Skills and What You Need to Know to Play

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How to Play

If you want to win games, you'll need to know some skills so you can beat people!!

So here I am! I'm about to tell you most of the skills on playing. I'm going to teach you how to do a serve, an attacking drive, a clear, a drive, a drop, a smash, etc. But first, before you do all those things, you need to learn at least to hit the birdie!!! Practice a couple times until you can play with a friend and keep the birdie up for a long time. Before you learn any thing that's listed, You'll need to learn how to hold your racket correctly. Hold it in your hand that you write with. That hand and side of of your body(shoulders, leg, thigh, foot, etc.) will be called your racket whatever. Racket arm, racket hand, racket shoulder, etc. Now you need to hold it the right way. Put your thumb on the flatest part of the handle. You other fingers should wrap around the rest of the handle naturally. Do you see the "v" part of your hand? If you don't it's where your index finger meets the thumb. When you put your racket on the floor,(still in your hand) the net should be facing the left and right. Not up and down. The "v" should be pointing to your non-racket shoulder. If you turn your wrist, so that the back of your hand will be facing you, you're not supposed to see the end of your grip handle. Now you can learn how to serve. If you practice at a court, you stand in one box and your friend stands on the other side in a box diagonall from you. Right where the front service line meets the line that devides the service boxes, imagine there is a clock. Your left foot should be pointing inbetween 1 and 12 o' clock. Your right foot should be pointing to 3 o' clock. Your left hand should be holding the shuttle with the index finger and the thumb. But not pne finger on either side of the feathers. It should be the thumb and indexfinger on both sides of the stems.( Those are teh long skinny sticks coming out from the hard part.) Your racket should be held in the forehand grip. and slanting down on your racket hand side of your body. Your body pressure should all be on your right foot. If you are a beginner, there are 3 steps for serving. Step 1: You shift all your body pressure onto your left foot. Your left hand should be bent in a 90 degree angle.Step 2: Extend your left arm forward. Step 3: bring your racket arm forward and swing to the shuttle when your left hand drops it at the same time you start to swing. IT's okay if you mess up, because I sure did when I started.(don't tell anyone, but 1% of the time I miss the shuttle!) Pracice it a couple times until you get the hang of it. Now, the rest of the skills you'll have to read and try. Good luck!! |Attacking Drives|Clears|Drives|Drops|Smashes|

Attacking Drives	Hold your racket in the frying pan grip. It's the same thing as a forehand grip, but you turn your racket slightly so when you hold your racket in front of you, the net should be flat and facing you. Next, Bring your racket up to the net. Stand on the line closest to the net. Where your racket meet the long skinny stick that connects to the grip, that part should be right above the net, or else the shuttle will go into the net. Spread your legs far apart so that you can balance real well. Be on your toes and move your racket when you see the shuttle fly towards you. Ask a friend to feed(throw) shuttles to you for practice.
Clears.	Hold your racket in the forehand grip. In the back of the court, there are the two lines. Put both of your toes on the line. Each number listed represents a step on how to clear: 1: Bring your racket foot back and bring your racket up in the air. But bend your arm at a 45 degree angle. Your non-racket arm should also be in the air pointing to where you want to hit the shuttle. 2: Bring your racket behind your head. Drop your wrist SLIGHTLY. Do not drop it completely. 3: Rotate your hips and your feet should also rotate so that your racket foot should be on your toes. If you have a hard time balancing, adjust yourself. Your non-racket foot should have turned too. Your racket elbow should be pointing in th air-not straight. Drop your non-racket hand.4: Swing your racket into the air when the time is right. When is the time right? Well, you should always hit the shuttle at the highest point you can reach. But you're still on your toes. 5: Bring your racket down on your non-racket side of your body. Your racket foot should have stepped forward after you swung because of the force you used. If you feel as if you didn't need to step, that means you need to put more power in your swinging. Your clear should go allll the way to the back of the other court.
Drives	Hold your racket in the forehand grip. Stand in the middle of the court and be ready for the serve. If it is a high serve, you have a lot of choices: you can smash, clear, or drive.) You use the same steps as the clear but instead of hitting far and up, you hit straight and flat over the net.
Drops	Hold your racket in the forehand grip. The shuttle should drop to your side of the net. You lounge with your racket foot in front and turn your racket 90 degrees to the right and lightly- VERY lightly, over the net.
Smashes	Hold your racket in the forehand grip. Do the exact same thing as a clear, only you should point your racket down slightly so it will go far, fast, and down.

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