Vad kan man när man kan spela badminton? : En kvalitativ studie av elitspelares uppfattning av sina egna förmågor

Sammanfattning: Abstract Aim. The aim of the study was to identify what abilities that elite players in badminton develop through playing. The purpose of doing this, was to get an insight into the most skillful player’s specific abilities. To investigate what you ”can do when you can do” is of great importance for teaching sports. Hopefully this study can contribute to developing methods for teaching net-, and wall games and in the larger perspective also other categories of sports. The research question is therefore: What does it mean to master badminton? Method. Four elite players in badminton, divided into two pairs, played a singles game against each other, over three sets. The match was video-recorded. The participants watched the recorded material and subsequently a semi-structured interview was carried out. At the interview both of the players, as well as the researcher participated. Data has been processed using a step-by-step method described by Tenenbaum & Driscoll (2005). Results. A total of seven categories of abilities were identified: - Abilty to assess the ball trajectory and impact point. - Ability to very quickly reevaluate your decision, during ongoing play. - Ability to assess risk versus opportunity during play, by assessing your own and the opponent’s abilities. - Ability to adjust movements with the purpose of changing one’s tactics. - Ability to perform actions that can give you a mental advantage. - Ability to evaluate and reevaluate one and several strokes ahead. - Ability to assess probabilities and responding by making desicions on the court. Conclusion. A clear emphasis, with the elite players, lies on tactic understanding based on experience ot the game. It gives us an indication that focus in training should lie on a game based approach that trains the complex abilities needed to play the game. Therefore one should be doing less of repetitive training and focus more on exercises based on the game’s tactical idea, so called idea based training and devote themselves a lot to playing the game in modified exercises, adapted to the participant’s level. Development happens in interplay continually with your opponent.