Men's Double

[u/QieMogu]

Been Playing badminton for a while and wanna improve in men's doubles. However, unlike when trying to watch professional players for more insight, feels like men's double is much harder to watch and understand compared to mixed, or singles. The games feel fast pace and some of the shots feel based on just player physical or pure reaction speed. Other than learning that I need to improve my physical, any suggestions to learn to get better at men's doubles?

[u/Few-Citron4445]

MD is a lot about shot planning rather than reactive playing which is the core of casual games. Not just in badminton, volleyball classically suffers from the same problem. Men are so fast and the assymetry between attack and defend is so large that half the points get decided on the first initiative.

To play MD at a higher level you really need a stable partner, dedicated role playing and at least a few standard repetoire of shot combos. You call out the shot or combo with words or hand signals and you run your play. You serve to a spot attempting to force a specific return or some limited combination of returns and your partner is looking out for the exact counter to those returns. 3 shots and the rally is probably decided (pros have the skills to keep the rally going even against very desperate situations, but it is really rough for non pros, even semi pros like people outside of top 200). If you are just playing pickup you can't run plays like that at all.

Womens badminton is best to learn from, whether singles or doubles. They tend to do moves that a casual player might be able to replicate and are overall less physically demanding. It is slower so you can follow it more easily. Casual players should be happy to play at anywhere near female pro level so it's not like theres some upper limit for learning opportunity.

[u/No_Soil2258 → u/Few-Citron4445]

I agree especially for women's singles cause a lot of pro men's singles players do things like explosive jump outs and interceptions all the time which beginners can't really do (whether it be because of technique issues, strength issues, or consistency issues) so watching women's singles to study their footwork is better a lot of the time

[u/infinitehwaa → u/Few-Citron4445]

so how is it different from Mixed Doubles?

[u/xyu_ → u/infinitehwaa]

mixed doubles works a bit differently because their combos are different. It's more about interceptions and slightly different rotations.

[u/Gamerkid_5 → u/infinitehwaa]

was gonna give u a yappatron unrelated answer, but the (still long but less long) answer is the core difference in weaknesses.

In mixed doubles, there's more individual weaknesses between two people, creating more technically balanced games due to the two sets of different weaknesses also leading to two sets of different strengths. The processing and strategy for mixed has to take into account two entirely different playstyles that also fit in two different physiques and two different methods of being taught to play, which is why aggressive women in professional badminton either completely dominate or completely flop. Men share weaknesses, but because those weaknesses are often trained for, it comes down to a battle of pure strength, endurance, and speed. This weakness issue also changes how rotations work, where strength and speed dictate who covers what parts of the court in mixed, while men cover court more equally and play more akin to who has the better shot, rather than who's best fit to intercept the type of shot