New developments in training female players

Jij het nieuws, wij een tikkie!

Online it didn't really generate a lot of comments but off the record a couple of coaches responded in disagreement. Almost all coaches did not have a good argument against what I wrote, they just did not agree and that was it. Also here in Denmark there was no good discussion. Girls just do the same training as the boys are doing. It is much more tradition than right argumentation that sets the tone.

In general I think that there is not much development coming from Europe. Asia has always been better at footwork and I can see no change in that at this moment. On the other hand I can see that Asia is taking over the leading position of Denmark in technical training. The coaches in Denmark still have a high standard but one way or the other they can't make the transition to new concepts in the game and this is especially so in the lady's single where they are falling far behind.

Last month I have been working on a special subject to find new developments in Asia for the lady single, not only footwork but total concepts.

There are a couple of conclusions. First of all the fact that China is not the absolute leader anymore and other countries don't look at them as the only example for development. Thailand and Japan have their own strategy, where especially young girls get to the top very fast. But I believe it is mostly due to very hard work and not because it are new concepts they are working with.

The real new game you can see in a player like Tai Tzu Ying from Taiwan. When you look at her technique in deception strokes that is a total new concept. Tai Tzu Ying is not hiding one single stroke in a normal way, there is deception in 90% of her strokes and at the net it's even more. She is able to allow her opponent no space to prepare her footwork. They always seem to be a fraction of a second too late on the reaction.

She made me think of Peter Gade when she plays her net strokes and deception lob's. In all the games that I have been analyzing from the top lady's single players you see that the only jump that they are using is the interception jump, and this one is done more on the forehand side than on the backhand side. In the jump on the backhand side they are also very cautious to jump to the around the head. If the jump is too high they can't cover the cross at the forehand side and even when they get the shuttle nothing constructive can be done with it.

There is not one single woman at top level that uses a jump smash as a weapon at all. Sometimes it is used if the shuttle is clearly played too short and there is a killing situation but even then it is not something you see being done all the time. The woman single is much more an intelligent game where the attack is less hard due to the fact that female players are very good in the defense. The footwork is based on keeping close contact with floor, and that will be even more important with opponents like Tai Tzu Ying where the reaction time has been going down to the last split second.

At this moment I'm working on special training for the girls that will come to Oro this year, we will spend a lot of time working on the lady's single Asian style. I hope to be able to work close together with Camilla Martin. Camilla and I have been playing together a couple of times and the combination between her technical Danish know-how and my Asian background will be a perfect combination for the Oro camps this summer.

In 3 days time I will travel back from Asia to Denmark and there I hope I will have the time to sit down and write a long article on the analysis for the game from Tai Tzu Ying because this girl has a very interesting way of playing and is technically of a very high standard.