One of the biggest changes introduced by the Academy Badminton of Malaysia (ABM) in recent months was using data driven analytics to track national shuttlers’ progress during training sessions.

Late last year, the ABM were given the mandate of overseeing the shuttlers overall performance and its high-performance director Dr. Tim Jones revealed that improving their training sessions was a key factor to making that happen.

“We are not just looking at the results, but are going into the details and the process. This includes tracking their gym numbers, their power as well as their injuries.

“For example, in the past we might have just the weights they lift in the gym. But now we use devices that measure velocity [speed] and power. This is looking at more detailed progression.

“Say a player still lifts 100 kilos, we can know they lift it at a faster speed so they can make improvements. Sometimes we match velocity over weight lifting because we know if you lift heavy weights you tend to get sore and slow.

“So we will adjust the process by shifting to lighter weights just before a tournament so it becomes higher velocity and the player becomes less sore.

“This makes the training quality better, and the player improves too. The training itself is the same, but it's more detailed and specific,” Tim told Stadium Astro.

With the coaches also having introduced video analysis to help the shuttlers’ understand their game better, these upgrades in training sessions should be showing in their performances ahead of a gruelling calendar.

Since the top-tier shuttlers’ returned from their Europe assignments late last month, they had almost a month of solid training before the start of the Badminton Asia Championships (BAC) next week.

After the BAC in Dubai, the shuttlers head to the Sudirman Cup in Suzhou, China (May 14-21) followed by the Malaysia Masters.