"The tools for success are universal."
Sifu Freitag, December 19, 2008

Anna Rice is a 29 year-old Canadian women's singles badminton player who is currently ranked number one in Canada and Panamerica. She participated in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and placed in the top 16 at the Bejiing 2008 Olympics (no other north american woman has placed this high Olympic level in badminton). She trained for the 2008 Olympics whilst completing a B.A. in Political Science and History. She has just completed a Masters degree in Communication for Development. Anna is also a "Right to Play" ambassador. This movement provides equipment for sports in developing countries. This spring, Anna will be travelling to Africa to help bring badminton to developing countries on this continent.

Currently, Anna Rice is in Edmonton for two reasons. The first is to compete in a Badminton Series Tournament being held this weekend. The second reason was to run a training and motivational seminar for the top ranked womens badminton players in Alberta. My daughter was one of the females invited to attend this function, and of course, I was on hand to take pictures and do the taxi driving. Jill tells me that I missed the most awesome part of the day when Anna spoke after dinner about how she was able to pursue a university degree whilst training for the Olympics (I did not attend this partly so that Jill's coach could be at the dinner, and partly because I had a volleyball club managers meeting to attend). I did, however learn alot from what I saw and heard from Anna. Below, I will list the major points, which the reader who also attends classes at Silent River Kung Fu, may find surprisingly familiar.

Intensity: Anna had the girls performing some pretty demanding drills, but midway through one of them, she stopped them. She said its no good if you just turn up at a training session. Every session has to count. So you need to perform the drills with all you have, to the very best of your ability or you will not progress. Anna seemed a little perturbed when she was telling the girls this, and I can understand why; these girls were getting a once in a lifetime opportunity to train for two and half hours with an Olympic athlete, yet Anna must have sensed that they were not giving their all. Perhaps she should have had them do 50 pushups.

Training with a Sense of Purpose: Anna went on to explain how she approached her training. She came to training sessions with a mind to repeat, repeat, repeat a drill over and over again to the best of her ability until she had perfected it. If the the instructor stopped and she had a free moment she would do something; continue the last drill, or do another drill. If she had no partner she would go over to the wall and hit the shuttle against it over and over again because it helps with her long serve. Every moment of her session was utilized. The purpose of every training session was to perfect, to progress, and to reach the next level leading to her ultimate goal of getting to olympic level.

Keeping your centre: I did not hear this one as I was on the other side of a glass partition. I watched her demonstrate this to a girl, and the message was very clear. Badminton requires incredible agility. A player may, in one rally, need to travel to opposite corners of the court many times to return a volley. Having travelled to one end of the court, the player must instantly make a recovery and return to the centre of the court ready to intercept the next volley - where-ever it may go. Anna was drilling the girls for this by sending consecutive shuttles in rapid succession to all four corners of the court. One of the girls was having a little difficulty with the exercise and Anna demonstrated what the girl was doing wrong. As she reached one destination and reached forward to return the shuttle, Anna allowed her torso to learn forward also, and bend over at the hip. With great difficulty Anna then tried to staighten up her torso at the same time as her feet tried to travel back to the centre of the court. It was a cumbersome move, and somtimes when anna leaned forward, her momentum pushed her shoulders so far forward that she had to put her hand on the floor to regain her balance. Anna then demonstrated the right way to perform the exercise. She maintain what I can only describe as a very deep right leading horse stance. Her centre was low, and her torso remained upright at all times. Consequently, she never lost her centre; when she reached forward she lowered her stance to extend the reach; when she needed to change direction she only needed to move her legs, the weight of a forward momentum of her torso did not have to be dragged back to its centre as well.

Strength and Flexibility: We have a picture of Anna executing a smash from the back of the badminton court at the beijing olympics. She has just travelled to the back of the court and the very last backward step has been so deep that her legs are stretched wide apart in a backwards straddle. Her very next step would have propelled her forward to the center of the court. At the very same time she is executing a smash hit which requires that her torso reach side ways and her raised raquet extend that reach and simultaneously she must keep her centre so that her smash can be executed with power and speed. Jill's coach looked at the picture, pointed at Anna's deep straddle and the powerful leg muscles and said, "Power and flexibility - you have to have both". Hasn't Master Brinker said something like this too?

Jill greatly admires Anna as a person, a badminton player, role model and inspiration. She plans to attend some training programs that Anna will be holding this summer in B.C.. I expect that she will learn a great deal and grow a great deal. I also suspect that whatever new things she learns from her experiences will be surprisingly similar to the lessons we need to learn in Kung Fu. In both cases, these tools for success can be applied time and again in other aspects of our lives.

For further info, go to http://www.annarice.org/. Anna also blogs.