Why is there emphasis for players to be able to hit the shuttle at the "sweet spot" consistently?
The easiest way to illustrate is the difference is to experience watching a live BWF-level (or equivalent) tournament. When the professionals stroke and play, you could hear the nice crisp well defined whack with a solid thump vs when you go into a badminton hall and would normally only hear either the loud (due to excessive strength) or high-pitch (due to high tension) whack - the difference is alike a shot from a pistol vs a hunting rifle!
Hitting the sweet spot more often than not, is the domain of the trained players or professionals. The action is important as it allows the optimum transfer of energy from the swing of your arm, to the shuttle, via the racquet.
So it is possible for a non-professional to gain this skill (caveat - see end)?
Yes, but it requires dedication and many hours of training to embed this level of "stroke timing" into your body's muscle memory (automatically performed under stress). Once you have acquired this level of stroke timing, almost every stroke will be so automatically eg you will be doing unconsciously.
Are there steps you can do to help in your quest?
Yes, there are and are the following:-
1. Sweet spot of racquet are different, even though there are of same type of design.
For example, the sweet sport for a Yonex ArcSaber will be slightly different than a Yonex Z-Speed.
Hence you can determine the location of the "sweet spot" for your racquet after it has been strung at your preferred string tension via the following video.
2. After determining roughly where the spot is located, how can you determine where your racquet contact point is when you swing it? (aka where are you hitting)
The professionals have access to super high speed cameras, petabytes of storage and computers to process the information - these are well beyond the reach of the non-professionals.
The "old fashion" method is to restring your racquet with a dark colour string. After a round of play with the dark strings, you can see the white residue left on the strings from when you hit the white cork of the shuttle hard!
3. The next step is the hardest - you need to keep adjusting the timing of your stroke until you can hit within the sweet spot most of the time. Takes much patience and much practise. During this period you need to keep telling yourself how to perform that magical stroke until it becames automatic or second nature (aka the muscle memory).
4. Step-3 requires atleast 5-6months of consistent practise, depending on your skill level.
Please note the above are recommended for players below the age of 32 only. This is why those who has the potential are train from a young age so that there is time for the stroke timing to be embeded into the muscle memory.
Don't believe me?
Easily proven. Say you get badminton training when you are older, age 30 or more. You train until you could do those championship shots as well as hitting the sweet spot often DURING TRAINING or WARM-UP. However, during play, your special shots hardly work and you could hardly hit the shuttle within the sweet-spot of your racquet?
The reason is simply. During play and when under stress, your subconscious takes over and the strokes embeded into your muscle memory surfaces. That is why national training never accepts older candidates, they always groom from a young age.
