Lucie Corcoran (Coach), Daniel Magee(Coach) , Caroline Black, Adam Jermyn, Liam O’Leary, Ruaraidh Sim and David Walsh (Players) have returned from the European Summer School which took place in Pressbaum, Austria from 17th to 24th July. Here they relay their experiences from the week.

Day one: Players settled down and began to get acclimatised to their new training environment. The temperature was as high as 34 degrees so this was going take a bit of getting used to. The head staff sat down with the coaches to set out the objectives for the camp. The coaches and players had a clear set of goals to achieve and with this in mind they were left to adequately prepare for the first day of training. 

Day two: The coaches were introduced to the First of the areas that would be worked on. An emphasis was put on quality of training, in areas of feeding, progression of routines and match realism.

Meanwhile the players took part in a competition with the other camp participants. This gave the players the chance to go head to head with players of very different physical and technical abilities. The most noticeable result here was Ruairidh Sim who made the final of the Boys competition. The tournament also gave the coaches a chance to analyse the players. After the analysis, plans were made to help improve players in the various weak areas in their game.

Day three: The third day saw the Introduction of the coaches to their groups. The staff coaches took a session on defence that would later be used with the players. In the following session the camp coaches had to work on the individual needs of their players within the groups they were assigned. This is the format that would be followed for the rest of the week. This ensured that players got an opportunity to improve the weak areas in their game. So combined with the set training with the staff coaches the players would be able to become  more complete badminton players.

Day four: The set topic for day four was net play and variation of net. Coaches were taught in the morning the technique that the players would later train on. Huge concentrations on technical issues were addressed on this topic. Later the coaches worked with their own group of players and had a chance to address their weaknesses and set individual drills to each player. This days training served in improving the player’s core game and helped to make a start in addressing the individual player’s needs.

Day five: By day five there was already huge improvements seen in the players game play. Areas of Technical and tactical ability had been addressed, therefore a huge concentration on this day would go on physical training. The players started on non racquet footwork, and later went on to circuit and ply metric training. This work pushed the players to their physical limits and helped them to see what is required and expected of players of this standard. It was a very beneficial exercise and the Irish players got a good idea of what work is needed of court and how they could continue to improve on this area when they arrived home.

Day six: The final day of training, in this session there was a focus put on giving the player some more variety in their play. Lim Kenn from Malaysia took the session and taught the players how to make deception in their game play. The players responded well to the training and gained an understanding of the racquet skills that they needed to improve on. This days training combined with the rest of the week helped the players to understand all the different areas they need to work on to continue to improve as a player. The players participated well and took a lot away from this experience and it will serve them well in the development of their physical, technical and tactical knowledge.

Report from Lucie Corcoran & Daniel Magee