The drop shot is one of the most useful shot in badminton. You can play defensive shots or offensive shots from almost anywhere on the court. Knowing how to do good quality drop shots can lead you to many points and wins. In this article I’m going to tell you about some drills you can use to practice your badminton drop shot.

Before we get into drills, the first thing we want to know about is some qualities of the drop shot. As I mentioned before, there are many types of drops. I will discuss two, the fast drop and the tight drop.

A fast drop looks almost like a smash. It is a drop shot that usually reaches pretty close to the service line and also travels at a straighter angle. As the name suggests, it travels at a fast speed as well. This shot is great for pretty much all situations and are also the easier drop shot to learn.

A tight drop is a little different. Tight means that your drop should be very close to the net. The tight drop shot is usually slower than the fast drop (unless you make a slice) and usually used offensively. In the beginning, it may seem like it’s easier to play tight drop shots and many of your shots will look like one. The shuttle travels a high arch right next to the net. But this is not a proper drop shot.

Many players make the mistake of playing a drop shot that travels too high giving your opponent chances to net kill and win the rally. Try to keep your drop shots low; almost touching the net or even hitting the net and rolling over. You want to be able to consistently hit drop shots that are just above the net.

A basic drop shot drill you can do with a partner is where you drop, your partner net shots, you lift, then your partner drops, then you net, and then your partner lifts and repeat. The other version of this drill is where you repeatedly drop shot while your partner lifts and then switch after a while.

The first drill I mentioned should be done on a half court but you can do the other drill differently with the worker dropping to only one place and the feeder lifting to any place. These two versions of this drill is great for practicing consistency for both your partner and yourself.

Doing 3 sets of 5-10 minutes on each person is a good start.

Feeding drills involves a feeder, usually a coach or experienced badminton player, who would hold around multiple shuttles and then hit them to you without returning your shots. A basic feeding drill is having a feeder just hit shuttles for you to drop. The feeder would hold onto around 20 shuttles and then he would lift each one up.

Doing 5 sets of 20 shuttles is good for practicing consistency.

Another note with feeding drills is that it can be used to improve your speed. For this basic drill, the feeder should lift to both your forehand and backhand corners at moderate pacing to work the worker, the one hitting the shuttle.

You may have noticed that with the feeding drill, it wasn’t much different than the basic drop shot drills. Well only if you don’t add anything. The reason feeding drills are here is to make the worker work hard without working the feeder. Generally we want to make the drills more complicated.

In a game, you’re not only going to make drop shots right? Doing feeding drills with variations is going to prepare you for games much better and also allow you to practice a variety of shots. A few drills I’m going to talk about in this article are drop and net, drop, smash, half-smash, and multi-feed.

This first one I’ll tackle is drop and net. In this drill you want to drop shot to one place and then follow up with a net shot to the same place. The feeder can hit lifts or net shots anywhere on the court. Make sure to change things up like occasionally net shotting twice in a row, cross netting and lifting, etc. Also note that you can use just one shuttle for this and it may be even easier to do so. 3 sets of 5 minutes or hitting 25 shots back and forth is good. Make sure you change up where you are dropping and netting.

The second drill I want to talk about requires a feeder to feed multiple shuttles. This one is the drop, smash, and half-smash. With this drill, a feeder would lift to either your backhand or forehand and you would make shots as the title says, drop, smash, and then half-smash. You can choose to make any shot cross-court or straight depending on what you want to work on. This drill is great for working on your overhead swings. 5 sets of 20 shuttles should be okay.

The third and last drill I want to talk about is multi-feed. While this drill’s focus is actually speed, it can give you an idea of how to actually implement drops. In this drill, the feeder should hit anywhere on the court at a fast pace. The worker can also hit any shot back. 5 sets of 20 is also good for this drill.

Now I want you to take these drills and practice, practice, practice. Like every badminton shot or everything in general, you will only get better if you practice. I can’t stress the importance of good quality practice. This means when you practice, you want good quality drop shots as well. Don’t just hit a random shot and forget about it.

With these drills you should have a good start as to how to practice drop shots. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and as always have a great day!