16/03/2023
Badminton tipping points
We often talk about being lucky when we are in the right place at the right time, talking about badminton and making it to the top, it is not different. InterVision looks at this very differently, we assume that the correct time is known and that you can find or thoose the right place to.
There are a few moments in age development that are important if you want everything to happen at the right moment. We call these the “Tipping Points” . There are points in your sport life where it can go one way or the other, even if you or your trainer still have the same ideas about achieving your goals.
You have to start playing badminton fairly early and we are thinking between 6 and 10 years old, starting earlier works well in Asia but a lot less in Europe. Children in Europe who start too early are tired of the sport after a few years and are going to try something else. In the age group of 6 to 10 years, the training should above all be fun with hidden serious elements, and there is still a lot of work to be done to make it really fun. Coach education today is not focused on serious fun, we are talking here about functional fun and not laughing only fun.
TP 1
The first tipping point is friends, children will do the sport where their friends are when you lose this “friends” race as a sport then you are behind very early on. Almost every sport has this problem, so it is a good idea to set up a multisport pool together with other sports. Make a membership for 4 sports like: Badminton, Judo, Handball and athletics. There is a permanent trainer/supervisor for each sport and together they jointly discuss what they think is important for the children to learn. By letting the children do different sports you kill several birds with one stone. The children are not easily bored with a sport, they receive a much more all-round sports education, which benefits each sport. The various trainers can jointly give sports advice to the parents about what their child has talent for. Needless to say, the friend group effect will get a lot bigger.
TP 2
Between the ages of 9 and 11 it is technique time for both boys and girls and EVERY workout should contain technique complex elements along with the fact that it should be fun.
Play tournaments where it is not important to win but where it is all about the best strokes, most beautiful feints, longest rallies and making the least mistakes give a price for these things and not for winning the tournament.
Missing out in this period is an important tipping point, learning technique in this age is very easy and takes little time. If you miss this point, there will be an important time shortage because it will take much longer to learn these techniques later. Needless to say, you need to put your best trainers on the group during this time. And that there must therefore be courses to provide these trainers with the necessary knowledge about working with these groups.
TP 3
The third tipping point comes with puberty, around 11 for girls and 13 for boys. In this day and age we lose a lot of girls in our sport. Boys and girls are divided into equal age groups and that is very disadvantageous for badminton. Girls find it boring to train with the "childish" boys. And the boys have absolutely no interest in girls in the U11 and U13. You can solve that problem in two simple ways, let the girls train with a higher age group of boys or ensure that there is also a separate training for girls.
Training mixed doubles is not a good idea in this age (of the same ages). In puberty it is not a good idea to focus on new techniques, repeating and improving known techniques is fine. The most important focus point is footwork, do training on the bog muscle groups not on fine motoric movements. So we switch from the fine motor skills of technique training at a young age to the gross motor skills of footwork.
TP 4
At the end of puberty, the children's heads and bodies regain some of the fine motoric skills, and at this moment it is all about keeping their attention on the badminton sport.
Good coaches will analyse the players and show them what is going wrong and especially what is going right in relation to the tactical theory. Technique and footwork come together on the court and with the analysis in hand we will bring the thinking into the game.. Now the technique and the footwork are the tools in service of the tactics. Where with girls you mainly work on being smart and using their natural strong manipulation power to bend things to their will and advantage. Teaching smart also sounds much better as a tactic, girls are often able to achieve their goal in multiple ways and are therefore well able to understand and execute complex tactics.
With the boys, tactics often have to serve hard work, the smartness often comes later, they live WITH their body and see the body as a tool, where girls live IN their body and are therefore much more careful with it. It's time for theory lessons, playing with assignments and to learn a lot more about our sport. Theory must also have a counterpart and that is the physical training, players must learn that executing different tactics is not possible without a proper physical constitution, a good balance and therefore a more than reasonable condition.
You need a fairly complete trainer during this period, by which I mean someone who continues to see the whole picture in every detail. If we are not able to teach players this job smartness right now then the years before will lose a lot of their values.
The right time and place
The time at which you do the different things is clear, even if it is a fairly rough description. Where to get this knowledge is a much bigger problem, I describe a number of different types of needs from trainers. The qualities that these trainers must have are often not found in the club and even at the RTCs that is rarely the case. We will have to train these trainers and that is probably the biggest problem in a country like Holland. What is offered is very general and often not focused on the practical needs of talent development.
