12 Basic skills used in badminton: Technical and traditional.

“Badminton is like ballet dancing, it requires a lot of control, strength, mind play, and measured movement”.

Amir Khan

One of the most beginner-friendly games, Badminton requires the utmost agility, stamina, and quick calculated moves of a player. Starting to play Badminton is as simple as picking a Racket and smashing the shuttle but developing dexterity and expertise is a great deal. Apart from the great amount of fun playing, the player’s extensive physical and mental health benefits from it. On one hand, it keeps your body mobile and flexible while on other hand, it handles your stress levels boosting your ‘Happiness’ hormones. But there is a catch. Badminton will award you only when you play it right. Unless your basic skills of Badminton playing are not unerring and precise, you will fail to get the most out of this sport. So, this article will guide you through all the technical, non-technical, and basic skills used in badminton, hopefully making you skillful enough to become competent in it.

You can learn about how to play badminton in detail in the below-linked articles!

How to play badminton:

Before indulging in the technical skills, it is imperative to discuss some basic skills i.e. Warm-up at the start of sport and Cooling-down later on. This may seem minor activity to you and many do skip it before any physical activity, but after reading the advantages mentioned below, I am sure you will not miss it. 

To start, warming up could contain any light-paced and low aerobic activity such as sit-ups, jogging, etc. The main objective is to increase the blood flow to muscles and lower their strain. If not done properly, the muscles and joints will remain strained. The moment a strained muscle is subjected to hard and quick movement, the tissues could break causing damage to the muscle. 

Moving towards the Cooling-down phase, after the body is subjected to quick aerobic activity, the blood flow has increased manifold, lungs are pumping air at greater speeds and sweater is running down from pores. In short, the body is signaling for a rest. But you need to be careful providing that rest. People tend to go down the fans after sports, which could be detrimental to your health causing blockage of blood flow. In addition, any extra cold drink could be avoided as the temperature of the body is hot so it could be dangerous. Avoiding these practices will ensure a regulated temperature and blood flow of the body. To effectively cool down, don’t suddenly stop your activity but gradually slow it down to a minimum level.

Technical skills in badminton:

Following are some useful skills to master the sport of badminton:

1# How to grip a badminton racket? 

To start skills used in badminton, racket grips can be of two types:

• Back-Hand
• Fore-Hand 

To briefly describe both the types; In Back-hand, the thumb is placed along with the racket stick while the other finger is tightly wrapped around the stick. When playing a shot, the player will move his thumb forward adding a slight tilt to the racket. On the other, in a Fore-hand style, the only difference is that the thumb is replaced with the index finger while the other part of the hand stays wrapped around. 

Different players adopt different styles but it is preferable to first look closely for wrist strains. In the case of any strain, it is advisable to change the grip style.

After knowing about the types of grips, let’s discuss the pros and cons of grip.

While playing badminton, a naive player can be distinguished from a proficient player based on two factors: the level of control and the angle of shots. A good grip offers both. With your gripping style up to level, you are most likely to attain more control over your shots meaning the better placement of shuttle in the opponent area. Moreover, a perfect wrist movement will ensure a good hitting angle. Talking about the strength of the grip, it should be slightly tighter but not to a large degree because it will cause excessive sweating on your palm and will affect your grip quality.

2# How to serve a Shuttle in badminton?

The next most important skill in badminton is to learn the correct way to hit the shuttle. To get ahead of the opponent in the rally with regards to points, it is crucial to learn about all serving styles and the methodologies applied in each of them:  

Mainly there are three types of serves:

• Low Serve Technique:

This strategy involves careful and calculated use of power. The goal is to middle the shuttle sending it into a flat projector into the frontal portion of the half. To counter your possible aggression, the opponent will rush towards the net leaving an open area in the rear end of the court. Having a piece of knowledge about the dimensions of the court will help you carry out this shot.

• High Serve Technique:

This strategy involves striking the shuttle with the edge of the racket to attain a significant height to reach the rear end of the court. The opponent will go on the back foot and while countering this serve, the opponent will allow you to score in a slight flick shot or an aggressive smash downwards.

• Flick Technique:

This strategy is to confuse the opponent in thinking you are serving a low serve but the key lies in surprising the opponent by serving centimeters above the net. This extremely low power serve could be effective in scoring a point early on.

3# How to master different poses?

As discussed earlier, balance is key to success and an effective posture is a fundamental skill in badminton supporting it. While playing shots, you will need to switch between different postures. Here, we will be talking about the three most fundamental postures:

• Defense Posture
• Attack Posture
• Net Posture

The details are below:

• Defense Posture:

This pose is to be adopted when faced with aggressive smashes. This involves preparing your body to lean backward, bending the knees slightly, increasing the width between the legs, and raising your arms above chest level. These movements will help you tackle all incoming shots whether low or high.

• Attack Posture:

As the name suggests, you will prepare to take on the opponent looking for empty spots and gradually increasing the power in your shots. Relevant body movements, in this case, would be getting ahead while moving your arms high, legs wide and prepared to jump, weight shifted to legs uniformly and body leaned towards the sidelines. These actions would help you get behind the shuttle and hit a powerful smash.

•  Net Posture:

The idea is again evident in the name, in this posture a person moves on the net, raising the racket to the height of the net. The objective is to cut the shot and simply throw the shuttle in the opponent’s area.  

4# How to strike a winning stroke?

The final technical skill in badminton is the idea of different strokes and learning how to hit them. To begin, there are four types of strokes mainly in practice:

• Over-head Back-hand style
• Over-head Fore-hand style
• Under-arm Back-hand style
• Under-arm Fore-hand style

The fine details of these strokes will be mentioned below:

• Over-head Back-hand style:

This stroke is executed with extreme power by adding as much momentum to the racket as possible by swinging it from back to front over the head and hitting a long shot to send a shuttle at the rear end of the court. When executed with timing, it could be effective in scoring points. But, it could be difficult to execute perfectly as movements have to be swift, and slight mistakes could cost you a point.

• Over-head Fore-hand style:

This stroke requires a somewhat gentle hand from the player, creating a short swing and targeting the shuttle to follow a straight trajectory. Remember, excessive use of force to execute this stroke could lead you to hit the nets and thus could cost you a point.

• Under-arm Back-hand style:

This stroke could come in handy when facing a drop shot from the opponent. The idea is to move the racket with a swing down the body while keeping a loose grip and hitting a long shot so that opponent gets on the back foot and has no time to hit another fast drop shot. If executed flawlessly, this stroke could take pressure off you in moments and will never allow your opponent to settle in one place.

•  Under-arm Fore-hand style:

This technical stroke could be used when faced with a straight, chest-level smash hit. The fundamentals of this stroke include moving forward in a ‘Net Posture’ as discussed above, and hitting the shuttle with as much force as possible towards downwards resisting its movement. This low shot from you could easily knock your opponent out.

To add, these strokes will deliver ideal results only when extensively practiced and understood as directed above.

Conclusion:

To be successful in badminton and master the technical skills of badminton, you must always keep an element of surprise. Never let the opponent know your strategy. Deploy tactical moves such as suddenly switching to forehand from backhand or an all of the sudden flick shot. Always have a game plan ready. Study successful players and their game styles and you will surely learn a lot. Remember, in the end, hard work will succeed no matter what.