Skill Acquisition Focus Enhances Badminton Support

by James Skitt - 12.04.10

Success in sport can depend largely on an athlete's ability to develop and perfect a specific set of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills, which is why coaches at BADMINTON England and Sport Science and Medicine practitioners from the English Institute of Sport (EIS) have been working together to study the concepts around skill acquisition and how it can be most effectively utilised within the sport.

Coaches and practitioners from both organisations, which form the support team behind the country’s top players, held a collaborative workshop on skill acquisition attended by Professor Mark Williams, a world renowned expert in skill acquisition, expert performance and effective instruction who has been working closely with the EIS.

Williams, Professor of Motor Behaviour at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, regularly consults with high-level performers across many sports and has produced over 300 publications across these three areas.

EIS Performance Psychologist Simon Drane, who organised the workshop, explained: “By combining Mark’s relevant research and experience as well as the expertise of the badminton coaches and EIS practitioners, we were able to look at the evidence based theory of skill acquisition and apply it very specifically to badminton training.”

Before the workshop practitioner and coaches had, through a series of focus groups, narrowed the field of skill acquisition down to a number of badminton specific areas such as anticipation and decision making, serve and return and the effect of pressure on all of the above.

Drane explained: “One area of focus for instance was around the serve and return, which is an absolutely crucial part of the game in badminton.

“Through looking at Professor Williams work with other sports and combining that with the badminton expertise in the room, we identified visual gaze, postural cues and anticipation as the vital elements in this phase of play.

“One outcome was to explore the possible use of a ‘mobile eye tracking system’ which can give us information about spatial and temporal properties of visual fixations. By pairing this with video footage we can study which postural cues are important to anticipate the direction of serve and actually place this into a simulation based intervention to enhance performance.

The day also involved discussion around the application of skill acquisition into the player’s training philosophy.

Drane added: “We discussed some innovative ideas for being able to manipulate the training environment to encourage skills that we need to work on.”

Andy Wood, Team GB Olympic Team Manager, added: “It was a really interesting and challenging day and the opportunity for us to tap into the expertise of someone like Mark Williams and each other will result in enhanced practice I’m sure.

“Personally I took a lot from the session and in particular our discussions around anticipation, decision making , pressure management and their impact on performance.”

The Yonex European Badminton Champions are at the Manchester Evening News Arena from 14-18th April, click here for more information http://www.europeanbadminton.com/

Photography © Getty Images