THE MOMOTA EFFECT

The Momota effect

I talk with many badminton coaches and on a daily basis, what surprises me is that they are all talking about training and playing like Momota. In the first place I would like to say that Momota is very good in being Momota, it is a very solit way of playing and also F***ing boring, it is like Lin Dan without all the funny things, this way of playing was the answer to the perfect Lin Dan style, by Chen Long and then Momota. All 3 great players and the way CL en Momota are playing was needed in the development to fight LD. Now copy Momota is NOT the answer to win from Momota, he will always be the best Momota and even if you copy his style perfectly and you beat him then you only beat the older Momota who was not so good as the young one was so you never know if you are better then Momota in playing Momota style.

The interesting thing about Momota is looking at players who can make things difficult for him at this moment, this way you can see where the development is going. In the last 10 years we have been working with Time & Space has a success formula to play at the highest level, and this Time & Space concept was also working very well for young players. Henri Vervoort and I were the first coaches writing about this TS concept and it was very successful for many years. But as with all concepts they get old and new elements are needed to develop again, this is where Momota comes into the picture again. You can see several players who have the right tactics against Momota and they can make life very difficult for him but there is something missing, the players can not keep on playing the way that is needed to win from Momota. The thing that is missing is the third law in Time & Space and that is Energy, it is also very logical you can not keep on creating time and space if the energy is used. Players fill up the tank before they start the game and hope it will last the whole game, Momota knows this as well and has to make sure that they use more energy than what he is doing himself. Players at this level know how to create the time and space to be able to have success, the only thing that can stop them is the leak of energy. There is a limit to how much energy you can build up in/with your body, improvement will only increase a little when you are already super fit. It will cost you a lot of time and hard work to get just a little more energy in your game that will help you to control the game until the end. So the next thing you have to look at is how to save energy in your game, this is what we can learn from Momota, he is a master in energy saving work on court.

Even more than using Time & Space Momota and Chen Long are using Energy as their favorite weapon, this also implies that we have to look different towards this kind of game because also analysing has got a new dimension, coaching is not only technical and tactical anymore but it is also energy management. We are already at this moment doing tests with speed restitution in the break’s, just to make sure that we use all the energy in the most efficient way and restore it wherever possible. The way to do this you will find in our coach education programs from the VBO, where we come to talk about this type of Momota thinking much more in detail. Our goal setting is to be the best coach education organisation in Europe, we don’t compromise with anything there for we have very limited places in our coach education. For more information write to: [email protected]