Oude wijn in nieuwe flessen

I have been asked to write a book about badminton training several times and someone even started to make a book from all the articles I have been writing over the years but Fred Besselink’s death made an end to this plan. I will not easily start a project like this simply because before a book comes out it will be out of date on some of the parts and within a 3 years you should reconsider 80% of the book. Even today I still meet people who very proudly tell me they have one of the books I have been working on for 30 years ago and I always tell them “I hope you don’t use it anymore in your training”.

I write this article because I have just been reading a new “book” in Dutch that is confirming my thoughts about making a book like this. Making a book like that is not wrong it will give a picture of how we thought about badminton the last 10 years but it should not been used has a guideline for the future because some of the stuff is already outdated a couple of years and we risk that it will be used for for the next 10 years. So in 2030 players will be learning stuff from this book that is by that time 20 years old.

One of the examples is in the technical part where it says that EVERY stroke has a backswing, this is simply not true and in deep contrast with the development in our sport. The back swing doesn't fit the concept of “space and time” that we use in coach education today, a back swing leads to predictable badminton. Lob’s don’t need a backswing and when you still do this you show your opponent what you are going to do, a window wiper has no backswing and a wipe over defence has no backswing (if done right) in several diceptions you don’t need to use a backswing. The technical part is not up to date but I’m even more worried about all the missing parts in the footwork part, this is the most important part of our sport it is what makes technical strokes possible.

I have seen so many mistakes in the book that I can and will not write about all of them, I just like to tell people not to take it too seriously and when you read it be critical. This product is made with cut and paste (knippen en plakken), and also this is not wrong but take out the name of the other sport and put in the word Badminton. A friend of mine told me in shock that parts of the book were just copies from other federations, and he showed me the part where they were talking about JUDO instead of badminton. 

I just hope that this is not what we have been waiting for the last 6 years in Holland, and that there will be a very good and up to date coach education on the way. You don’t need to tell people what to do, you need to learn people how to think and improve themselves all the time.