TRANSFORMATION PART 5

This is fifth and final part of the Transformation series.

D. Pre and Post match video reviews

When the tournament draw is out, we will be able to see who her opponents are. We will find videos (if available) to study her opponent’s game. Her coach can give pointers to strategize her game plan.

While in a match, Kiera wasn’t able to see herself how she played. With the video playback, she can see where she did good (reinforcement) and also where she could have done better (for improvements). Her coach can therefore, focus on areas that needed improvements.

After her match, we playback her match to analyse numerically by counting number of winners and errors. We discovered interesting statistics especially in doubles matches; who is playing well (low error counts + high winner counts) and who is having a bad day. The statistics doesn’t lie. One playing well doesn’t necessarily mean both will win the match. Both have to complement each other in the game. If a partner cannot compose her game temperament with high error counts, this will negate the winner counts and hence cost the match. More on this later.

E. Pre match warm ups on court

Often in the beginning of a tournament, especially first round matches scheduled early in the mornings, we can expect she may not be at her best. Kiera plays better when she has a pre match court warm ups just before her match. It is like she is playing her second set when she starts her match. Nothing too intense nor heavy, just variety of shuttle feeds movements to get her feel and rhythm going with the shuttle.

Usually if her match is in the later part of the day, we will look for nearby courts for this purpose. We time it just right after her court warm up, 30 – 45 mins before her match. It works well for her. Bigger international tournament venues have separate hall with additional courts for players to do warm ups. I see this in many western BWF super series tournament venues. This will definitely be helpful for the players.

However, if her match starts early in the morning, the best we can do is to do light drills, a day earlier. If she follows her club team for tournaments, her coaches will do some light workouts early, wherever they can find empty spaces near the hotel or court venue. Other than that, some rope skippings or hitting shuttle against the wall etc. will be helpful as well. That would be as best as can be done to prepare her warm-ups before her matches.

F. Mental Preparation and Visualisation

Perhaps one of the most important aspect but least “thought-up” is pre-match mental preparation. It may work differently for different players. Here are some but not exhaustive examples :

- Focus on tactical, strategies, executing quality of strokes and play. Playback previous videos that has, ie. winning rallies, winning game points etc.

- Have her to do mental visualisation, on court conditions, on previous matches that she did well, on specific rallies or moves/strokes which she played well and scored good points. This mental rehearsal I belief is a powerful tool to provide positive input into her sub-conscious mind. Hence boosting her confidence going into her match.

- Having positive conversations and steer away from discussions that are otherwise. Get 3rd party validation. The belief and encouragement from coaches will boost confidence.

- When ever she has the “jitters” spend time to do other like listening to music and watch movies to get her mind off the stress of the coming big match. However, this needs to be supervised not to overspend long screen time on her device.

G. Win Error Video Analysis

This is an interesting post mortem on how a player and opponent performs in a match. During her 2025 MSSM U15 doubles preparation, her club coach advised her to play a supporting role to her partner. He saw that her partner was strong in the front court and advice Kiera to play to her partner’s strong areas. When we did the post-match win error analysis, we were surprised that Kiera played better as a supporting role rather than the initiator. The initiator or lead attacker takes more risk and hence likely to commit more errors as well as (but not necessarily) more winners. However, a supporting role will have lesser winner count as well as lesser error count. Kiera normally takes the initiator role in most of her doubles match hence her error counts were high. In this case, she could contain her error count but at the same time, able to win some winners. So it provide more stability for the pair.

I urge the readers to try this method of post-match analysis because it will assist the player to understand better why he/she plays better and like-wise. Wish to know more, you may pm me or leave your contact below for me to reach you so as I can share it with you.

This is the end of the 5-part Transformation series sharing since part 1 back in May 2024. I am happy to hear any comments if any and learn from the readers experiences and sharings as well.

Thank you for reading.