BASIC GRIPS OF HOLDING THE BADMINTON RACKET AND BASIC POSITIONS IN THE COURT

As a badminton player, I believe that holding your racket correctly while playing is the most important thing you need to know. This is because holding your racket correctly will allow you to feel more comfortable when playing, your hand would not be stiff and holding it correctly will allow you to exert more power on your strokes while playing. There are two basic grips of holding the racket, one is the forehand grip, and the other is the backhand grip. First, let's talk about the correct way of holding the forehand grip.

BASIC WAYS OF HOLDING GRIPS

FOREHAND GRIP

From my point of view, holding a forehand grip is easy. Imagine that your shaking hands with a person. Now, shake hands with your racket handle, that's how you are supposed to hold the badminton racket with the forehand grip. As seen from the picture above, a V is supposed to be formed in between your index finger and thumb while using this grip.

The forehand grip is supposed to hit shots on the forehand side of your body and overhead shots. For example, if you are right-handed, your forehand side is on the right side of the court. To exert more force while hitting the birdie, hold the racket loosely in your fingers first and just before hitting the birdie, hold it tightly before that moment and hit the shuttle. Holding your racket loosely will improve the flexibility and allowing one to hit the shot more powerful and more accurately.

From my point of view, I believe that the forehand grip should be hold in the middle of the racket handle, but I believe that everybody have their own preference to choose whether they want to hold it nearer to the shaft, in the middle or further away.

BACKHAND GRIP

Holding the backhand grip is a bit complex. On the handle of the badminton racket, there is the narrow part and the wide part. In my opinion, there are 2 ways to hold the backhand grip, one is to place your thumb on the wider part of the handle and your thumb is facing towards the racket face, making the racket face parallel towards the ground(As shown in the picture). The another way is to place your thumb in between the wide and narrow part of the handle(Not shown). For me, I use both ways depending on where the birdie is coming towards me.

Similarly, the backhand grip is used to hit the backhand side of your body in the badminton court. Example, if you are right-handed, your backhand side would be the left hand side of the court. Before hitting the birdie, you should always loosen your fingers to create more power just before hitting as the force comes from the sudden tight grab of the badminton racket just before hitting the birdie.

From my point of view, I would normally hold the backhand grip nearer to the shaft as I feel that I can hit the birdie with my power like this and as I have said, everybody have their own preference of holding the grip.

POSITIONS

I believe that there are three positions while playing in the court, one is the forehand position, another is the backhand position and the last one is the overhead position.

FOREHAND POSITION

Above shows a player hitting the birdie in the forehand position. The body is supposed to be facing towards the net. There are different kinds of footwork as to reach the forehand position but I'm not going to discuss about it.

BACKHAND POSITION

This picture shows Lee Chong Wei in the backhand position, playing with his all-time rival, Lin Dan. While executing the backhand shots, being in the backhand position, one is not able to see their opponent movements as the body and face is facing away from the net.

OVERHEAD POSITION

The overhead position is in my opinion, is the hardest to get in to. To be in the overhead position, one must have very good core strength and needs to be fast in their footwork. The overhead position is playing the forehand in one's backhand side of the court. As shown above, the player is actually a right-hander but is able to execute a forehand stroke on her backhand side. This is known as the overhead position.

To end it off, I believe that holding the racket correctly is having a good head start in the game and learning about all this 3 positions is essential for a badminton player's knowledge. But, although a player may have known the basics, but other factors like footwork and your strokes play a part in the game. In order to be good, one must train and put in the effort and heart to improve his/her skills in Badminton.

Reference : My knowledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton

http://www.badminton-information.com/badminton_grip.html

Credits to the owners for the photos.