VIDEO – Badminton Footwork in the Rear Court for Beginners – Part One

There are many possible footwork techniques for moving from the center into the rear court – the easiest and at the same time very effective one on the half court but also for later as a common used variation into the rear forehand corner, is to perform two side steps followed by a scissors jump. I used the following exercise progression with kids between six and eight years during a weekend course. It proved to be work well for introducing them to basic Badminton movement. I taped the videos directly at the course – so some of the young performers do not look as smooth, but the idea of the exercise will be clear.

With the first exercise, the return to the center of play is prepared - the parallel plyo step is learned in a very basic and isolated way. For this exercise, the players are standing in a row in an upright position. When the coach claps her hands they perform a flat plyo step and freeze for a moment in a deeper athletic position. To do this, the centre of gravity has to be lowered while the feet are lifted flat from the ground. The final position should look athletic. The boy in the orange T-shirt does best to show that athletic position, as you can see in the last part of the video.

In the next progression the plyo step is performed during motion. The athletes run and, to a sign, perform the plyo step. In a Badminton game the player has to link his movement and therefore his plyo step to the impact of the shuttle to the opponents racket (or slightly after) wherever he is one the court heading to the center of play – so this exercise helps young players to link there running and performing of this important timing step to an external stimulus.