The Best Way to Teach Badminton. And the Ramifications for Other Sports.

Let’s take the example of teaching a beginner to do a long serve.

Traditionally, the coach tells the beginner about the biomechanics of the stroke. They tell them to focus on the relevant body and arm movements – where to face, how to turn, how to coordinate their shoulder, arm, wrist and racquet.

The aim of this detailed instruction is to ensure the player develops good technique – the foundation on which progress is built.

But even though this is the standard way of doing things, just how effective is it?

Lucky for us, some researchers decided to find out.

Some Research to Ponder

The researchers recruited a group of beginner badminton players[1]^,[2] and had them hit 10 long serves while focusing on each of the following:

• the movement of their arm and hand.
• the racquet head.
• the point where they intended the shuttle to land.

They also hit 10 serves for which they weren’t given any instructions about focusing. The accuracy of the players’ serves was measured.

An Unexpected Result  

Now when a coach gets a beginner to focus of what they’re doing as in focusing on the movement of their arm, hand or racquet head you would expect their technique to be good.

Consequently, you would expect their accuracy to be good, certainly better than if they didn’t focus on anything at all.

But this is not what happened.

What happened was the further away from their body the players focused, the more accurate they were.

When they focused on the shuttle’s landing point they were more accurate than when they focused on their racquet which in turn was more accurate than when they focused on their arm and hand.

Interestingly when players focused on the landing point they were no better than when they were given no instructions about where to focus.

Two Things to Take Away

First, focusing on either your racquet or your arm is the worse thing you can do. The minute you focus on biomechanical technique, as many coaches may instruct you, your accuracy takes a nose dive.

Second, it appears the best thing to do is to focus away from what you’re doing – either focus on the shuttle’s intended landing spot or not focus on anything at all. Of course this is the very antithesis of traditional coaching

We Have a Problem

Coaches need to get their young charges up and running with a technically correct technique. But how do you do this without words and without referring to the bodily twists and turns of your eager young beginner?

Luckily there are ways around this. However, this is a story for another day.

Now you may be wondering whether this principle applies to other sports. Short answer – yes, it’s a universal principle. And yes, this is another story for another day.

Until next time.

Roger Wheller

“I read the research so you don’t have to”

[1] Amadi M. Kasher S.M. & Taghavi M. & Borhani H. The effects of attentional focus and skill level in performance of badminton long service. World Journal of Sport Sciences, 7:2, 84-89, 2012.

[2] The players were university undergraduate students who had completed a technical badminton course as part of their physical education studies but did not play regularly.