Badminton anyone?

I wasn’t able to write last week for two reasons: I was extremely busy with my work, and my right hand & arm were too sore after what I thought would be a simple game of badminton.

I first heard of badminton in France a year ago while talking to a coworker who mentioned playing it. I said, “Isn’t that a game for …” and he filled in the rest (I won’t repeat it because it could be offensive to some people!). He told me that it wasn’t, but I still imagined in my head people dancing around tapping the little flying thing over the net.

Recently, I found out that a friend and former coworker plays this badminton. So I say “Isn’t that a game for picnics?” (I was being much nicer than the other guy). She laughed and explained that it’s pretty serious and very popular in Asia, etc.

My racket sport experience goes back to the high school tennis team (we were really bad, didn’t even have try-outs) and here in France I played with a friend once a week for over 3 years. When my daughter was born we both got busy and stopped playing. So now I was curious about this badminton sport, since it was more popular than tennis with my coworkers. A bit of Googling led me to Wikipedia Badminton. It seemed this was a very serious sport afterall. So I asked my coworker to play. I figured with my tennis experience, I could pick up badminton very quickly and surprise her with a competitive match. Before our match I learned that she takes private lessons, plays in tournaments, etc. Ok, this should be interesting.

Racket sports are very popular in France, and there are lots of tennis (and of course badminton) clubs. From our work, a 20 minute combination of walking & train had us at the closest badminton courts. We reserved 1 hour, and fortunately (or as you will see later on, unfortunately for me), the court was available afterwards. I say fortunately because for the first hour I could not even hit the shuttlecock! It was very embarrassing. For one hour I swung at this thing, and missed! To the amusement of my friend and everyone else in the neighboring courts. I was too fast and too slow, and when I did make contact, my racket was at an angle, which creates a spin in tennis but in badminton it creates so much spin that the shuttlecock doesn’t go very far (sometimes just a few inches!).

After an hour I was able to get it across the net. But only if I used an overhand stroke (like a serve in tennis). A forehand or backhand was out of the question. The badminton racket is longer than a tennis racket so judging the distance was very difficult. After two hours I had a major breakthrough (thanks to my great coach) and we were able to do longer exchanges. I got better at placing the ball, right/left, front/back. I even learned the smash although most of my smashes were on accident.

The time went by fast and soon we realized that we had been playing for over 3 hours. On the way home we arranged for another lesson and with a bit of luck with the train schedule, less than an hour later I was back at home. I exercise regularly and had even been doing extra bike sessions (30 minutes every day) to prepare me for this match (I’m a serious competitor, even if I’m not a good one!). However, after 3 hours of badminton, I was exhausted. And there’s a reason. According to the French Wikipedia Badminton page, a 3 hour match of tennis has just 30 minutes of real play. This was always one aspect of tennis that I didn’t like. Unless you have ball boys you spend a lot of time getting the balls, preparing for serves, etc. In badminton, almost all the time is effective play. The court is much smaller, and the shuttlecock rarely goes out of bounds. At first I was afraid to hit it hard, but I soon learned that I could hit it as hard as I wanted and it wouldn’t go out of the court. That’s pretty cool, because there’s nothing better after a stressful day of work than hitting something as hard as possible and not having to go chase it because you hit it out of the court!

Earlier I said unfortunately and that’s because 3+ hours was a bit too much for my first time. The next day my forearm was very sore. I had to configure my mouse for my left hand and had a lot of trouble eating sashimi with chopsticks for lunch. The day after was even worse, I had sore body parts that I didn’t even know existed!

I was going to close with a comparison of sports in France and the US, but that will have to be a future blog entry. So let me close with a few facts about badminton: It’s one of the most intensive sports for the heart, alongside squash, water polo and ice hockey. Not only that, but it’s very easy to learn (unless you’re a tennis player) and anyone can play. And most importantly, it’s a lot of fun!