they smash are they slow to recover?

As this particular skill develops, not only will you know what shots you
should play to a particular player, but you will be able to predict what
they are going to play back to you.

Because other players won’t have as well developed observational skills
as you, they won’t be using the first step (self-observation), so won’t
know that they always return a cross-court net shot cross-court, or they
always lift your short serve, or always go for the winner when faced with
a smash.

As a corollary to this step, to take this concept even further, and to make
it more effective, you can take a poker expert’s advice.

I remember reading somewhere that the key to winning a poker game
doesn’t involve controlling what you should be thinking.

It’s not even controlling what your opponent’s thinking.

It’s controlling what your opponent thinks YOU are thinking!!

The example they gave was of one of those old poker games on a boat in
the middle of the sea, and it all came down to the last game, all the money
was at stake. The hand was dealt, one man put all his money in the
middle of the table, stood up and threw himself over the edge of the boat!

Of course, his opponent matched his bet, confident that it must be a pretty
awful hand to make the guy do that. They turned the cards over and the
guy actually had a full house!!

To put this into a badminton context, let’s take the three examples given
above.

1. Your opponent always returns a cross-court net shot cross-court.

Remember, your opponent doesn’t know that he is going to do this (step
2). He thinks that you don’t know where he is going to put the shuttle
(step 2 corollary). So if you change your actions (step 1) to looking as
though you think he’s going to do a straight net shot, all the while
knowing it’s going cross-court, when he actually plays the shot you have
nipped across the court before the shuttle has left his racket! You are
controlling the return before he’s even played his shot!

You may be thinking, well that’s all very well but what if he notices this,
and starts playing straight net shots? Well, if you’ve ever played against a
player who always cross-courts a net shot, it takes them quite a while to
adjust and then suddenly start playing them straight!

2. Your opponent always lifts your short serve.

This may seem obvious – ‘how can someone not know they always lift
my short serve’?

But imagine in a doubles match where the serve goes around the four
players, where even on your serve you are only serving one in two to a
particular player, and you are mixing it up between long and short serves.

Every eighth serve in the game could be you serving them a short serve.

How useful would it be to know what one in eight returns is going to be?!

That can be achieved by developing your powers of observation with my
three steps!

3. Your opponent always goes for a winner when faced with a smash.

This is a nice one to have!

If you have ‘detected’ from your observations that whenever you lift the
shuttle, they go for an out and out winner, you have the steps covered.

You already know what they are thinking – shuttle up, me kill! You know
what they think you are thinking – they don’t care! All their focus is on
killing that shuttle so that you can’t return it, so to them it doesn’t matter
what you are thinking.

Of course, the fact that you are now controlling them by lifting the shuttle
and being totally ready for that smash, safe in the knowledge that they are
not preparing for their smash to be returned means that you are
controlling your own play in such a way to get maximum results.

Obvious question: What if the smash is impossible to get back?

Now obvious answer: No smash is impossible to get back if you know
where it’s going!

The third and final step in this three step process is to observe the game
from what we call in life coaching terms ‘third position’, or to observe it
from an outsider’s point of view.

It is the hardest of the three steps to do during a game, but the most
effective if done right.

The way to do it is to take out of the equation what you are feeling, take
out of the equation what you think your opponent is thinking (and, yes,
take out what you think they think you are thinking – this is getting
complicated!) and view the match from the eyes of an outsider.

And I mean this literally – pretend you are sitting on the side of the court
watching ‘you’ play the game. What do you see? As your favourite
detective, what do you observe? What would you tell the ‘you’ on court
to do to win the match?

For example, it may well be obvious to an outsider that player A is
winning because he is smashing and B is lifting the shuttle more. Or that
each rally is ending with an unforced error. Or that one player only wins
points on their short serve.

This is all vital information that you can use!!

Let’s just take one of those examples; say most rallies are ending with
unforced errors. Just by then changing the focus of your play, based on
this new found observation, from trying desperately to win the point to
making sure that your shots were going in with no thought to winning the
game, you would suddenly paradoxically start winning.

Your opponent would still be making the unforced errors and you would
calmly just be tapping the shuttle in. In all likelihood, your calmness and
effectiveness would probably make them try even harder to win the point
and make even more mistakes. You are playing smarter – proof indeed
that just trying harder alone will not make you a better player.

This particular result may in fact have come about from any one of the
three observation steps:

• You may have observed that you were making a lot of unforced
errors to lose the points, and changed your focus to getting the
shuttle in.

• You may have observed that your opponent was making a lot of
unforced errors, so changed your focus to wait until they did them!

• You may have observed looking at it from the ‘outside’ that the
rallies were finishing with unforced errors, and adjusted your game
accordingly.

Not all changes will be as obvious as this one, or capable of being spotted
from each of the three steps, but I hope that this gives you an idea of the
three ‘dimensions’ if you like, of developing your skill of observation.