Badminton in the Lucknow winter
Cold mornings, slow shuttles and why we change shuttle speed in December.
A typical evening in the junior batch
Ninety minutes, six players to a coach: what our juniors actually do on court.
Parents often ask what their children do in the junior development batch, so here is a typical Tuesday on courts 3 and 4.
At 5.30 pm the players arrive, change into court shoes and start with ten minutes of skipping and light running around the hall. Then fifteen minutes of footwork: shadow movement to the six corners of the court, called out by the coach, with the pace rising every round.
The main part is multi-shuttle feeding. Coach Ayesha stands at the net with a basket of shuttles and feeds them one after another, fast, to one player at a time. A player might hit forty shots in a minute, then rest while the next goes. This builds the stroke and the movement together.
After that come pattern drills in pairs, such as clear, drop, net and lift, played continuously for three minutes. The last half hour is match play, with the coach watching and making short notes.
We finish at 7 pm with stretching on the side of the court. Once a month the coaches test speed, jumps and shuttle runs, and every player gets a written note on what has improved and what to work on next.
