(During rallies. Pic cred: The author.)
Continuing SAISA badminton
Thus far, I’ve been enjoying badminton quite a lot – it’s such a great way to be active over the week and make new friends. This week, we have moved forward with the clear shot and focused more on parallel playing and net shots.
When playing matches or rallies with other players, I’ve been striving to improve my net shots and serves. Particularly when serving, over the past few weeks I’ve been able to noticeably refine my serves so that they reach the service line – this was something that I had once struggled with. Additionally, I have a much lower rate of missing the shuttlecock when playing.
An aspect that I had been hoping to improve when playing badminton had been my agility, however, due to the holidays I don’t think that I have made as much progress with this as I had initially hoped. Of course, that’s not to say that I haven’t improved my agility at all – I definitely find it easier to react quickly to shots farther from me on the court.
Yet, I hope that with future practice sessions, I can refine this further. I plan to do this by concentrating more on where a shuttlecock travels during a match and making sure that I am in an optimal position when making a shot.
Although I’m a bit sad that I can’t travel for SAISA due to upcoming IB exams, I have found my experience with badminton to be highly valuable – I’ve made countless friends and gained many new skills!
Learning outcomes:
- LO1 – Strength & growth
- My goal at the start of SAISA badminton was to be more agile and react faster when playing – I think that I have been able to make good progress towards this goal. Applying the advice of my coaches have definitely allowed me to strive towards these goals.
- Additionally, in terms of physical fitness I have found playing badminton to be much more effective in getting me to be active than the aerobics that I would previously do. My goals for the future would be to balance between these two activities better.
- LO2 – Challenge & skills
- A challenge that I had not mentioned previously is time management and balancing my time playing with how much time I have for schoolwork and studying. Especially considering the IB exams, I want to focus more time on schoolwork for the time being.
- I definitely think that this could be an opportunity to gain organisation and time management skill in order to make sure that I am active whilst simultaneously working hard for the exams.