By Justin Ma, 7x US Junior National Badminton Champion.
Last updated December 1, 2021
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4 min read
Did you know that using a certain part of your badminton racket can improve your power and accuracy on the court? It’s called the badminton sweet spot.
The sweet spot is the best place on your racket’s string bed to hit the shuttle. To get the most out of each shot, you’ll want to aim for it every time.
Consistently hitting the sweet spot is something that takes training and time. Most professionals rarely miss it — but for the rest of us, it can take a little extra practice.
You can find the badminton sweet spot near the top center of your racket. An oval racket will normally have a smaller sweet spot than an isometric racket.
To locate the sweet spot, try hitting a shuttlecock and listening to the sound that your racket makes. When you hit the right place, you’ll notice a less blunt noise with more bounce, along with a little less vibration.
You can enlarge and widen the sweet spot on your racket by reducing the string tension. But be careful you don’t loosen your strings too much, as less tension means less power behind the delivery of your shots. However, lower tension is more forgiving on shots that are not perfect.
As you may have already guessed, increasing the string tension makes the sweet spot smaller. This, in turn, diminishes the amount of time you will have to connect with your racket’s sweet spot. In other words, you will notice shrinkage in the allowable margin of error for your swing to still produce the desired shot.
Just remember, the higher your racket tension is, the more nearly perfect your timing on your shots needs to be, even when you’re under pressure. Your level of success will start to feel very “all or nothing”. The slightly sharper feel and control are not worth always worth it in my opinion.
The main reason players tend to have trouble with soft shots when the tension is lower is because they are coming from a higher tension. So initially, at least, they are unused to the slightly more bouncy feel of the slightly lower tension and it throws them off. The best advice I can give you is this. Adjust the tension until you can hit all your overhead shots effortlessly, and over time you will get used to the feel. Over time, your soft shots and mastery of the badminton sweet shot should improve.
Once you can recognize the sound of your racket’s sweet spot, you are ready to start practicing.
With that in mind, here are a few badminton sweet spot exercises for you to try out:
Wall rally drills are a simple, effective training technique. And the only tools you’ll need to do them are a racket, shuttlecock, and wall.
Simply bounce the shuttle off the wall and try to hit it with the sweet spot every time it comes back to you.
These drills are spectacular for practicing because you can get some fast-paced training in with minimal equipment.
Find a partner and practice hitting shots back and forth to each other. Try midcourt shots, so you can focus on hitting the sweet spot.
You don’t want to worry about how hard you have to hit the shuttle, so avoid sweet spot practicing in the rear court.
A training rod can be a helpful badminton tool for sweet spot practice. It’s a long flexible rod on a weighted base, with an elastic string attached to a shuttle.
With a training rod, you can practice all of your shots over and over — and never have to pick up a shuttle off the floor!
A sweet spot training racket has a smaller head but is the same length as a standard badminton racket. So, you’ll have the same distance from your hand to the sweet spot of most rackets when you use a training racket.
If you have trouble with mishits, practicing with this tool can help you improve your consistency. The small racket head forces you to concentrate on hitting the shuttle just right every time.
With a bit of practice, you could see significant improvements in your shots when you return to your normal racket.
Pro Tip:
Justin Recommends the Black Knight Sweet Spot Trainer 120G (Red) Badminton Racquet
The only way to get good at hitting the sweet spot with your racket is to keep practicing. And the techniques in this post will help you get there.
Eventually, you’ll be able to automatically judge the distance from your hand to the sweet spot — and you’ll be able to hit it almost every time. Good luck!
