What's in Your Control?
5 Tips with Aylex Badminton Academy
Control your intentions, not the outcome
Why it matters: Use these tactics to fight for control of the rally. Stop trying to overpower your opponent, or mindlessly chasing down every shuttle. Instead, find ways to disrupt your opponent’s flow and counter-attack efficiently.
As a result, we maximize the technical and tactical aspects of the sport. We can take control by preventing our opponents from controlling us. Turn a physical game into a psychological one. Remember, fewer battles are won head-on.
Reflecting on Efficiency
The underlying theme of the video isn’t necessarily control, but rather efficiency. As players or teams wrestle for control in the rally, we can still work to be as efficient as possible. Remember that efficiency doesn’t mean EASY. Often, you’re still scrambling for the shuttle.
For example, sometimes when we are very late for the shuttle, it may be better not to use proper footwork. Lateral movements are recommended when we are in position, but sometimes, you’re just sprinting to the corner. Lunging is similar. We should lunge most of the time, but sometimes it’s more efficient not to (e.g., recovery on very deep lunges). As always, your mileage may vary (YMMV).
1) Controlled Attack (Back-Court)
The key takeaway here is that a controlled attack is based on shot placement instead of power. As control and power are often on different ends of a spectrum, smashing often defaults into hitting something harder, turning it into a physical thing. Shot placement makes it more of a tactical thing, assuming technical components are met.
In the video, we demonstrated how to attack in doubles, where a poorly placed shot is easily countered. Keep in mind there are more variables in play in a rally, as your partner can help cover shots for you in some cases. This allows for different tactics, but your partner has to know what to cover first. If you are regular partners and train together, this is an advantage. But if you’re playing with someone new, then make sure they know what to do (or if they can do it).
In cases where you’re not confident in your partner (or have no partner for singles), you have to be ready for your opponent’s potential return. If you’re certain that you can win the rally on your shot, go for it. There’s a bit of nuance here worth explaining.
There are different approaches to thinking when hitting these kinds of shots. There’s the “let’s see what happens” and the “please, please, please, let this win the rally” thinking (and everything else in between). At lower levels, the thinking often is in the latter category, where the attack is a bit of a desperation shot, making it a do-or-die situation. At higher levels, sometimes the shot is thrown in to mix up the pace of the game, or just to see what the opponent can do. The difference really comes from the follow-up. The former is prepared for a return; the latter is not.
For efficiency (and control), when the chance isn’t “good enough”, it’s best to play a reset. In our doubles example in the video, it would be a block or drop shot. If the lift isn’t great to smash, then we make it look like a smash, but drop instead. This prevents our opponents from charging in on our drop shot (which would be a gamble on their end, technically). Sure, we need to do more work and start our attack again, but efficiency with respect to winning the rally might mean doing more work. Efficiency for physical efficiency’s sake would be to smash, which isn’t our goal.
We want to win rallies, and hopefully, win the match as the priority. Not conserve energy.
2) Controlled Defense (Doubles)
In the video, we demonstrated that instead of lifting a smash on defense, we can break it down into two shots instead (block/drive, then lift). For efficiency’s sake, it’s technically more efficient to do it in one shot. The problem is that the technique needed to lift a smash to the back-court is a limiting factor.
We can extend this in singles, or in some cases in doubles where we are pushed to the other back-corner. In these situations, lifting it to the opponent’s back-court is very difficult. Often, when we try, we might get between 1/2 and 3/4 court, especially on our backhand corners.
The tradeoff is having to deal with a mid-court smash from the opponent, versus a tight net shot or block by our opponent. From the back-court, we could try a recovery shot to the front, which is similar to a block or drive (not too hard) in doubles. Assuming your shot is good enough that they can’t kill it at the front, most of the time, they will hit a tight net shot, forcing you to move all the way to the front.
For most people, they can probably get a better lift at the front, even when they’re late. Here, it’s good to remind us that the goal is to lift defensively, unless there is a real opportunity to counterattack (possible, but unlikely). Essentially, we have lifted the shuttle on defense, but with two shots.
The most efficient way is hitting one shot if you have good enough technical skill. If not, then break it down over two (or more shots).
3) Controlled Serve & 3rd Shot; Serve Return
The video does a good job of breaking the concepts down so I’ll just summarize the key points here. I must credit learning this from Kim Dong Moon (South Korea) when I trained with him. This really elevated my game and gave me a huge edge when I was competing internationally. Although the “first three shots” in doubles and mixed are important, remember that you still need to know what to do if your opponent just lifts your serve.
Assuming your serve is good, the best thing to do is to split step forward (in front of the service line), and look out for any net shots. Meanwhile, the back person looks for mid-court returns. It’s really that simple. Once each player knows what to look for, then you each share the work so that one person doesn’t do the work of someone else.
What often happens is that there is little instruction on what to do, at least what I’ve seen in North America. I’ve taught this in clinics and camps in many places, and it’s surprising how few players can go from a short serve to a net kill. Also, it’s interesting to see how often people try to hit to sides of the mid-court on the return of serve.
However, it really depends on the level you’re playing at. A good serve should not be “killable”. The best someone can do against a good serve is to take it as early as possible and hit a neutral shot back. Think of it like hitting a good “serve” back to your opponent (something that dips down right after it crosses the net). At high levels of play, players may intentionally try to hit the net cord, which is beyond the scope of what we’re discussing here.
Remember, if the shuttle is hit below the net cord, the harder you hit the shuttle, the longer it stays at that trajectory. So if it’s below the net cord, hitting it too hard causes the shuttle to rise, allowing for your opponents to hit the shot with angle. Especially from a front-court shot, like a serve return, sometimes it’s hard to recover in time if your opponent hits it back at you. This concept applies to our next tip too.
4) Controlled Drives
I see this a lot in warm ups, where the drives get harder and harder with the shuttle flying wildly at times. Pro players don’t really have an issue because everyone can hit hard from almost anywhere, but for the rest of us (myself included), we want to be efficient by following a simple rule:
The lower the shuttle is below the net on a drive, the softer we want to hit.
The obvious exceptions are when it’s too low, then we should probably lift (assuming a block will get killed). When is it too low? Depends on your skill level, but I would say maybe halfway below the net (from top to bottom of the net, not the top of the net to the floor). We are talking about drives from midcourt to midcourt, as the rules change in other positions, like smash defense.
The main idea is this: if your opponent hits it hard and rising, it’s best to take off a bit of pace and try to get extra angle so that their next shot will rise even more. Conversely, if you’re in that position, you want to hit it softer so the shuttle will fall sooner. It’s still a drive, but think of it as a “softer” drive.
The outcome you’re looking for is to get the attack, because anything hit below the net has to come up. Drives are essentially neutral shots, and mixing the pace of drives to get angle is an important part of the game. Hitting hard to get it through your opponent feels nice, but at higher levels of play, it’s very difficult against someone that knows what to do.
And now you do too.
5) Controlled Positioning
Although this was a doubles demonstration, the principle applies to singles too. Think of it this way:
If I want to make someone hit to the back, what do I do?
Stand at the net. They should hit to the back, unless they didn’t see you, or you’re not playing at a very high level. This is basic badminton (or any other racquet sport): hit to the empty space.
In doubles defense, a common question is: who takes the middle shot?
I grew up learning that it was whoever’s forehand it was. That kind of worked until you play with someone with the opposite racquet hand. Then it’s both, or neither?
Now, I teach it differently. The middle shot should be taken by the person covering cross-court. Exceptions apply of course, but we’ll leave it as a general rule. This works because cross-court smashes are rare, as they often put the attacking team out of position if the defending team returns it. Additionally, the cross-court distance being the longest allows more time on defense.
The video example is more for what happens when the defending team hits a drive return past the front court player. Growing up, the conventional training wisdom was for the attacking player (back court) to block it to the middle, forcing a moment of confusion for the defending team, making them lift again.
For the defending team, the defender who is in the straight position (covering the straight smash) usually can’t charge in because the attacker has made “timing” with that player. This means there is some kind of visual confirmation that the shot has been returned, and moving in too close allows the attacker to lift it over them, just like in our example for singles at the start of this section.
However, in that moment, we lose track of the other defender. Since we are so focused on one player, we often lose track of the other. There are many opportunities in doubles that allow for the other player to sneak in and hit a shot that catches the other team off guard. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doubles more than singles. Just because you might not be hitting the shuttle, your positioning might be a way to set up your partner.
There’s a lot more to positioning, so I hope to have a chance to film another video on it.
