The way players look at us

From all the trainings I have had the opportunity to follow during this first year and a half of badminton, I can easily make a ranking of them, which would be, from worst to best : club and camp training in my own country, private training in my own country,   Orø camp in Danemark, and training here in the Vietnam Danish Badminton Academy.

A club training (or a camp back home, which gives more or less the same quality of training) is usually with one coach for about 10 players, for a time period of 2x  2 hours a week. During that kind of training, the coach can spend 12 minutes on each player a week. But that’s not even closed to the reality, because many players are late, the lack of focus of most of players slows down the all group …  You must consider many things that make the training worse than it could be, and that’s both for club training and for private trainings (I did 2 or 3 privat trainings a week).  First of all, and that’s probably the biggest issue, most of the coaches will just ask the players to do a training where you work on drops, on smashes, on defenses, on whatever stroke… But they never really think of a training where they would combine this technical training with a footwork training, and with a tactical training. And the consequence of this is that you get used to have the wrong footwork according to the stroke you made, because the tactical element isn’t there in the training.  Here in Vietnam, or in Orø, we always add the tactical aspect in any training, to have a game realistic training. While at home, I have often been told that tactical only matters in doubles, not in singles (I often hear « In singles, just play where the opponent is not »). There is tactics in every aspect of the game, and in every training, from the thoughest multi-feeding training to what looks like a simple training where you would do, for example, only spin shots and interceptions, you can actually work on tactics as well (where do I put my right foot after the spin, do I suscain back or should I take the right foot back ? Which type of interception do I make, soft or hard ? …).  And then you quickly go from those clubs trainings where you have one or two focus points to a training where you end up with more than 10 focus points.

Another big difference is that the coaches you find in club trainings back home (and I guess it must be the same in most countries in Europe) have one answer to everything, you should do this like that because that’s how we have been doing it for years, or because Lin Dan or Momota does it we’ll also do it.  It’s of course ridiculous because every player is different.

Many coaches are also just players who think they are great coaches because they are (or think they are) great players.  I did a week with such coaches in Belgium last summer, I can honnestly say that I didn’t get anything out of it. The coaches can’t explain anything, the trainings aren’t logical (we litteraly spent 3 hours working on jump smashes, while we didn’t even work on footwork to get there), they don’t put any tactical element into it.  

I must stay incorrect to one thing I said : I actually got one thing out of that week of camp in Belgium ; a knee injury.  And the coaches were actually very proud to have 25% of the players injured in the end of the week, because for them it was proof that the camp had been very hard and productive on the physical aspect.   Instead, here, we do trainings that are also very physical, even harder than their trainings, but first of all they take care of doing it with the right footwork and technic, to prevent the injuries. I never trained as much and as hard as I have here in Vietnam but still, I arrived the first week with all kind of knee protections because I was constantly injuring for the last 2 months.  But after a week here, I haven’t ever worn a knee protection anymore, footwork has been corrected and injuries are over.

On the physical aspect, we also focus here on doing physical trainings for badminton, so the usual trainings recommended by club and private coaches back home, such as running for an hour, going to the gym to get beautiful big legs, are proved to be a magnificent waste of time here, because we then need to do yet another physical preparation for badminton.  

I am saying all of this about Vietnam but it’s also the case for the Oro Camp.  The quality of training here in Vietnam is of course a bit higher, but that’s because I have the chance to be the only player for 2 coaches.  And the heat makes the trainings harder, that’s something you can not get anywhere in Europe. I have almost been two mounts is Vietnam and will return again in Feb. 2020 for a couple mounts more, it is time well spend.