Learning the overhead stroke for young beginners

For young children, learning the overhead stroke is a key early step in their development.

Some kids are fairly active or athletic, and pick up the general motion of the stroke fairly intuitively. With them, the conventional approach works very well: demonstrate the stroke, go over a few key points for grip (forehand grip), body position (side on to net) and contact point (above the shoulder and in front).

However, there are many kids, either very young children (5-9 years old) or older kids without much athletic experience that have trouble learning the overhead stroke. They have a lack of general athletic coordination that hampers their learning using the conventional method. Learning the overhead stroke right away could be too big of a jump in terms of difficulty. What may be necessary is to take a step back and work on some precursor skills to the stroke:

Throwing motion: overhead throws of the bird
Swinging motion: shadow swings of the racquet
Stroke footwork: shadow swing with stroke footwork (e.g. scissor kick)
Grip and racquet control: various service types, bird bouncing
Hand eye coordination: basic defensive shots (learn to react to bird's trajectory)

A sample progression might look like this:
1. Underhand throw, FH and BH
2. FH Grip, FH Serve into box
3. BH Grip, BH Serve into box
4. Overhead throw
5. Overhead throw with footwork back & scissor kick
6. Overhead swing
7. Overhead swing with footwork back & scissor kick
8. Overhead stroke from hand toss
9. Overhead stroke from serve
10. Overhead strokes (continuous)

Modified Doubles Games - Opening Situation

Same server, serve returner (Doubles)

In this version of doubles, the same service situation is repeated each rally rather than using the usual rotation of serves and sides. This allows for the same plays and situations to come up at a higher frequency, which subsequently gives more opportunities to make corrections and adjustments for those plays.

Can be further modified to either repeat the same service location and/or service return to force a specific 2nd or 3rd shot situation.

Advantages:

• focuses on the opening situation for doubles in which most rallies are decided
  
• allows for repetition of standard opening plays and their variations

Disadvantages:

• requires relatively level opponents/training partners

Notes:

• Be sure to have sufficient repetitions of a given situation to explore all the possibilities

Beginner Physical Training Routine - Part Two

A while back I posted a routine of a few exercises for a person beginning physical training. When you start, the emphasis should be on learning good form and technique - a step that should not be rushed through! However, once that has been achieved, the next step is to apply the principles of progressive overload to improve strength quantitatively: weight & reps.

The goal is to develop a base of muscular endurance which provides the work capacity needed for future more maximal strength oriented training. There are many different ways do this, but for now I am suggesting the Escalating Density Training (EDT) method. EDT involves setting a fixed amount of time in which you try to do as many reps as possible with a certain amount of weight for a given exercise. I like this because the time needed to perform the workout is fixed and it challenges the athlete to give their maximum effort.

Part 1 - Agility drills (4 minutes)
Start off with some agility drills while the legs are still reasonably fresh. You want to make sure to move at a higher intensity than you do on the court, that's why we keep the exercises fairly simple. Pay attention to quick foot contacts, good core stability and rhythmic movement.

choose one of:

• 1 leg hops, square pattern, 80 hops/set, start each set on the minute, 4 sets (2 per leg)
  
• 2 leg low squat hops, square pattern, 80 hops/set, start each set on each minute, 4 sets each
  
• wide lateral barrier jumps, 20 jumps/set, start each set on each minute, 4 sets each

Part 2 - Core strength

• Tripod holds: get into the top of a pushup position, one by one raise a hand or foot leaving three limbs to support your weight, make sure to keep the trunk from twisting. 5 seconds per hold, do as many as possible before collapsing
• Pallof press isometric: from a kneeling position hold the handle to a low pulley at arms length for 20-30 seconds. Perform 3 sets/side.
• Side plank: 20-30 seconds. Perform 3 sets/side. Add weight as necessary.

Part 3 - Upper Body

Pressing movement (3 minutes EDT):

• pushups with handles
  
• DB press
• dip

Pulling Movement (3 minutes EDT):

• DB row
• pullup or pseudo pullup
• body row

Part 4 - Lower Body

• walking lunges (6 minutes EDT)

Part 5 - Energy Systems

• DB swing, 10 reps/set, 1 set per minute, 5 sets
  

In between exercises, you can do add additional exercises like:

• shoulder external rotation
• Y's
• bird dogs
• fire hydrants
• lateral band walks
• single leg RDL

Total time for the workout should be about 35-40 minutes.

This setup is for 3 sessions per week, Mon-Wed-Fri. However, it can be modified to accomodate different weekly training schedules. If two consecutive days are spent training before a day off, you can split the workout into:

Day 1 - agility, pushingx2, energy systems
Day 2 - core, pullingx2, lower body

If it's three consecutive days:

Day 1 - agility, core, upper, lower
Day 2 - energy systems
Day 3 - agility, core, upper lower

Drills - Serve Return + Intercept

# of players: 2 or 3

This drill practises the movement for short serve returns as well as the quick recovery needed to cover the net after such a shot.

Player 1 serves short.
Player 2 pushes off quickly to the net, racquet up and cocked back, and pushes the return of serve.
Player 1 drives the return-of-return of serve through player 2's zone of coverage.
Player 2 recovers quickly from the previous shot to cut-off and intercept the drive.

With only two players, the serve return option is mostly limited to a fairly soft push at the server, who is standing back at midcourt. With three players, the server can stand right up to the service line, and the third player can cover the rear court. This gives player 2 more options on serve return.

Linear and Complex Progressions - Sandwich Method

Ordinarily, we use a progression from basic skills to more complex skills integrating more basic skills. An example would be:
stationary shot -> 1 shot with movement from the base -> serial pattern of multiple shots-> semi open-ended pattern -> fully open-ended game situation drill-> competition

A player will frequently move up through a progression, then move back to the start of the progression and start again. For example, you'll do basic drills during preseason training, and gradually more open-ended or complex drills as the season progresses. This type of cycle occurs at different scales:

beginner: mostly basic drills -> advanced player : mostly complex drills
preseason: emphasize simpler drills -> late season: emphasize open-ended drills

However, how do you manage progressions on a smaller time scale? For example, on a monthly, weekly, or even per session basis?

Obviously, if you're only training once or twice a week, you can do something quite simple like taking small progressions (i.e. longer serial progressions, faster speed) each week and then maybe the bigger ones (i.e. more open ended, switch from half to full court) each month.

If you're training more frequently, you can be a bit more clever in arranging your exercises to avoid stagnation. One method for working on a progression within a single training session is what I like to call the sandwich method. It works like this:

complex drill -> simple progressions -> back to complex drill

So, you start with the advanced exercise, which can be used as an assessment of the player's higher level skills: positioning, decision making etc. Some things you can change with vocal cues, others require more work on simpler progressions. When you go to a simpler progression after the complex drill, you will be more focused on what needs work because you've already been shown what's deficient. When you finally get back to the complex drill, you have a point of reference from which you can look for improvement.

Drive techniques

To be good at drives, you need the following:

• know the different drive techniques used in different parts of the court
• how to position yourself to make it as easy as possible to get to the shot
• understand your opponent's moves and how to exploit them
  

There are three different techniques used depending on where the shot is being made: above the net at the forecourt, above the net at the backcourt and below the net at the backcourt.

From above the net in the forecourt, the player uses an overhead action to hit the drive. If the bird is at net level, the player needs to crouch down lower to be able to hit it with the racquet pointing upwards. The stroke is initiated with a very small amount of internal or external rotation of the shoulder , depending on whether it is on the forward or backhand, respectively. Just before contact, the fingers tighten momentarily to deliver the power into the shot. Body and forearm rotation is minimal. The objective of this shot is to get to the shuttle quickly while it is above the net and direct it downwards at the opponent to put pressure on them.

When the shot is deeper in the court but still above the net, we can add forearm rotation to add more power because there is more time to prepare for the shot. The motion is still initiated by a slight shoulder rotation and it still requires grip tightening just before contact. There should be a rebound action just after contact. This shot can be described as a half-smash taken low, and the objective is to place the shot into an open space to catch your opponents on a poor counterattack.

When the drive is performed from below the net at the back, the racquet points sideways or downwards. Therefore, the technique is quite different than the above two drives. Movement is now initiated with a slight body rotation. The racquet is held away and in front of the body, creating a long lever arm from racquet head to centre of rotation. Therefore, a small amount of body rotation results in pretty good linear racquet head momentum, which is then transferred to the shot via finger tightening. The objective of this shot is to blast the drive past the net player who is positioned too close to the net.

Which Slice to Use

There are two kinds of slices: the normal slice and the reverse slice. The slice puts a clockwise spin on the shuttle (as referenced from the person playing the shot) causing the shot to slow down. The reverse slice puts a counter-clockwise spin on the shuttle causing it to drop more quickly.

For a right-hander, the slice is used when dropping to the left side of the court and the reverse slice towards the right side. This is excellent when paired with the smash - the racquet swings one way and the shuttle flies off at an angle due to the slicing action. As a result we get four combinations:

ATH straight smash -> ATH x-reverse slice
ATH x-smash -> ATH slice
FH straight smash -> x-slice
FH x-smash -> reverse slice

This is ideal when you are well positioned in the backcourt and have the opportunity to take a good aim for your shot. When under pressure, it can be beneficial to perform the opposite slice to curve the shot into the court. This ensures that your shot stays in even while you're a bit more off balance. Here's a video demonstrating an example of this technique: