Leading up to the tournament

I played a good amount of badminton the week before the badminton tournament. Maybe too much as I used it to procrastinate doing some of my work that I should have been doing.  I  played primarily with some random people at CARSA, a few of which were really good and helped me work on the skills I am lacking in. I tried to refine a few skills during this time which include, Various different serves, dropshots and placing my shots. The hope is that this will lead to me doing ok at the tournament  

The week before the tournament I played with some random people at CARSA. The first couple games I played were with some really talented players that fully thrashed me. But playing them made me think a lot more about my shot placement. For a while now I have been hitting most of my shots right back to the middle so my opponents could easily return it. By the end of a few games I was getting better at returning to a more difficult area of my opponents court. This in no way means I did much better against the guy I was playing but I was getting the rallies to be a little longer. 

A couple days later I played doubles with some guys that were there and really got a chance to practice my serves and how and when to switch them up. It was a good session, as they were close to my skill so I got a real workout in and I wasn’t getting discouraged by getting crushed the entire time. When doing my serves I practiced doing short serves until they were used to them then I would mix in some long flick serves so it would go over their head. I learned this sort of trick from Lucas as he does it to me quite frequently. The other thing he would do to me is drop shots, which often gets me running around. I managed to practice this as well although I was less successful and about half the time would put it in a perfect spot next to the net for my opponent to smash it down on me. So just one more thing to learn.

The week of the tournament I only played once with Adam and his roommate. In technical skill I’m better but in athleticism and power they beat me so it was pretty even when we played. It was a good chance to practice returning smashes that they would launch at me. As well as practice my own smashes, as I feel like I have not developed my smashes very much yet. This was the day before the tournament so it was a good practice to make sure my reaction time would be good for tomorrow. 

The next post will be the tournament!