Badminton training

Went for my first badminton training session today at Assumption English School. It was a cycling trip there, going along the familiar route on Bukit Timah which I usually use to go to and from NTU, and I got to keep my bike securely there too.

The training starts with lobbing before going into a few drills involving players on both end of the court executing different strokes; most drills use a feeder to start, good for keeping up the activity level. It is good to do such isolated drill practice for me, hope that eventually the performance there will transfer into my game. The best learning pointers for the day for me is on my preparation during defence. Some drills started with a static right-foot-forward position, which is kind of awkward because there's bound to be some position adjustment after the shuttle is served, not sure if that's the best thing.

Also learnt a very uncommon position of preparing for smash/drop, which should take quite some time to get used to. But then again, I recall Chen Hong in that posture when they set up their smash in badminton clips too, so perhaps it's worth learning.

Wonder how the training progression will be, or if there's any plan at all. The last 15 mins was left for us to play a doubles game, and that's when the instructors smoke out, something that I frown upon (will try to keep them there to give me advice next session). Also, given that we practiced quite a bit of footwork during the session, shouldn't we be playing singles game at the end instead of doubles?