A complex sport

PROVIDING THE BEST SUPPORT

One of the key elements of successful support service provision is integration. Understanding athletes requirements, specificity of support and collaborative working are often described as some of the most crucial elements of athlete support.

Andy Allford, Strength and Conditioning coach and Juliette Lloyd, Sport Psychologist have been working closely with Britain’s best and upcoming Badminton players, working on providing high quality and complete support.

Badminton is a complex sport; combining mental, technical, tactical and physical elements of performance, applied to a fast paced game situation.

AA: “Because of all of those elements, the ‘ideal’ player profile is always changing; many successful players have had strengths in each of those different areas to varying degrees, so finding an ideal is extremely difficult. There is no single ideal profile for badminton and because of it's open skilled nature it is important that we work closely with the coaches to identify what areas of development will make the biggest improvements to their game. Identifying this is a challenge, for instance if a player has difficulty in winning a tight 3 set match this may be due to poor fitness, poor concentration, poor nutrition or a combination of all these things”

JL “Preparing each athlete/partnership individually for a competition is crucial as they each have their own individual strengths and areas of development.  In order to tease out these individualities, we use a Performance Profiling tool which allows the athlete to assess themselves on five aspects of performance.  We’ve asked them to list the most important technical, tactical, physical, mental and lifestyle aspects of an elite badminton player and then rate where they currently are against the best in the world or those know to be at the peak of their potential.  Those areas where the biggest discrepancy is seen between current and ideal which can become the focus moving forward”.

AA: “For example, two of the areas we are looking at in the physical part of the performance profile is each player’s pre-match preparation and recovery. These areas are really important for the players as during tournaments match times can vary greatly from the schedule making preparation hard.  Players could play up to 2 matches a day over a 5 -6 day period making recovery crucial. Couple that with the fact that matches could be played from 9:00 in the morning through to 11:00 at night and one sees that preparing and recovering are vital for peak performance.” 

JL: “My role is to focus on the mental aspects of peak performance and help the athlete to understand just how powerful their mind is and how to use it to their advantage.  My approach is holistic. The modern athlete does not work in isolation and so my role is about working with support staff, coaches and the organisation that surround the athlete as well as the athlete themselves.  For instance, if Andy or the coach is working with an athlete on pre-competition preparation, it’s important that they understand the role/impact the mind can have in this area and use this information to ensure the best possible outcome.  In this way, we are all working together, and reinforcing each other’