Once a decision has been made to hit the shot, a set of impact requirements is established:

• Time/position of impact between racket head and shuttle
• Speed of impact
• Direction of head movement
• Angle of head relative to direction of head movement

The player uses their motor skills to attempt to satisfy the requirements of the shot.  Motor skills encompass a physical capability and a way of controlling that physical capability.  By using the term 'motor skills' instead of 'technical and physical' we hope to focus the reader's attention to the role of the body and brain in producing actions together.

The control of actions defines a motor pattern. This is a pattern of movement of the body's limbs over the duration of the action.

The shot requirements of Badminton place certain demands of the motor system.  They can include:

• Unlimited speed - the shot improves as speed increases
• Specific speed - the shot improves as closeness to required speed increases
• Specific direction - the shot improves as closeness to required direction increases
• Response time - the shot improves as the response time decreases (impact happens sooner in the trajectory)

We shall divide motor skills into:

• body positioning and shaping - moving the body to the vicinity of the impact with the correct limb arrangement to begin the shot
• shot execution - the final process

A clearer definition of these two divisions shall be developed in later sections.

To lay the foundation of motor skills we shall start be looking at basic muscular concepts and move on to control theory and how the demands of shots can be met.

Core Text Contents

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