Quite simply a Badminton drill is a practice.

No, not practising Badminton, by playing or knocking a few shuttles across the net to your partner. A Badminton Drill is a practice. It’s a practice of a specific skill or element required to play badminton.

The drill itself can take many forms but will usually target a small and specific area on which to work, such as a net drop shot.

Let me give an example from my own style of play, I invariably have my racket ‘down’ either to the side or in front, even when at the front of the court. A better position for the racket and me as I’m 6’2”, is to have my knees slightly bent and the racket head raised to shoulder or head height.

I need to Drill this habit into my head. So my partner and I play the ‘patty cake’ game, both stand just back of the front service line and try hitting the shuttle as horizontal and as close to the net tape as possible.

It becomes a ‘game’ when there are no rules, i.e. freedom to hit shuttle on either forehand or backhand. But it becomes a Badminton drill when you continually just do forehand. It can be further broken down into say, near forehand and far forehand.

Drills are better than practice because they’re more specific to particular areas, so you can isolate your weak shots/areas of play and develop those.

Badminton drills should be done over a long period. An hour spent on a particular training drill is nothing, and what’s more it should be regularly repeated throughout your training regime.

Another practice drill might be ‘mid court backhand cross net return’, bit of a mouthful that, but if your partner can deliver the shuttle to the right area this is easily practicable, but the main purpose of the drill could be to get you to change from a forehand grip to a backhand grip!!..

A Badminton drill is a repetition of a small but necessary skill, it’s something that all the top players do regularly and if you have any dreams of becoming a better player, then you will need to spend some time working on your own specific weaker areas by using Badminton training drills on a regular basis.