Badminton Footwork Drills

Badminton footwork drills…. not something many of us bothered with as beginners. Who has time for the footwork when we have to practice smashing and drives or perfect our serve. It turns out you should make time!.

Badminton footwork drills are most important aspect of badminton practice and should be one of the first things to do drilled in beginner training. These drills will make you faster than before allowing you to move across the court with more speed and less energy and set your body in the correct positions to allow quick and powerful shots. This area is often overlooked by beginners and recreational players meaning even small improvements in this area can lead to a huge competitive advantage for those players and even experienced players will benefit from revisiting footwork drills.

The standard ready position for receiving a shot is with your lead foot ( side you hold your racquet) half a step in front of the other foot, with knees slightly bent, weight on the balls of your feet and relaxed body.

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Badminton Footwork Drills for Increasing Acceleration

These following drills are are aimed at increasing your speed and acceleration from the ready position. Many beginners are slow at pushing off because they don’t use their strength correctly.

Pushing off should use your ankle and calf strength by starting with your heels slightly off the ground and making a small jump to use the energy stored in your tendons. The jump should be small and fast keeping your feet close to the ground as lifting your legs up high wastes valuable time. Your acceleration relies on the explosiveness in pushing off against the ground. Most professional players make this small jump to increase the power of their push off against the ground.

One of the best ways to drill this small jump is by skipping, you should only lift your feet high enough to let the rope pass just beneath in order to closely match the movement you will be performing on the court. Skipping also helps build strength and endurance in your calves and is also very good for improving your cardiovascular endurance making it one of the best exerciese to perform for improving your badminton.

This can also be drilled on a court with a partner by picking 6 points from around court, an example of this would be, the 4 corners and one on each side, your partner then points with their racket at one of the points. As soon as they move their racket you should do a small jump and take the first step towards where they point. You should then return to your starting point and go again switching with your partner after a set number of times.