TRY DIFFERENT TRAINING, IT'S FUN

As a follow-up on my article about Multi Shuttle Feeding, I would like to go to training with several players on the court. The number of players you can do training with on a court is depending a lot of your own creativity, naturally we like to have two players on a court because we are specialists on single training but there is no reason why we should not be able to do all kinds of other training types. The most players I have done on one court in a serious training is 8 players, this was a mix double training in Asia on 2x ½ court with a lot of rotation systems. Not only was it great fun it was extreme reaction training and very good to let two players work very close together. We have done several different things like playing synchronised rally’s where both couples had to play the same strokes at the same speed, starting with 4 strokes and slowly did more and more strokes, we end up doing 12 strokes. No need to say that is was very hard to keep the same speed in both rally’s, but we did not get very far out of takted. 

The next training I really like a lot is to play with 4 players on a court and they have to play two singles at the same time with two shuttles on one court, there are no fixed service places and you can not smash, the back player have to get out of the way if the other player is moving towards the back and you can not play both in the same corner. This is super fun training and it is very hard if you do it right, start slow because you have to make sure you are running around the other player that is also on your side of the court. You have to take a lot of things into consideration first of all you should not collide with the player on your own side of the court, you have to do a lot of extra footwork to get around this player because the shortest way is not always possible, you have to look to where there is space to play the shuttle to and make it difficult for your opponent  has possible without getting in the way for the other single players on the same court. It will atek a little time but within 5 to 10 min players get used to it and the practice will run smoothly. I have been doing this training for many years and it never happened that two players run into each other.

One other type of training I have developed and that has been taken up by many coaches is the clock, you can do this with two players on a court if they are not so good, with 4 players if they are a little better and with 8 players if they can do it perfectly (this is however very very hard to do). The rull is very simple you always have to play the shuttle to the next corner and you start turning  with the clock, with two players it is very easy but even when it is easy it will take sometime before you don’t make mistakes anymore. At first you will see that the players just move to the next corner without doing the right footwork, when they get better at it make them do the right footwork. When the master this a little you can make changes by telling them to go counter clockwise, and you will see that you have fucked up there thinking again. When two players can do it perfectly you can start with 4 players on a court, let them start at the same time but make sure there is one corner free. So front FH corner a player, back FH corner nobody, back BH corner a player and front BH corner free, on the other side you do the same and with two shuttles you let two couples play every time into the next corner. This is already very hard and you need to be a good player to keep this up without one of the 4 players making a mistake. No need to say that is is extremely hard to have a player in every corner and now do the clock with 8 players at the same time. Give this way off alternative training a try, it is fun it is different and it is good training.