Badminton diary, 2025/04/29

I have a business trip to Daeejeon this week. The week before I browsed Naver and found a badminton club there to practice. It is a local club based in Samchun Secondary School and located within 20 minutes by walking from my hotel.

 My first impression to the club was very positive because I felt welcome. The manager accepted me to play as a guest player and sent a long message to guide me how to find the way beforehand. Other members were noticed about my visiting. They enthusiastically asked me a lot questions since it is very rare to have a foreigner coming to their club.  They were quite surprised about my thorough preparation: 2 rackets, a pair of non-marking shoes, a shuttlecock tube (note it if you want to play badminton in Korea), and other stuffs like headband and knee support. I then had to reveal that I had  been living in Korea for quite a long time to familiar with the badminton culture here ;)

 I started my session with some fun games. They arranged first several games to test my levels. Later on, the club's best players arrived and I started to play seriously with them. Notably there was a left-handed player. He is skillful and I was impressed by his overal techniques. When he is in good position, it is very difficult to predict his next shot: an attack clear or a disguise drop shot or even a steep smash. That is exactly the technique I am trying to adopt! Fortunately I soon realized the reason: he was behind the shuttle and he used the same arm motion for those three shots. I can do the clear and smash pretty well but I was struggling a lot with the drop. At that moment I realized that my arm was always stiff dring drop shot, the motion was mainly from the shoulder so my opponents could easily read. I realized that quickly thanks to this video of "fortune cat" drop shot. I adapted the technique and my game play were much improved later on.

 Key takeaways for a better attacking shot: get behind the shuttle, early racket preparation, use the arm motion and decide to fire whether clear or drop shot at the last second.

On my way back to the hotel, I passed through the Expo bridge. It is quite beautiful at night :)