1 Comment »September 7, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

Canadian Player Fiona McKee

The following article is an introduction to a new contributor to BadmintonLife.com, Canadian badminton player Fiona McKee. Fiona is a multiple National Champion and Pan Am Champion in women’s doubles and mixed doubles. If you’d like to read more about Fiona and her badminton life you can visit her blog at FionaMcKee.ca.

I started my badminton career at the Toronto Granite Club training in their junior program with Mike DeBelle. When I graduated from high school, I was accepted into various Ontario universities for science or kinesiology. I chose to attend the University of Calgary for kinesiology as completing my university degree in Calgary gave me the opportunity to train in the Glencoe Club’s National Badminton program. I wanted to combine badminton and university because I wasn’t ready to stop playing as I felt I hadn’t reached my badminton potential. The badminton program at the Glencoe Club provided me with top-level training and coaching within Canada to improve my badminton skills and understanding of the game. This decision was the right one aafts I received great training with the coaches at the Glencoe–Ardy Wiranata and Bryan Moody.

While at the Glencoe, I won U19 Mixed Doubles Nationals with Billy DeJong, U23 Mixed Nationals and Women’s Doubles Nationals with Samantha Ralph, and Senior Nationals in Women’s Doubles with Charmaine Reid. However, from the start, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to train full time, attend competitions, and complete my degree in four years and thus I took a reduced program each year. This proved to be the right decision because I got to travel the world and compete in the top badminton tournaments in 32 countries without having to give up my education. I didn’t want to have to choose one or the other.

Then the opportunity came to train with Kim Dong Moon. My mixed partner at the time, Will Milroy, encouraged me to train with Kim Dong Moon as he felt that Kim being a previous world mixed doubles champion had to the most to offer us in Canada for mixed training and strategy. I spent one year training with Kim and won the Senior Mixed Nationals and Pan Am Championships with Will Milroy and went to the Worlds in India winning our first round. I learned so much about badminton during this year. Kim provided me with a higher understanding of the game, not just at a physical level, but also a mental level.

After Will retired, I didn’t have a mixed partner at Kim’s and left. Since then, I have had partnership troubles. When my mixed partner dropped me part way through this year’s badminton season, I lost my national carding, Quest for Gold funding, and chance to attend the Commonwealth Games. I have always loved mixed and doubles, but now realize that you are dependent on a partner that can let you down at important times. Personally, it is a tough time when you have goals and dreams that can’t be reached due to the poor decisions of others. It took me a while to get over this letdown by the actions of a partner that I couldn’t control or influence or really understand.

Feeling pretty low and not even sure if I wanted to compete in badminton anymore, a surprise opportunity came my way. Sune Gavnholt of the Danish Badminton League (Danmarks Badminton Forbund Badmintonligaen) contacted me about joining the Ikast Badminton Club to compete for its team in the first Danish league. I would also be given the opportunity to compete in international tournaments with some of the other players from the Danish club.

This opportunity enables me to continue competing in badminton for another season. I need goals and a competitive environment to be able to go out and train everyday. I would love to say that I always have an undying love for the game of badminton, but that is very unrealistic. I have to have goals that I am working towards to keep me motivated. Training isn’t always fun, but winning is and I train so that I can experience winning and achieving my goals.

After losing my chance at the Commonwealth Games and now not having a mixed partner, I was just training for the sake of training and that had become hard. Competing for a team in the Danish league couldn’t have come at a better time when I was lost about where to go with badminton. I definitely didn’t feel I was ready to stop playing and competing but I didn’t feel like there was much left for me in Canada. I graduated with a four-year degree in Kinesiology this past year and instead of looking for full-time employment, I decided to sign with the Danish Club. I had never dreamed that I would ever have an opportunity like this and knew I just couldn’t let it pass me by.

I have had opportunities in the past to play on teams and really enjoyed the experience (Pan Am Games in Rio, Sudirman Cup in Scotland, and Canada Winter Games in New Brunswick). The added excitement of everyone on a team working together to achieve common goals is so rare in badminton.

I have met badminton players that felt they retired too early and never got to achieve their badminton goals and others that felt they hung in too long and lost education or employment opportunities. With my formal education ending, this coming year provides me with one more chance to reach my full badminton potential; I hope this will be the compromise between retiring too soon and hanging in too long.

Tags: commonwealth games 2010 delhi, fiona mckee, kim dong moon, Will Milroy

4 Comments »July 28, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

We frequently get requests from people to run Badminton Life Training Camps, so we decided we’d do a proper survey to see what the interest level is like.  Take the survey below and let us know what you think:

Badminton Life Training Camp Survey

If we have a positive response we will try to put something together for you.  Thanks for reading everyone!

Tags: badminton, badminton camps, badminton life

No Comments »May 3, 2010 in Badminton DVD, Instructional by Emmet Gibney

Our course The Essentials of Badminton Technique was so popular when we first released it that we ran out of DVDs, and we were unable to fulfill all of the demand for DVDs because we could not ship to Malaysia, India and a number of other popular badminton countries. Well now we have re-stocked our DVDs and we offer shipping anywhere in the world

The Essentials of Badminton Technique Now Available

To celebrate the re-release of our course, and our new international shipping, for this week only we are offering a discount of 15%. This sale only lasts until Friday so don’t miss your opportunity to learn badminton from a champion.

We also have some bonuses to sweeten the offer, interviews with both Peter’s junior coach, and his senior coach, two of the biggest influences in his badminton career. Also, for those of you who struggle with English, or are hearing impaired, we now have transcripts of the instructions for you to read or translate if you like.

The Essentials of Badminton Technique Now Available

Remember, from Monday, May 3rd until Friday, May 7th at midnight we are offering the course with shipping anywhere in the world and a 15% discount.

Talk to you soon,

Peter Rasmussen
BadmintonLife.com

No Comments »April 23, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

I was recently contacted by the people at the Hong Kong Sports Institute Limited looking for an international level coach. Perhaps some of our readers might be interested in this position. Below is the information for this job, as well as a link with information on how people can apply:

http://www.hksi.org.hk/hksdb/front/e_co1_hksdbco2_20100414.html

The Hong Kong Sports Institute Limited (“HKSIL”) is dedicated to provide an environment in which sports talent can be identified, nurtured and developed to pursue excellence in the international sporting arena. We are now inviting suitable candidates for the following vacancy:

HEAD BADMINTON COACH

THE JOB

The HKSIL works in close collaboration with the Hong Kong Badminton Association (“HKBA”) in achieving the jointly defined goals of elite training. Therefore, while reporting to the Chief Executive, the incumbent is also responsible to the HKBA to ensure the following duties are satisfactorily conducted:

• To oversee the planning, design, implementation, evaluation, of the Badminton programme in line with the agreed training and competition aims of the HKBA and HKSIL;
• To lead the Badminton Department, managing coaching and administrative staff, ensuring that it operates effectively, efficiently and within the annual financial budget;
• To create systematic opportunities for talent to emerge through related programmes so that the development of Badminton is enhanced;
• To ensure that all scientific, medical and other athlete support services are fully utilised and integrated into the Badminton programme to enhance elite training outcomes;
• To contribute technical information to in-house and general media publications as requested;
• To contribute to the enhancement of the professional image of the HKSIL;
• To contribute towards the overall development of coach education programmes which contribute to the development of more and better local coaches; and
• To motivate and train direct reporting coaches to become high quality international coaches.

THE REQUIREMENTS

• Holder of a university degree or equivalent;
• Holder of national level coaching certificates;
• Over 10 years with a proven record of achievement in coaching Badminton at international level;
• Substantial experience in leading programme planning and administration in Badminton. Knowledge in sports science and sports medicine and be able to bring their benefits to the coaching process;
• Excellent interpersonal / analytical / evaluation / planning skills; and
• High level of computer literacy.

Tags: hong kong badminton

2 Comments »April 20, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

If you were to ask any top ten, or even top 100 player, they would tell you they have coached at some point in their career. Often they are made to do it by their federation, or their club. Sometimes they have to do it because they need some extra money. Several players do it because they want to give back to the sport that has given them so much. Perhaps the most overlooked benefit of coaching is that it helps you to improve as a player yourself.

How Does Coaching Help You To Improve?

Think about your school work.  Is there a subject that you are particularly strong in?  Perhaps your friends often come to you for help with math, or science.  Maybe you even do some tutoring.  When you spend time helping others with something that you are already good at, you get better at it.  This applies to everything in life, even badminton.  By spending time helping others with their badminton, you start to really analyze what it is that you already do.  You notice some of your own bad habits and correct them.  You break down the fundamentals of your technique in order to explain it clearly to your student.  By doing all of this you further cement your understanding of the game.

When you watch your players playing games you have to break down strategy, and tactics.  You start noticing how to move players around the court, what their strengths and weaknesses are.  You take yourself out of the game and from the outside looking in you gain a new perspective on the sport.

I myself and currently starting my own training again.  My goals are much more humble than most, but still daunting for me.  I want to win the Canadian nationals, something I’ve never done before, and frankly it’s going to be an uphill battle.  Life often gets in the way of training.  You need to work, or perhaps for you it’s your homework.  Well that’s why I have decided to start doing some coaching again.  Make a little bit of spending money, while improving your badminton, nothing better than that.  It’s an excuse to keep you on the court, and keep you thinking about badminton.

Give Back To The Sport You Love

As I mentioned in the introduction, another major motivation for a lot of players who coach is giving back to the sport.  I think that is very important.  Many of us love this game, a lot.  Most of my life’s fondest memories have happened either at tournaments, or near a badminton court.  The sport doesn’t get as much respect as we all know it should.  I know that for me growing up in Canada, my friends and I would often be embarrassed to tell people that we played badminton, hockey was the big game in our city.  It shouldn’t be that way.  Kids should feel proud to say they play badminton, because their friends should like it to.  We need to get more kids playing badminton, but there are not enough coaches.  This is why it’s so important for people to coach if they have the knowledge.  Be willing to pass that knowledge on, share with others what has been so dear to you.

Tags: badminton coaching

8 Comments »March 24, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

Rune Ulsing Talking With Coach Michael Kjeldsen

The player coach relationship is an interesting one.  In many cases it’s similar to a parent-child relationship, with many of the same ups and downs.  As a player you want to be loyal to your coach, especially if you have a good relationship with them, and if you have produced some good results under their guidance.  However, there comes a time where every player needs to make the decision whether the need to go elsewhere in order to grow further as a player.  This can be a touchy situation, and many coaches can feel slighted when their players move on.

As a junior I had a few different coaches at my club, but the one I spent the majority of my time with was Wang Wen.  Like many of my peers that played with my during my junior years Wang is like a second father to me.  We spent a lot of time traveling to tournaments across the country, talking about badminton, and about life.  It’s fair to say that he was one of the biggest influences in my life.  So much of my badminton game has come from his teachings.  When I was 14 he took me from losing first round at the nationals to being a contender for national titles the following year, and many of our club’s players have had similar experiences as countless numbers of our players have won national titles under his guidance.  However, when I was in my last years of juniors Wang told me that in order for me to take my game to the next level I would need to go elsewhere, that he had taught me all that he could.  At that point I had planned to move to the national training center, but was sidelined with a knee injury which ended those plans.

Many of the best players have had similar paths.  They reach a point towards the end of their junior careers where they have maxed out what their current coach can offer them.  The best coaches recognize this, they leave their own egos out of the equation and allow their players to go out and explore what other coaches have to offer.  Unfortunately a lot of coaches are more interested in their own results, and building their reputation, rather than allowing their players to grow.

My opinion as you can probably tell is that a player should eventually move on, but there are arguments for both sides.  If you stay with the same coach through your career you know you’re with someone who knows your game well, and perhaps they have a good idea of where they want to bring you for the long term.  They also probably know how to motivate you, what your limits are and so forth.  However, they bring only one perspective to the table.  When you bring a new coach into the mix you get a whole new perspective on your game.  They see things in a different way which is the most valuable thing you can do.  This goes hand in hand with sparring with new players as well, but I’ll get into that in another article some time later.

An ideal situation is if you are moving from your home club, to a place with a high performance coach of some kind.  Someone who deals almost exclusively with high level players.  This ties in with the environment that you’re going to be in as well.  A high performance training environment means that everyone there is serious about being a really good player.  However, if that option is not available to you, there still is some advantage of working with a new coach simply for the fact that they have knowledge and opinions that your previous coach does not, and that always has value.

What do you think?  Should you stay with one coach?  Will working with another coach mess up your game?  Or is it better to go off and bring your game in a new direction, with a new coach?

Tags: badminton coach, badminton lessons, badminton player, badminton training

35 Comments »February 24, 2010 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

I think it is fair to say that I am a huge badminton fan.  You would be hard pressed to find someone who loves this game more than I do (maybe Peter).  I am also certain that a great number of you visiting this website, and reading our articles are equally as crazy about this game as I am.

It can be difficult at times being a badminton fan living in North America.  Few people give our sport the respect it deserves, and that frustrates us, am I right?  But what do we do about it?  We complain to our fellow badminton fans that we never get to see badminton on television.  We complain that we don’t have as much funding as other more popular sports.  We complain that our athletes do not put up the big results.  All we do is complain.

The problem is not just in North America of course.  Internationally we suffer from the same inferiority complex.  Players complain that the prize money and sponsorship deals don’t come close to those of tennis.  What does BWF do about this?  They sign with a sports promotions agency.  They change the scoring system.  They partner with pop stars to promote the game.  They change the scoring system back.  They change the scoring system again.  They change the tour structure.  They drop their agency and sign with another. It just keeps going on and on, but there has been zero progress.  In fact adjusted for inflation, I would bet that we have gone backwards on almost every financial metric you can think of (prize money, TV ad deals, etc etc).

China’s economic growth is good for badminton, no doubt about that.  However, if China continues to be such a dominant force abroad it’s not very entertaining.  We need several countries capable of challenging China’s dominance.  I’m not talking about 4 or 5, I’m talking about 20 or so.  Denmark won the European Team Championship again this year.  Absolute domination.  Denmark is a very small country, but they have a lot of badminton players, and the systems they have in place for the sport are fantastic for developing players.  They are far from being perfect, former Danish national coach Steen Pedersen told me that Denmark will fall behind the Asians soon if they don’t start putting more into the sport.  So what is the big underlying problem?

“Badminton is the second most popular sport in the world behind soccer in terms of participation.”

I don’t know how many different people, and sources I have heard this from, but I can assure you it is false.  I have mistakenly told people this in the past as well, so don’t feel bad.  Even if it was true, if you removed China from the calculation it would certainly take us out of the running.  Badminton is not suffering from lack of popularity in China.  I’m willing to bet that Lin Dan and the rest of the Chinese national team members are doing just fine for themselves.  Do not quote that stat, it is false, it is wrong, and even if it isn’t it’s just a ridiculous thing to say.  If badminton is so popular then why is there no money in the sport?

Below I have included a little graphic to more clearly demonstrate the sport of badminton’s greatest problem:

The original version of this graphic was actually taken from a food pyramid graphic describing how in order to have a certain number of meat eating predators, you need to have significantly more grass eating prey, and then to support the grass eating prey you need to have A LOT OF GRASS.  Are you seeing where this is headed yet?

Looking at the top of the pyramid you will see Lin Dan.  He is the greatest player in the world today, and of all time.  In order to produce one Lin Dan you need the support of a couple dozen national team players.  These are players who in their own right could be world champions were it not for Lin Dan (ie Chen Jin lost in the final of the 2009 Worlds to Lin Dan, as did Bao Chunlai in 2006).  Then in order to support the top national team there are many many more players who would easily be top 20 players if the rest of the Chinese team wasn’t in their way.  Then if we skip all the way to the bottom, you see a whopping 50,000 provincial level players.  These are people who might even be top 20 players in a country like Canada or the USA, but in China they are nothing special.

Most of the badminton organizations that I am aware of spend the majority of their time and money focusing on that top part of the pyramid.  The same applies to both BWF and the national associations like Badminton Canada.  They spend their time focuses on what they can do at the top level to improve the game, and they wonder why they can’t get any traction, why things never get any better.  It’s like trying to design a better water hose to clean your car with, but you neglect to turn up the water pressure at the tap.

Dear Badminton Canada, stop spending all of your time and energy focusing exclusively on how to qualify athletes for the Olympics.  Stop spending all your energy debating on whether team selection criteria should be more internationally or domestically focused.  These are important things to spend SOME of your energy on.  You should instead spend MOST of your energy on promoting the game at the grassroots level.  This does not mean spend more energy on juniors that are going to World Championships, this does not mean creating a better junior circuit.  Again these are important, but they are not the most important thing to be doing right now.  The number one thing we should be spending our energy on is promoting the sport of badminton to people who do not yet realize how great it is.

I have been a part of countless badminton exhibitions over the years, as a player, and as a videographer recording them.  In every single exhibition I have been involved with people have been amazed at how great our sport is.  The ooohs and aaaahs were limitless, and these kids were ripe for the picking.  They were young and impressionable, and could easily have been converts.  Given a choice between hockey and badminton, some of these kids would have chosen badminton, I guarantee it.  I know kids who made that choice.  Martin Giuffre, the Canadian National Runner Up this year made that choice.  The problem there was nothing in place to try and convert these kids.  Take a look at this promo video from one exhibition tour I was a part of in North Carolina four years ago:

As you can see, a lot of these kids were really excited about watching badminton.  No, they didn’t know who the players were.  They may have heard that Tony Gunawan and Howie Bach were World Champions, but I honestly don’t think that mattered much.  What mattered was the game was exciting to watch.  You don’t need world class players to promote the sport.  Even national or provincial level players will impress people who don’t know our sport well.

So why wasn’t this exhibition a huge success?  Why aren’t there more people playing badminton in the USA, or more specifically North Carolina?  A couple reasons:

1. No follow up
2. Nowhere to play

Number 2 isn’t really an issue as there is a decent number of people playing at different schools in the Raleigh area.  The real issue is that there was no follow up.  Nobody was identifying who the real keen kids were, and nobody was following up to try and convert them.  This is something that the sport of badminton as a whole has failed to do very well thus far.  The national and regional associations are not doing enough to build databases of badminton fanatics, and the corporations are not doing their part to foster the growth of the sport either.  Companies like Yonex seem more interested in maintaining market share than in growing the market as a whole.

As fans of this sport it is our obligation to promote the sport in whatever way we can.  It is our obligation to organize exhibitions, to be involved, to help introduce our sport to as many people as we can.  If we are not doing our part, we do not deserve to complain anymore.

I want badminton to be more popular than tennis.  Forget that, I want badminton to be more popular than soccer.  I’m doing what I can by starting this project with Peter.  We want to promote this sport the best we can.  I want to offer whatever help I can to bring this game to the level it needs to be at.  If you want to help too, tell your national or regional organization to read this article, and then they can email me at info@badmintonlife.com and I will do whatever I can to help bring badminton to the next level in your area.

Badminton can be so much bigger than it currently is, we just need to believe it can be done.

Tags: Badminton Canada, badminton world federation, Bao Chunlai, BWF, Chen Jin, lin dan, martin giuffre

No Comments »January 25, 2010 in Badminton DVD, Instructional by rasmussen

Essentials of Badminton Technique Available Now

After a long wait, and months of production we have finally released our instructional video the Essentials of Badminton Technique. We worked a very long time on this to make it the best possible instructions we could, and we hope that the badminton fans on our website find it helpful.

Essentials of Badminton Technique Available Here

For our early bird customers we are offering a limited time discount, purchase your copy before Friday January 29th because the sale ends then.

Tags: badminton technique

11 Comments »September 16, 2009 in Instructional by Emmet Gibney

This article is a little different than the others in this series in that it offers no advice to the individual players (other than perhaps to leave your country), but instead offers up ideas to the organizations. Upon viewing the title of this article I’m sure that already many of you are prepared to start arguing with me. Where you’re from should make no difference whether you’re a good player or not you say, people from even the most remote places have the ability to succeed in badminton. This is true to a point, but it is undeniable that a small handful of countries, and one country in particular, dominate badminton. In no particular order here are the main countries I am referring to:
Read more

Tags: badminton, badminton coaching, badminton tips, badminton training, David Snider, emil holst, nathan robertson, roslin hashim, Tony Gunawan

No Comments »September 11, 2009 in Instructional, Video by Emmet Gibney

We’re getting close to finishing everything for the coaching videos. The DVD and subscription website (www.badmintonlife.com) are almost ready for purchase. I went to watch Peter play a club match the other day, and then we also did a quick little video with Peter to tell you what’s going on now. Peter’s club played well, but lost very close after going to a “golden set”. A golden set is when the club match is tied 3-3, so they pick one event to play and they do one last set which decides everything. Unfortunately Peter’s team lost the golden set 24-22! Anyway, here’s Peter : )

Tags: badminton club, badminton coaching, badminton tips, badminton training, peter rasmussen