Philippines badminton

This blog is not meant to be a blog of my personal life but about badminton coaching and strategies, the next post is a bit of both.

I was invited to visit a badminton Academy south of Manila, Rey and his wife, friends that I met kindly drove me there from my condo in Makati. I met up with William & William Gabuelo, a father and son combination, along with Coach PJ they look after and coach many players in 2 different halls on Saturdays.

The first hall was Winners badminton, this is a 14 court hall with cafe, conference rooms, gym,studio and a hairdressers.... you can even have your car washed at the same time !!!
The facilities here was better than anywhere else in the UK even Badminton Englands HQ only has 8 courts. To say the least I was very impressed, the 2nd hall in Las Pinas was also large with I think 8 courts.
The Gabuelo Academy is obviously well organised and run, the junior players that I saw there any coach would be extremely pleased to have them in their squads. There was 2/3 under 11 players that if were in England would I'm sure be selected for the WCS program,they certainly would have had my recommendation, there was also other excellent players at 11 years old. I was allowed to work with some very good teenagers and if they continue to train under the Gabuelo Academy I'm sure will go on to bigger and better things.

There is also a high level of parental support which is essential for any serious badminton training program.

There is a badminton tournament in October which a lot of players will play in, I am looking forward to going there and watching, I want to see anyone that beats some of these players because if they do they will have to be very good.
Philippines badminton, in this area anyway is looking very healthy and good for the future.

Thanks to all for a most enjoyable day.

first 3 shots

I played with a player tonight that when he received service he simply always lifted the shuttle high to the rearcourt for our opponant to smash it..... he did this every time and mostly we lost the point due to this, even when I respectfully mentioned this he still did the same thing.... whatever happened to learning from your mistakes !!!!

Anyway to get back to the subject, in around 1992 a survey was done in the UK with national players, I think it was also done worldwide, The survey showed that the average rally was............. 3 shots only !!!! Hard to believe as you have so many rallies that last 10 or 20 shots but then we also have serves into the net (1 shot) serves that fall short of the service line or go out past the rearcourt service line (1 shot) or sometimes you serve and your opponant kills it (2 shots) these tend to bring down the average amount of shots in a rally.

This is why the first 3 shots are so important.
1, The service
2, The service return
3. The reply to the service return.

These 3 shots should be when you look to get the advantage, i.e to get your opponant to lift so you can attack.
The service should be tight to the net and start to fall as it passes the net to minimise your opponants attack.
When receiving you should be looking to attack the shuttle as early as possible to hit down or at least avoid the lift by hitting flat or a tight net reply.
The 3rd shot should be the same, look to attack the service return as early as possible to avoid any sort of lift.
This cat and mouse situation is the basis of most services, vying for the advantage and never give it away as easily as the partner that I mentioned at the begining.

Master the first 3 shots in a rally and you will be on your way to becoming a better player.

I played badminton !!!!

Well as everyone knows I don't play as much these days...mostly just coach. I wanted to hit some shuttles as I was getting restless but don't know anyone so I visited a club called Ultimate Impact for queueing, I didn't really want to play games, I just wanted to hit some shuttles but had no choice. The heat and humidity is so baaaad !! I was perspiring before I went on court !! Anyway after the first game I am graded as level "B"...... hey I'm 53,overweight and don't play much these days..... give me a break !! :-)

The organization was excellent, Michelle, Sheila and Leo were the 3 that I met, very friendly and helpful organizers, they make sure that you get a level match, your name is called out over the loudspeakers when it's your turn to play, much more professional than in the UK.

The courts are fine and they have an equipment kiosk where you can buy rackets, shuttles clothing etc, it's run by a friendly and helpful guy, I've had my rackets strung by him and he done a good job and he done it there and then !!

Anyway it was ok as all the people there were very friendly and nice. Over here when it's your turn to play you play 2 games back to back, after the first game I was breathing soooooo hard and perspiring so much you would have thought that I had just been swimming. I played 8 games and only lost 2 so not too bad for a fat old guy !! :-)

I played with some other A/B players, surprisingly most of then did some unusual things when serving.... they would serve a semi high serve and allow their opponent to smash !!!!! I couldn't believe it ... can anyone imagine what I would say if any of you did that..... there's 3 main serves in doubles, low serve (90% of the time) the flick serve (10% of the time) and the occasional drive serve..... but a serve that is aimed for you to smash !!!!....... NO WAY !!
Though in saying that the shuttles were so slow that it was hard to smash through anyone's defence from anywhere near the rearcourt which made for longer rallies.

As the shuttles were very slow this made the games into 3/4 court play which helped me as I am old and slow. It was difficult to play a normal clear from baseline to baseline as the shuttle's were so slow, when I did manage to clear well, it usually went out. At home we can hit a clear that falls vertically very steep on the baseline, that is difficult here probably because of the heat and shuttles they use. Because of that they are not used to hitting a vertically falling shuttle, I tested and proved this as I played a high singles type serve to a few good players and mostly they found it difficult to hit the shuttle well.

I found it difficult to watch the games there as I am usually coaching at home when watching players play, I would see players doing this and that wrong and wanted to say something but couldn't, so for once I had to keep my mouth shut..... I can hear some of you saying.... yippee !

It's a shame as there were some good players there but they were doing some simple things badly. They could all do with some footwork training and positional play, also how and when to rotate to keep the attack. Maybe if I get to know some of them I could help them.

All in all it was a nice friendly place to be and I will go back again, I will have to put my old body through it all again.... wish I was 23 again !!!!!

My visit to the Philippines

I am preparing for my visit to the Phils this September; I am staying there for over 7 months. I am looking to base myself in Manila but I also want to travel around to other places too.

I am hoping to find 4/6/8 badminton players that I can coach regularly. I hope to find some youngish B,C or maybe even D level players that want to become "A" level standard. Of course they must be prepared to work very hard to achieve their goal.
I am looking for a place that has at least 4 courts and no resident coach as I don't want to step on anyone’s toes.
I am a bit worried about "Filipino" time, I must have players that will be punctual as you can't have players wandering in to join training whenever they like. I am unsure how to deal with this, I will give the players my respect by always being there on time and helping them as much as I possibly can, by the same token I expect them to reciprocate.

We shall see.................

Quiet time for badminton

The playing season is over, even the training sessions finished last week. My first Saturday... free from badminton......... really looked forward to it.......... ended up doing a private one to one 2 hour session !!!!!
I enjoyed it but am still looking forward to this Saturday so that I can have a badminton free day.

What shall I do ?? I will probably end up watching some badminton videos to analyse. Or maybe even pop into town to buy some more badminton shirts. But at least I will be on my own without a stopwatch/racket/20 shuttles in my hands.

So yes I am looking forward to my badminton free weekend !!!!!

The flick serve and receiving it.

The flick serve is a must to have in your armoury of shots. It must be deceptive and undistinguishable from your normal low serve (notice that I don't call it the short serve !!)

When I was a player I would always flick at least once in the first few points just so that it would keep the receiver honest and normally keep the pressure off my low serve.

But not only is it important to have a good flick serve but it's also important to be able to play it as a receiver.

Shots and footwork are constantly being added to, if you have watched any international badminton recently, you will see that for the flick serve when receiving the receiver's footwork is simply a couple of steps and a short jump backwards to try and hit the shuttle down or at least flat and hard. Most of the time they were off balance when hitting and their recovery was minimal (poor).

Their priority was just to hit down even if the shuttle was slightly behind them, they had no time to do a few steps then a scissors jump. Watch the chinese especially in the Sudirman cup their only priority was to hit down from the flick, their footwork and recover was in a way secondary but obviously practiced.

This is what I will be coaching this weekend to my players, they will not only be practicing the flick serve but the receiving also, then they will practice going forward for the low serve then reacting for a flick. The main objective to be hitting the shuttle down in the shortest time possible. Looking good and recovery will be secondary but also practiced.

National finals

Congratulations to DJ for winning the England National under 18 singles final, he also won the National doubles final on the same day at England Badminton headquarters in Milton Keynes.

He worked very hard and deserved it. He should be playing for England U 19's.