Badminton Coaching

“I hope we don’t have to try and hit the shuttle in to the bin this time”, I said nervously to Vivienne. Room 17 were on their way to the second badminton coaching sesion, and after last week I was positive that I didn’t have a future in the sport. This week we had a different coach, her name was Donna and she is ranked 20th in the world! Hopefully this session would go better than last week.

When I first heard that we were going to badminton I was quite relaxed and thought it would be easy. Clearly I was wrong. I don’t know how but nearly every time I tried to serve, the shuttle just ended up on the ground, and the times that I actually did hit the shuttle it hardly got a metre away or it just went in a completely different direction. Now I know badminton is way harder than it looks, maybe that’s just me.

Even though it was hard I still learnt quite a lot, like that the name of the thing you hit is called a shuttle and three different ways to hit the shuttle. There is the forehand,backhand and my favourite, the overhand. You use the forehand when the shuttle comes on the side that you are holding the racket in and just do a soft hit. Then there is the backhand, you use this hit when the shuttle is coming towards you on the opposite side you are holding the racket on. You have to take it across your body for this hit. Now finally my favourite, the overhand. This hit is when you have the racket behind you and then you bring your elbow forward and strike at it. It’s kind of like when you are playing volleyball and you smash it over the net.

When I was with my partner Ashleigh we were in quite a small space, and I managed to get pretty sweaty and tired. I didn’t realise how much running you have to do in badminton, or maybe we were just hitting it wonky? At the end I felt like a deflated balloon.

When I first came in to badminton I thought it would be easy and I was also a bit nervous. But I just had heaps of fun, learnt lots and I think I improved. As I said at the beginning, badminton is definitely not the sport for me, but I still had a good time and it was great fitness. Now I am really keen to go back to badminton again.