Indonesian athletes were world champions in badminton for many years.
They had a history of winning when it counted. When they were the best in the world, I watched them play; talked with them, their coaches, and their former world champions; and visited their training camps. One reason that they were on top of the world at that time was their extensive use of simula-tion training. They simulated every aspect of the game—their strategy, coming from behind, bad calls, high temperature, crowd effects—particularly for the world championships. You can adapt the basic ideas underlying this specific simulation program to whatever sport or challenge you are facing.
Long before the match, the top Indonesian players knew everything about their opponents—their strengths, weaknesses, playing style, and technical peculiarities. They studied videos of their opponents and gained from the experiences of teammates who had already faced them. They preplanned a strategy and mentally ran through exactly what they would do when their opponents did A, B, or C. Teammates sometimes role-played the actions of opponents in simulated games. The players knew where they should return the shuttle, or bird, for a particular opponent before they played him, and they prepared to place the bird accordingly before it ever reached them in the actual game.
They also practiced anticipating their opponents’ returns, which meant knowing beforehand where the bird would likely go and planning to be there. If this strategy worked on 7 out of 10 shots, it was worth targeting the anticipated return area. In a sport like badminton, speed is closely linked to anticipation. The player must anticipate and move toward the return area before the bird is fully hit, particularly for a hard smash. (A hockey goalie or soccer goalie facing a hard shot must react in a similar way. To be successful, the goalkeeper must anticipate where the puck or ball will go and be there before the player makes full contact with the puck or ball. The puck or ball often moves to the goal faster than a goalie can react; correct anticipation is therefore essential.)
By studying where the bird (or ball) usually goes under various conditions and with different opponents, a player can greatly increase the chances of being in the right place at the right time. The top Indonesian players were undoubtedly quick, but they had much more than speed—they knew where and when to move. They were usually in the return area before the bird arrived, even on blistering shots in doubles play. They targeted their speed, anticipated their opponents’ shots, and perfected their own strategies through simulation training.
The Indonesian players also used simulation to improve their performance by preparing themselves for the following performance situations:
➤ Coming from behind. Top players built confidence in their ability to come from behind and win a game by simulating specific come-from-behind game situations in practice. A game might start at 14 to 3—a stronger player
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would begin with 3 or 4 points and a weaker player with 13 or 14 points. The objective for the stronger player was to come back and win the game. For the weaker player, the objective was to prevent this from happening, or at least to have some strong rallies. With a proper matchup, both players could play hard and push their limits, and the stronger player would come back to win. This process gave less experienced players a chance to play the champions and the champions practice coming back from behind. For many years in the Thomas Cup championships, whenever the Indonesian players fell behind they were consistently able to come on strong to win. The fact that they were behind did not seem to distract them at all; they had practiced coming back. They knew that they would come back, they focused on doing it, and they did.
➤ Bad calls. Poor officiating—for example, calling a shuttle out of bounds when it is obviously in bounds—was simulated in practice to prepare players to overcome the frustration that can follow a bad call. The purpose of this simulation was discussed and then implemented in some practice games and exhibitions. Sometimes the simulating official would make a series of bad calls. The player’s goal was to ignore the bad calls and focus on preparing for the next shot, to shift focus from something beyond his control to something within his control. There were no emotional outbursts or even second looks from the Indonesian players after questionable or close calls at the champi-onships. They simply focused on getting ready for the next rally and got on with the game.
➤ High temperatures. For many years, the Thomas Cup championships were held in Jakarta under extreme temperature conditions. The outside air temperature in the evening was in the mid-30s Celsius (mid-90s Fahrenheit), and the humidity was in the 90s. The arena was packed with 12,000 sweaty people, and there was no air conditioning. Heat-producing television lights were set up right next to the court, and all windows and doors were closed to prevent drifting of the shuttles. Needless to say, it was hot! The spectators, including me, ended up dripping wet just sitting in the stands.
How did the Indonesian players prepare for those conditions? They pre-pared by living and playing in the heat and by bringing in large crowds to fill extremely hot and humid arenas for exhibition matches. If visiting teams are to play to their capacity under such extreme temperature conditions, they too must prepare for them. The best preparation is to practice and play exhibition games for a couple of weeks in the same time zone, in a similar climate, under similar conditions, and then rest well before the tournament. This approach prepares an athlete to walk into that arena and be ready to go the distance.
➤ Crowd effects. I have rarely heard fans roar as loudly as the crowd did in Jakarta for the badminton championships. The sound was deafening, and the crowd was definitely partisan. They heckled opponents and roared approval for their heroes’ every shot. (The fact that badminton was their major sport and that a lot of private betting was associated with those games may explain some of the fans’ enthusiasm.) In some countries a crowd of 12,000 people
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for a badminton match is unheard of; in Indonesia it was normal. The audi-ence would have been much larger had the seating capacity in the halls been greater. Younger players learned to adapt to those crowds by growing up with them. The junior players and national team members traveled throughout the country giving exhibitions to large crowds. They invited the public to the main badminton hall in Jakarta for simulation matches in final preparation for the championships; the free invitation was accepted gratefully, and the hall was full. This final simulation was aimed at readying the athletes to walk onto the championship court feeling totally supported and completely prepared mentally.
➤ Longer or more challenging games. The best players often took on more in their training than was required for their championships. For example, they might play one and a half to two hours straight at an extremely fast pace.
They might play whole games in which one player was allowed only to lob, or smash, or play defensively, or play to the backhand, while the other player could use all his moves. To keep the pace moving, to work on speed, and to develop anticipation, one player might play against two opponents, or mul-tishuttle games might be introduced. In mulmul-tishuttle games it is possible to play nonstop badminton, with a shuttle always in play, or to practice reacting to shuttles coming rapid fire from all corners of the court.
As a result of training for more than what was required on the day of the competition, the players were in superb physical condition. They used their fitness to their advantage, particularly in the extreme temperature conditions.
They could maintain a very fast pace or deliberately keep a rally or game going for a long time simply to tire out their opponents.
➤ Taller or different sized players. When the taller top European players started to play well at the international level, the Indonesians developed a new simulation strategy to train their players to play more effectively against them.
They built courts that were higher on one side, so that the players playing on that side were the same height as the taller top European players.
A former world champion and one of badminton’s all-time greats believed that following three simple rules, which could easily be applied in practice simulation, gave a player an advantage both strategically and psychologi-cally:
1. Never stop a game to change a shuttle when you are winning. If you lose two points in a row, change the shuttle.
2. Continue to use serves and shots that are working—often—but also use variation in your play. Otherwise, at the higher levels your opponents will anticipate your shots.
3. Never change a winning tactic or strategy.
While still at the top of their game, the Indonesian superstars worked directly with the most promising junior players. The reigning and longtime world
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champions in both singles and doubles spent about two days a week coaching and playing with younger players. The youthful players had an opportunity to play with their heroes, watch them at close range, learn from them, follow their actions, and be inspired by them. The championship players learned and gained from coaching and working with enthusiastic young players and enjoyed the sessions.
China now has most of the dominant players in badminton and has become a leader in many other sports as well. The Chinese are masters at simulation training, partly because simulation training originated long ago with tradi-tional training in the martial arts and partly because it works. The Chinese are doing everything that the Indonesian players used to do and more. They make extensive use of video imagery training and have a strong central sport development program supporting their efforts.
The only country where I have witnessed in-depth simulation training that surpassed that of Indonesia was China. In table tennis, a sport that they have dominated for many years, the Chinese used simulation extensively and creatively. In the early 1980s Chinese badminton players were using some of the high-quality simulation procedures used by China’s best table tennis players. In the latter part of 1980s China became the dominant badminton power in the world. They gained ground in many sports in the 1990s and are still gaining ground in the 2000s. The Chinese have become the masters of repetition and high-quality simulation and use it to their advantage in sports where they excel.
Simulation has played a major role in their tradition in martial arts (wushu, for example) for many years. It has also been applied in contemporary sports in which they excel, such as table tennis, badminton, volleyball, gymnastics, and diving. With their most successful teams, the Chinese went a step beyond what most other countries do with respect to repetition of skills, moves, and programs in training. They prepare their athletes to perform well when fatigued and to play well when competing against their most challenging opponents.
For example, some skilled Chinese athletes have been trained to replicate the playing styles of top opponents from other countries to provide realistic simulation training for national team members. This kind of training has helped strengthen their overall readiness to face the challenges of high-level opponents and high-level competition.
When countries such as Malaysia, Korea, Denmark, Sweden, and England began to make extensive use of effective simulation training in badminton, they took a step up and produced some world leaders in the sport. Similarly, when the Europeans, notably the Swedes, began to implement some of the extensive simulation preparation strategies used by the Chinese in table tennis, for a time they became world leaders in that sport. The point is that a well-designed, high-quality simulation training program can prepare performers for the expected and the unexpected, and help them achieve their goals in almost any performance domain.
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The one cautionary note about simulation training is to avoid overload-ing athletes or performers with too much simulation, too much repetition, too many performances, or too many competitions. Oversimulation, like overtraining, overworking, or overperforming, burns people out physically, psychologically, and emotionally. Excessive simulation can take the joy out of the pursuit, injure people physically or psychologically, lower their resis-tance to common illnesses, and take away the spontaneity that is sometimes needed for a truly great performance. We have to ensure that simulation, competition, and performance schedules work for us and the people with whom we work, not against us. A sense of joy must remain within the pursuit, and performers must have adequate rest and recovery. Individual differences must be respected in determining what works best and how much rest and recovery are required.
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Belief is the mother of reality. Excellence is a state of mind.