Badminton II
Training abroad felt completely different from home. I went through quite a few coaches—while I was in Singapore, local Singaporeans, as well as those brought in from Malaysia and Indonesia; and after I arrived in the U.S., immigrants from India and Nepal. Constantly switching coaches made the journey far from smooth, but compared to the previous “one-size-fits-all” training environment, it also brought new gains.
My first stop after going abroad was a training camp in Singapore, a Southeast Asian melting pot. Calling it a “camp” is somewhat misleading—it was more like a cluster of coaches. Whenever I needed private lessons during the summer, the person in charge, Aston (a former Singapore national team player), would assign one coach from this group for a two-hour private session. Besides Aston himself, I was often coached by Reza from Indonesia (rumored to have been in the same generation of national team singles players as Anthony Ginting), and Rezky (an Indonesian doubles player, who sadly passed away in a car accident in the first half of 2024).
From the end of my high school through my freshman summer, I went to Singapore three times. Each trip followed roughly the same plan: training three times a week. Because of Singapore’s diversity, its players display a wide range of training methods and playing styles. Although I did not participate in any local tournaments, I could clearly distinguish Indonesian-style blocks and drives, the fast-paced rally-heavy Malaysian style, and a locally popular Singaporean attacking style built around smash-and-net. Altogether, my total stay across the three trips was less than two months, but the private coaching there gave me perspectives very different from the playing styles I was used to back home. I strengthened my early tactical awareness and developed specific techniques: stabilizing my previously inconsistent fast pushes, learning flatter drives and half-lifts, cross-court hook shots after receiving smashes, tight net shots that catch the diagonal, and net toppling.
Singapore was a wonderful place to live and train. Its well-developed infrastructure—buses, the MRT, and abundant commercial areas—made commuting to venues convenient. I especially loved the rhythm of early departures and late returns: heading out in the morning, finding a seat in a university or shopping mall corner to read, eating at a hawker center at noon, then taking the MRT to and from training, followed by dinner, study or entertainment, and finally heading home. This balance between intellectual and physical pursuits was deeply refreshing—except for the relentless heat, often 30–35°C, which left me drenched in sweat while moving between MRT stations and training sessions.
After arriving in the United States and rebuilding my life around Providence, badminton was the aspect that went the least smoothly. There are essentially no dedicated badminton courts in the entire Rhode Island, unless one counts the two courts in our OMAC gym that are shared with volleyball and basketball teams. For the first month and a half of school, I played only with friends on campus. Although this was also nominally “three practices per week,” the lack of structured intensity meant the training was ineffective. Within that month and a half, several of my physical metrics declined, and my technique showed no improvement. Things only began to recover in my second semester, when I started systematic running training; before that, my 1500-meter record had dropped to 6:37, roughly the same as in middle school.
Fortunately, I was not complacent with this.
A month and a half into the semester, I met Coach Andy. Andy was a Malaysian national team singles and doubles player in the 1990s. After coming to the U.S., he not only founded a training academy but also coached the national team. By then, I had already realized the urgency of joining a proper training group, so I searched online for well-regarded academies in the Boston area. Besides Andy’s AC Academy, there was also Chongtian Badminton, run by Coach Chongtian Qiu, a senior of Coach Hu back in Bokuan. What felt like a coin flip—sending an email to the former—ended up determining my long-term choice.
There are five badminton venues in the Boston area: two within the city at Harvard and MIT, the Maugus Club near Wellesley, and farther out, Boston Badminton Club (BBC) and The Mill Works. All AC Academy training was held at the farthest location, The Mill Works. I still remember my first trial session there. I traveled from Providence by train to South Station, transferred to the Orange Line to North Station, then took the MBTA commuter rail to Littleton/495. Unfamiliar with the area and not knowing to use Uber, I walked for an hour along a two-lane road to reach the gym. The entire journey took four and a half hours. Everyone I later told was astonished—but even then, I had already foreseen that for an international student without a car, living in a remote “college town,” this might simply be part of the journey.
Most later training sessions were held at BBC. I got to know other teammates—Sandeep and Elsa, who lived nearby, could sometimes give me a ride, making scheduling much easier. Still, there were many occasions when I traveled by train alone, spending two and a half hours each way. This predicament only ended after I obtained my driver’s license near the end of my freshman summer.
Training at AC Academy introduced me to a new group of friends. Sandeep is Indian; we talked endlessly during drives to and from BBC. Through him, I met many Indian friends and even picked up certain habits with an Indian flavor, such as yoga-style stretching and an appreciation for curry and cricket. Elsa is Mexican, an Arabic professor at Brown University; beyond badminton, we often discussed Arab culture. There were also many high school and middle school students training with us (I was the only college student). Almost every weekend, I would also go to BBC or MIT, where a “big name” in the Boston badminton community (Daphne, and Neil, I later learned and acquainted) would invite around ten players, open three courts, and have us play nearly nonstop for two and a half hours. It was during this time that my doubles awareness began to mature.
During my first eight months at AC Academy, I focused primarily on building explosive wrist and finger strength. I began to understand why, during high school training, I had persistent issues with unstable shots, frequent net errors, slow drives, and delayed reactions—insufficient wrist strength meant that I could not sustain shot quality and speed when fatigued. This problem became particularly pronounced at the Coleman Cup team tournament in March 2024. On the first day, I won three matches in a row; on the second day, my wrist gave out, and I lost two consecutively. Coach Andy used a distinctive teaching approach to enlighten me: despite knowing I was strongest in slow-paced defensive counterattacks, he advised me to play a fast, flat, pressing style against taller opponents. I failed to adjust mid-match due to wrist weakness. But after the loss, crouching courtside, I understood his intent—he wanted me to recognize my own shortcomings while experimenting with new tactics and shot selections.
After that tournament, I prioritized wrist strengthening and consolidating lower-body strength. Every Monday, I scheduled about an hour of running, training in groups with Brown teammates when possible, or alone when necessary. During those two months, I spent twenty minutes on wrist training five to six days a week. Resistance bands became my closest companion: their portability and flexibility allowed me to perform almost any wrist exercise, adjust difficulty easily, and avoid injury. Combined with increased protein intake, my wrists remained slender in appearance, but their muscle quality had advanced to a completely different level.
During this period, I also helped the Brown-RISD team get Division 2 third place in the Eastern Collegiate, Northeast Conference, and Division 2A fifth place in the National Conference, playing ten matches with nine wins and remaining undefeated in singles.
When I returned from Singapore during winter break, I learned that Coach Andy had been diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. Training at AC Academy was taken over by Indian Coach Sunil and Nepali Coach Pashupati.
I worked closely with Coach Pashupati. From the moment he began coaching me in February 2024, he noticed issues with my wrist flexibility—another dimension of my wrist problem beyond sheer strength. Other issues included footwork, shot selection, serving, and various technical and tactical details. However, since it was still during the semester and I only had two training sessions per week (six hours total), these adjustments were postponed until the summer.
Summer intensive training was mainly held at Maugus. For two and a half consecutive months, I traveled to Boston from Monday to Thursday (sometimes Friday). I woke at 5:45 a.m., caught the 6:32 commuter rail, arrived at South Station at 7:40, transferred to the 7:55 Worcester Line to Wellesley Hills, and reached the gym around 8:30. I would practice serves, wall drills, and other basics until formal training began at 9:30. Later, at Coach’s suggestion, everything was shifted back an hour to allow for more sleep.
These summer camps were small: sometimes only two or three people, rarely more than fifteen. Badminton is already a niche sport locally, and many people prefer to rest at home or return to their home countries during the summer. My view on the importance or effectiveness of the training was not affected though. As Pashupati put it: what matters is not with whom you are training with, but the coach. In fact, I was grateful for the small size of the group, as it allowed for more attention and detailed correction of every minor flaw.
Looking back, wrist strength and movement flexibility are inseparable. When strength is sufficient, small motions can generate high-quality, explosive shots; when it is not, the arm must compensate, leading to stiffness. On the defensive side, Pashupati improved my footwork and the stability of my neutral shots. We started from the basics—forehand and backhand lifts, wall drills—progressing from slow to fast, restructuring my grip and transitions between forehand and backhand. We also strengthened the small muscle groups around my hips and Achilles tendons; only with these can the legs and core work in sync, enabling faster turns and starts. In the backcourt, we invested significant effort as well. Pashupati improved my consistency and emphasized wrist recoil, distinguishing clears, drops, and smashes primarily through wrist action. He explained scientifically: the tip of a whip is more powerful than the tip of a rigid rod because energy is transmitted through the segments. Likewise, keeping the wrist flexible, the forearm relaxed, the elbow bent, and the racket at an optimal height allows energy to transfer most efficiently. After prolonged training, I no longer panicked when defending body shots; my defensive range expanded, and my offense gained rhythm and variation. My improvement was measurable in days—almost every two days brought a noticeable change.
This was the first time I truly experienced the feeling of “evolution.”
There were setbacks, of course. In mid-July, at the Bay State tournament, I strained my triceps and armpit and it took three weeks to recover. Unable to stop training, I endured the pain—applying anti-inflammatory gels, wrapping bandages, and focusing on net play, defense, and forehand backcourt shots that didn’t stress the arm. In hindsight, this may have been beneficial: the injury forced me to rely on forearm and wrist power, further refining my technique.
This was written in early August 2024. In three weeks, I will travel to California for the Dave Freeman Jr. Open. Because I now have a clear understanding of what I want and don’t want, I no longer panic as I once did. Since my first-round exit at the Frisco Open in May, I have understood the gap between training performance and match performance. During weekly Saturday BBC matches, I observe and adjust my “quasi-competition” mindset, aiming for three goals: staying calm, warming up thoroughly, and executing tactical ideas.
Training under different coaches, effectively “switching systems,” allowed me to experience how different training philosophies shape athletes.
The methods under Sun Jun-Ge Fei and Bokuan were not the most scientific. I was simply training hard—building brute strength, running relentlessly, grinding endurance. Coaches assumed that players should learn technique and tactics on their own. With too many trainees and too little attention to go around, this was unavoidable. Nearly every session followed the same drills: clears, drops to the net, smash and follow-up, clear-drop-clear-smash, offense-defense. I had no idea what I was really training, and I didn’t dare ask; in that environment, one did what the coach said, and “extra questions” were discouraged. As a result, my main progress was in physical conditioning. My technique barely changed from entry to exit. Even early in my freshman year, I hesitated to play cross-net because two out of three attempts would result in errors. Progress based on conditioning rather than technique and tactics is necessarily arithmetic, not exponential.
The Singapore system was somewhat better. The private-coaching model allowed for immediate corrections, making training more effective and enabling incremental technical improvements. However, most coaches were young, many imported from Southeast Asia or China, and language barriers limited their ability to fully explain what I needed, what to focus on, and why. Moreover, the short duration of interaction prevented root problems from being addressed; I could only pick up superficial refinements.
Training in the United States—especially on the East Coast—places less emphasis on conditioning. There are two reasons: first, coaches understand that conditioning can be done independently, and scarce court time should be devoted to more important shuttle-based work; second, long daily training hours already build endurance. Pashupati’s gradual, systematic rebuilding of my technique—slow to fast, shallow to deep—resembled the training philosophy described in Peak (Deliberate Practice): identifying core issues, strengthening them deliberately, and reintegrating them into the whole. This approach benefited me immensely. Many teammates complained that Pashupati was overly verbose. That’s true objectively—but I didn’t mind. His constant reminders helped me stay aligned with my training goals and prevented technical or mental drift. With a solid fitness base already in place, addressing my weaknesses allowed my improvement to become exponential. After all, badminton—especially singles—demands balance across all attributes.
I remember eight characters painted on the wall of Bokuan’s gym: “Train hard, play hard (tenaciously is the actual word).” On AC Academy’s uniforms are the words: “Train hard, play smart.” The latter builds upon the former, advocating intelligent and scientific training.
Although I no longer fully agree with Bokuan’s methods, I gained invaluable things there: an exceptional fitness base, strong stress tolerance, the ability to endure hardship, the drive to fight for my goals, and the patience to sit on the bench. At AC Academy, I built upon that foundation, thinking deeply and developing a more complete technical and tactical system.
It is now the Olympics. Zhang Beiwen’s journey from China to Singapore to the U.S. suddenly feels deeply familiar to me. Perhaps I, too, have a chance to walk that path again. I can almost clearly see my future progress. I have a full understanding of my potential, and I am gripping every step ahead tightly.