Hans-Kristian Vittinghus

Bye 2010!

2010-12-30T23:08:00.005+01:00

It's the end of another year and I keep getting little pointers that I should reflect on my year on this blog. First by a colleague and good friend who's had more ups than downs and then by a certain someone who thinks I don't like her to be smart. I think your amazingly smart (see what I did there!)! And I like people to be who they are... ;)

So, I was actually on my way to writing another looooong post breaking the entire year down into small bits. But it suddenly struck me that I was focussing a lot on the negatives of 2010. A disastrous spring where especially missing the Thomas Cup finals due to an infected toe was taking up many words. The summer was only good for my one week training stint at Mr. Misbun Sideks place. And the "easy" super series in Denmark and France in the autumn where I was hoping for a breakthrough was terrible for me.

I was reading it through, started thinking and then I realised I probably should be happy with my 2010. I have seen a friend on the tour being struck by testicular cancer right after achieving one of the best results of his career. I have got to known a player whose own federation is working against him trying to make things as difficult as possible for him, just because he is trying to maximize the possiblity of developing his game in a different way than what they dictate. I've have seen players being out of competition for the entire year due to different injuries. I've even seen a fantastic player having to change nationality not once, but twice, to find a place where she can just focus on what most of us athletes want: to play badminton, enjoy it and get better at it.

(I don't know if any of these players are reading this, but if they are I just want to make sure they know I do honestly admire how they are not giving up, but keeps fighting for their right to be what they want to be and achieve what they dream of.)

So who am I to be so negative looking back at a year where I have:

- Made my first ever Grand Prix Gold Final
- Made my first ever National Championship Semifinal
- Won a second straight European Men's Team Championship Gold Medal
- Won Norwegian Int. for the third time and the Irish Int. for the first time
- Achieved a career high ranking of 31

And many many other great experiences has come my way this year. I've played matches in front of fantastic crowds all over the world. One of the best memories is very recently at the Copenhagen Masters just a few days back. I've also been involved in different ways promoting Solibad, a charity foundation, which has given me great pleasure. And last but not least I've begun a working relationship with two people I find highly inspirational.

Maybe the disappointments I suffered this year were tough, but they have all helped me towards where I am today. And where I am today is not that bad :) I'm ready to take on 2011 with lots of motivation and my starting point of the year is better than ever before.

So looking back at 2010 all I can say is thanks for the good and the bad times, it has all made me grow. Thanks to all of my friends, family and fans who have been supporting me in a fantastic manner. It is much appreciated. Really, it is.

I may not be looking back at 2010 as my best year ever, but I'm certainly looking forward to 2011 being exactly that!

"Tough times never last, but tough people do!" - Robert H. Schuller

Happy new year everyone! :)

Bring It On - Part 2!

2010-12-08T14:05:00.007+01:00

So a good friend of mine, who's a very inspiring person, reminded me of something I seem to have forgotten for a while. SHE reminded me of how writing can work in a therapeutic way, something I fully agree in, but judging by the time it's been since my last post here one should think I have completely forgotten (or that I don't need a therapeutic treatment lol). I'm not sure getting me back to writing was her hidden agenda (girls always have one), but I know whatever she writes is free to be interpreted as you like, so this is how I choose to interpret it!

Now I'm here and it's time to open up again. Hopefully my inspirator, and all the other readers, will find it interesting, but more importantly I'm sure it will make me feel better with a clearer mind when I press 'post'.

My latest post was about the Dutch, Denmark and French Opens and how I was hoping to do well so I could push into top 28 on the world rankings (a ranking list/system that is broken, but that's a completely different discussion!) Unfortunately I didn't give a good performance in any of these three tournaments. The first two weeks were horrible and the last was just average. Not exactly what I was hoping for and obviously very disappointing. But I have come out of those three weeks with a stronger mind and a more positive outlook on the future. So how is that possible?

First of all my coach Claus Poulsen, whom I only started working with about a month before the tournaments, has been a tremendous help. His commitment towards helping me achieve my goals and getting my final breakthrough has been outstanding so far. I'm not saying it wasn't good with my former coach, but everyone like to do things differently and the change Claus has brought me just seems to have sparked my motivation once again.

The poor results also made me re-think what I'm working on and what I'm NOT working on. Am I working and focusing on the right things to take me to where I want to go? I was trying to find an explanation to why I could perform so well at Bitburger Open in September and then drop to this low level in October. Trough some long talks with Claus and a lot of thinking on my own side, we/I came up with a much clearer plan for what to focus on and what to 'forget' for a little while.

So now we're trying to adjust these things in my daily routines both on and off court. Theres lots of little things to work on, it will always be like that, even for a player of Lin Dans caliber. But some are more important than others and often the most important ones are often also the hardest to work on and change. I'm not gonna go into details about what it is exactly I'm working with, but I'm very focused on it in every training session I have and again Claus is there all the time to remind me.

This all means the losses has given me a better and more realistic picture of what path I need to go down if I want to achieve the goals I've set for myself. That's why I say I've come out of the period with a stronger mind. I feel I'm better prepared and more aware of myself now than I was before. That's about the only positive thing about losing - there is a lot to learn from it :-)

A couple of weeks after the French Open I managed to win my third title at the Norwegian International in Oslo. I'm very proud that I managed to defend my crown and I felt good playing there once again. But I also feel it was some kind of proof that I've moved on since the bad results and I'm ready to look forward to the next big challenges.

I will get another chance to prove that to myself this week as I'm going to Dublin for the Irish International on thursday. I will be the top-seed once again so the pressure is on me, but I know that if I can focus on the right things, like I did in Norway, I have a good chance of winning another title. But I will have to take it one match at the time and remember the proces all the time. I'm on the right path now, so I think it's a good idea to stay there :-)

The Irish International will not only be serious business for me this year. Along with Scott Evans and some other topplayers we will have an exhibition on the sunday evening a couple of hours after the final. All the profits from this exhibition will go directly to Solibad which is a non-profit humanitarian organisation. Their idea is a simple as to help others where help is needed. They don't do big life-changing projects, but just try to help in a way that maybe makes the days go by a little easier for someone with a troubled life. Solibad is raising funds through the badminton community and I'm proud to support them by playing with their logo on my shirts and now by doing this exhibition as well. I fully support them and I hope my small contribution can be felt in some way.

Along with Scott I've made a funny little promo-video for the exhibition. We tried to imitate a popular video made by tennis stars Roger Federer (the king) and Rafael Nadal (the crown prince, I hope your still reading Ms. 526!) and had lots of fun doing it. Check out the video here

If your interested in learning more about Solibad or maybe even give them a donation you should check out their website by clicking here.

That's it for now, I do feel much better now so mission accomplished :-) Hopefully it was worth a read for anyone out there...

/HK

Bring It On!

2010-10-18T14:15:00.005+02:00

Hi all,

Finally it's time for another update on this blog. I'm sitting here in my couch thinking about the next three weeks where I have three big tournaments to play. Dutch, Denmark and French Open.

These tournaments are very important for my season 2010/2011. I’m currently ranked 34 in the world, just about 3000 points away from top 28, which is what I’m looking to improve to before the end of this year. So you’re probably thinking why top 28? Well it’s very simple really as 28 is the number of players who are automatically qualified for the main draw in the Super Series events. With Korea Open in January being the first of the new Premier Super Series tournament and offering a historic huge total prize pool of 1.2 million dollars, it’s quite obvious that this will be a high priority event for every top player in the world. As a result of this Malaysia Open the week prior will most likely be almost as strong and therefore avoiding having to go through some very tough qualification rounds is a big goal for me.

If we look a bit longer term my biggest goal for this season is to finally qualify for the World Championships in London 2011. If I do, it will be my first big individual championship and I feel like it’s about time for me now. To qualify I need to be top 24 by the start of May next year. To achieve that I need to earn some points and the best chance for me to do so, is by performing in the main rounds of the Super Series. So again; avoiding the qualifying rounds in January would be good.

Anyway enough talk about ranking and points. That was just to fill you all in on what’s the thought behind playing three big tournaments in a row. I can’t think too much about this in the coming weeks. I have to focus (and I am) on playing well and enjoy it, then the results will follow.

I feel like I’m playing at a high level at the moment, not fantastic, but still good enough to be confident. My movement is excellent, which is something I feel like have improved a lot over the summer and up until now. I don’t weigh as much as I used to and I feel like I have more explosive strength in my legs. My endurance is also very satisfying, so physically I can’t really complain.
The sharpness and quality of my shots, mostly from the back of the court, is not at its best though. Usually this is one of the stronger parts of my game, so I hope it will get better as the tournaments go on. Maybe I just need to get back into my “tournament rhythm”.

Mentally I feel relaxed and ready to go. I’m excited about competing again and even though I don’t feel as well prepared as I did before the Bitburger Open I’m still very happy with my preparations. It’s always good to know you’ve done your homework – nothing more could have been done and now it’s just about getting on court and give it my best.

Nothing will ever be perfect though, not ths preparation period either. Unfortunately I was struck by a little bad luck this morning in training. Ever since I had that infected toe which forced me to miss the Thomas Cup finals in May my nail has been a looking like somewhat of a rainbow in mostly dark colors. It’s hasn’t really given me any problems, but this morning during a drill on court I suddenly felt some pain in the very same toe. After a little while I chose to stop to have a look at it. When I took off my shoe I could quickly see that something wasn’t great as my sock was mostly red around the toe and I was quite confident it was white when I put in on this morning…

90% of the nail had apparently broken, but not enough to fall off and now it’s painful to wear shoes. The pain is bearable and the doctor gave me something to wrap around the toe to take away most of the pain. I think it will work out fine and no matter what it’s not going to keep me away from the Dutch, Danish and French courts, that’s a fact! Still a little annoying, but I also had a minor accident in one of my last trainings right before Bitburger Open and I did pretty well there. So maybe it’s a good sign! :)

I will travel to the Netherlands tomorrow afternoon, so my next update will be from Almere, Netherlands. You can find the draws and a lot more on their website: http://www.yonexdutchopen.nl/

That’s it for now, nothing left to say but; BRING IT ON! :)

/HK

Exciting times!

2010-09-21T12:21:00.002+02:00

Time for an update on what's been going on lately and how I'm doing. I promise you this blog won't be as long as the last one :-)

Feeling fit and going to England
I've had some time to settle down and relax after my succes at Bitburger Open, the crazy few days following with emergency landing, leaguematches and pain in my groin. I feel much better again and I'm training with great intensity and motivation at the moment. The injury in my groin was still troubling me last week, but finally all the visits at the physio has paid off as it now feel 100% normal again.

Having no naggering injuries feels great, obviously, and it comes at a good time as I've have long planned to go to Milton Keynes, England for a 3 day training stint this week. Kenneth Jonassen, who is now coaching the English mens singles has invited me over for some matchsparring with Rajiv Ouseph and Carl Baxter, who are both preparing for the Commonwealth Games. I'm really looking forward to it as I'm sure it will be great quality matches. It's good to play some different opponents than what I'm used to at the national centre here in Denmark. Apart from that I also know it has a positive effect on me to get away from the same daily enviroment.
Getting some "fresh air" and a feeling of I'm trying something different is motivational and therefore only healthy for me.
I will leave for England tomorrow (wednesday) morning and return home on friday evening.

A big change
As you might sense from reading the above I'm excited about going to Milton Keynes, but this is not the reason why I chose "Exciting times" as my headline for this blog.
I have just recently bought an apartment, which means I will soon move away from my parents home and into my own place. There's a few things in the apartment we need to fix before then and I'm not in a hurry to move in, but I can safely say I'm eagerly awaiting the first day where I wake up in my very own place. :-)
This is obviously going to be a big change for me as I will have to start cooking my own meals, doing my laundry and all the other everyday stuff. It might take a little while to adjust to "a new life" like that, but as I said, I'm really looking forward to it. It will be absolutely savage! :-)

I also have more news to share with you all, but it will have to wait for another time, now it's time for me to go do some physical training.

But before I go I just want to wish my friend and good competitor Petr Koukal a full and speedy recovery. He has unfortunaly been struck by some very bad luck recently and is now set to fight what can turn out to be a very bad tumour. Petr is one of the nicest guys on the curcuit and he for sure doesn't deserve this, but as we all know him, there is no doubt he is going to fight it and come back stronger than before.
You can read more about his bad luck here.
All the best Petr - hope to see you soon on court!

That will be it for now, but stay tuned on this site and also on my facebook fansite, where I will probably throw in a couple of updates from my stay in England.

/HK

Second place and a crazy trip home!

2010-09-07T14:37:00.002+02:00

I should warn you before you start reading this blog! It's going to be a loooong read... It's so long I myself couldn't even find the energy to read it through one more time and correct mistakes! So if I couldn't read it through how do I expect you to? Well honestly I don't, you are free to choose. But if you do choose to read it all anyway, please forgive me for mistypes, spelling mistakes or any other flaws...

Enough about that - here goes!

Bitburger Open

My last update was a few hours before my semifinal match at Bitburger Open against Petr Koukal. Most of you probably already knew, but by reading the headline it should be no surprise to any of you that I managed to beat him. As I described in my previous post it was a big match for both of us. This clearly affected the level of play especially in the beginning where we both struggled to find any rythm. But after the interval at 11 in the first set I found a way to settle down and from 12-13 in the first I went on the win the match 21-14 21-4. Clearly Koukal never got settled and even if I did feel like I was playing very well in the second, I think it was obvious to everyone watching that he never got confident and didn't play his best - far from it.

Still the victory was a great boost for me. I've been in situations before where I've delievered a great result, like I did in the quarterfinal beating Yu Li, just to completely fall apart in the very next round. It didn't happen this time and to be honest, this is actually what pleases me the most about this whole tournament. If I ever want to win anything major I will have to learn how to be consistent over the course of a full tournament. I have done it many times on the EBU-circuit, but never at this level. So beating Koukal easily that day was a great step forward for me.

In the final I was up against Chen Long from China, the current world no. 11. Going into the final I had a 1-0 head-to-head record against him and I felt confident. But unfortunately I couldn't capitalize on my opportunities in the beginning of the third set and he then soon ran away. He was also clever enough to change his tactics in the final set and I never really found a good way to respond, so I will just have to admit I lost to a player who was better on the day. A rather uneven final ended with the scores 21-3 12-21 21-9 for him.

Of course it was disappointing to lose the final, but losing is (unfortunately) part of this game. This is not the first time, nor the last, I've lost. And when you play players at Chen Long's standard the possibility of losing will always be there, even if your playing well. That's how it is at this level.
That being said, I would have loved to win and I didn't feel great right after the final. But looking back at it now, I can accept my loss.

I still had a great week and produced what is my best result so far, so I would be unfair to myself if I wasn't satisfied with the performance.

The crazy trip home

The finals at Bitburger were being played so late in the day that I had to change my flight back home to Denmark. I was meant to fly sunday evening, but couldn't get on a flight until monday morning. So I booked a room at a airport hotel and had a good rest there. I was obviously a bit tired after a long week in Saarbrücken with six tough matches and since I had to play a danish league match monday evening, getting some rest was quite important.

Unfortunately monday didn't really turn out to be a good day for me. It started with me feeling quite bad in my groin, which also troubled me all of last week in Germany. When I got out of bed it felt really stiff and a bit painful when I walked. It loosened up after a little while, but to say I was looking forward to play on it the same evening would be a lie. But I was hoping to get home quickly and get some more rest to make it even better before the match. This was obviously not going to happen though...

I was on a plane at 9.30 from Frankfurt monday morning. Normally the trip to Copenhagen would take only a little more than one hour, but this one turned out to be an eight-hour journey. Yes you read it correct, 8(!) hours it took me to get from Frankfurt to Copenhagen. So instead of arriving in Copenhagen before 11 o'clock I ended up not being there until 15.30! The reason for this long delay is rather dramatic...

When we boarded the plane in Frankfurt there was an odd smell in the cabin, nothing we really took notice of, but it slowly got worse. After flying for about 20 minutes it was pretty bad and it more and more smelled like firesmoke. So the captain announced that we would have to make a securitylanding in Hannover, Germany. At this point people in the plane were still quite calm, but this was soon going to change...

The flight felt like it was running smoothly so people didn't really feel all that scared even if the smell was getting really bad, but all of a sudden the oxygenmasks came down with no warning. I'm sure you can imagine that was pretty scary and panic is a pretty good word to describe the next 10 seconds. Then the aircrew announced that the oxygenmasks were only in case people found the smell troubling their breathing, so I chose not to wear the mask as I really do think it was a little over the top. But most people didn't even hear what the aircrew said as they were already in panic. This was a quite bizzare experience, but we got down to the ground safely where lots of ambulances and firetrucks were waiting, but fortunately not needed.

We then got off the plane and was driven in a bus to the departure gates where we had to wait for several hours for a new plane that could take the last bit of way to Copenhagen. Some people where still in shock, but most of the passengers had the same feeling as me (it seemed) that it wasn't really that dramatic even though it also hit the news here in Denmark.

Leaguematch

Needless to say my plan of getting a lot of time to relax and get ready for the teammatch was not really working out for me :)

So when I finally arrived in Copenhagen I only had time to go home for a quick shower and a sandwhich before having to leave for the leaguematch. It was being played in Skælskør which is a one hour drive away, not exactly what I needed at this point, but what to do, there was no way out of it.

I arrived in the hall 50 minutes before the teammatch was about to kick off and 1 hour after my teammates. But as my singles was the last match to be played I had to wait another couple of hours before getting on court. When I finally did get on court I felt tired, powerless and had pain in my groin. No wonder really. My movement was hampered at best, but I really did not want to lose this match. I was playing a guy named Jeppe Lund, who's probably unknown to most of you, but he's not a bad player. Of course I was the big favourite, as I will be in all my leaguematches this year, but I knew I could not underestimate him.

Still he managed to win the first after some good play, but I still felt confident I would win if I just stuck to my gameplan. It worked out perfectly in the second and third set, right until the umpire made a very bad correction to a shot called out at 19-15 in the third. It should have been 20-15 and the win sealed more of less, but instead it got to 19-16 and my focus was off. I still managed to scrape home the win 21-19 and could finally see the end of a very long a tiring day. It wasn't pretty, but I didn't expect it to be. I was just happy to win, that was all I cared about.
We won the match 5-1 and therefore got a good start to the new season.

Round up and what's next?

So to round it all up, the last few days have been hectic for me. My groin is not feeling good after all this, but I'm looking after it and getting some treatment, so I really hope it won't bother me for too long. Today I have the day off training, I really need a day to fully relax and recover, but I still need to get back to training again tomorrow as I have another leaguematch to be played on thursday evening.

After that match I will take some very easy days, I might actually take the weekend off completely to recharge my batteries before starting another good long stint of hard training. I had a long period leading up to Bitburger Open with good and hard training, so it's important that I allow myself to slow down a little now.

My next big challenge will be three weeks in October/November where I play the Dutch, Denmark and French Opens. I will need to be in absolute top condition to perform well there, so getting some rest now will help me to be able to work harder leading up to those three tournaments.

That will be it for now, I'm impressed if there is still anyone reading at this point. To you I can only say thanks a lot and well done :)

/HK

Going well...

2010-09-04T13:34:00.002+02:00

It's fair to say it's going well for me here in Saarbrücken, Germany at the Bitburger Open 2010.

Yesterday I had a great win against Yi Lu from China who is a quality player, proven by the fact he won this tournament in 2007 and has many other great results. He used to be ranked around 20 in the world before China stopped sending him to any tournaments, so now he's trying to work his way back up. Fortunately I managed to stop his march towards top of the ranking yesterday in what was a splendid match.

I was fighting hard all the way through and tried to stick to my gameplan all the way, even when I was down in large parts of the first two sets. It wasn't easy to do though as I had to be really patient, which isn't exactly what I'm usually best at :) But yesterday it paid off and from being one set down and 15-12 down in the second I got in control of the match and played amazing from there on in. At 20-11 in the third set he played a few good points and I missed a golden opportunity to wrap up the match, so I got a little nervous (ok actually I got very nervous), but finally at 20-18 he made a mistake and I could celebrate a good win.

All this means I'm now in my first ever Grand Prix Gold semifinal. My opponent today will be a good friend of mine, Petr Koukal Czech no. 1. It's also his first semifinal at this level, so it's a big match for both of us. Making it to the final will be the best result ever for both of us, actually I think making the semifinal already is. So you can all imagine that we are both pretty exited about this match.

We have had a few good matches against each other before, the last time being in Swedish International back in January, where Petr came out on top of an epic 3-set battle. So today I will be looking for revenge, which is actually the third time in this tournament for me. The first two times I got it, so I might as well grap number 3 also ;)

The match will be played at 16.50 CET and can be streamed from the official tournament website.

I probably won't update this site again until tuesday or wednesday as I also have a teammatch to play when I return home on monday. But you can follow my progress and thoughts on my facebook fansite, where I post short quick updates.

That will be it for now, hoping to put in a great performance in a few hours.

Thanks for reading and supporting,

HK

Bitburger Open

2010-08-31T20:16:00.003+02:00

Hi everyone,

Once again it's been a while since my last update and now it's already time for some action on court with the Bitburger Open starting tomorrow.

I've had a great build up to this tournament over the last approximately seven weeks. Ever since I got back from my summer trip to Asia, this tournament is what I have aimed towards. I've prepared in almost the same way as the danish singles players prepared for the world championships last week and I really feel like it has been going well. At least all the way until saturday, four days ago!

On that day I was playing a few sets with Martin Bille and Christian Lind, who are also playing Bitburger, just to sharpen up my game a little. Unfortunately I slipped in the set against Lind and felt a little pain in the region around my hip/groin. It didn't feel bad, but I still chose to take sunday off to make sure I didn't push it.

Monday morning I had high hopes of training without any pain and getting a good feeling before leaving for Bitburger today. But it didn't feel better compared to saturday, it actually felt a bit worse as the pain was now stronger. It's wasn't so painful so I couldn't finish a match, but it was just there all the time which is very annoying and frustrating as it takes away some of your focus from the game. Of course it also affected my moving ability a bit, not too much though.

I've still chosen to go to Saarbrücken, Germany, to play even if the pain felt quite bad when I woke up this morning. My hope is it lightens up by tomorrow and luckily it has actually gotten a lot better over the day. I really hope by tomorrow it's almost all gone, but I'm ready to deal with some pain. Of course I have to be cautious and if the gets worse I know I have to stop as theres also other matches and tournaments to be played. But I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow, 100%!

I still feel like my game is working well, I'm moving around court with good speed and in general I just feel confident. So when I step on court tomorrow I will try to get this feeling on there with me. If I manage to do just that, I stand a good chance of progressing through day 1 where I have to play two matches (hopefully).
First up is Yuhan Tan, who's national no. 1 in Belgium. He is a good player whom I have great respect for, so it will be a good tough start for me. I've met him once before, right after I got back from my knee injury in 2008, a match where I lost in straight sets. I believe a lot has happened since then, so it will be interesting to see how it goes tomorrow.

You can follow the match here.

The match will be played around 1 o'clock.

That's it for now, I will make sure to update at least once more over the course of this tournament.

HK

As promised...

2010-08-03T17:25:00.001+02:00

but a little late - here is an update about what I've been working on lately and what I'm aiming towards in the near future.

As some (most) of you may know I had a long trip to Asia in June/July. I was away for four weeks, travelling to Singapore and Indonesia for one week each and then rounding off the trip by a two week visit in Malaysia. I won’t go into details about that trip, but just say that it was a great experience which I fully enjoyed. Mainly the two weeks in Malaysia were amazing as I was working a lot with Datuk Misbun Sidek! He’s an extraordinary coach and man in general. From just being around him for a few minutes you can feel his exceptional passion for badminton.

Some weeks before leaving Denmark I had a long meeting with the chiefs of sports and my coach at the national centre. We were evaluating my 2009/2010 season and planning the next six months, both for training and for tournaments. The evaluation part wasn't the best I've ever had, as especially 2010 has been a really poor year for me so far. Apart from making it to the semifinal of the nationals, which was expected of me (but it was still a first), I haven't really had any personal success. So I'm clearly not satisfied with my progress over the last year and neither is the federation. Expected and fair, no hard feelings from me there, its better they are honest with me and they really do have every right to be a bit disappointed and concerned, as time is running. I don't have forever to develop into a world class player.

Still they did their best to tell me how they still believe in my potential to perform at the biggest stages. We had a long positive talk about what I need to work on and how to do it and we made a plan for my tournaments for the rest of 2010 that I'm quite satisfied about. I left the meeting feeling very motivated and ready to get working, so all in all it was a positive outcome of a quite serious meeting.

A couple of the things we decided to do something about was my weight and my general fitness. At the time of the meeting I was close to 84 kilos which is too much for a guy my height whose playing singles. At the same time I/we also decided that I have to start living a healthier lifestyle and behave a bit more responsibly. I shall be the first one to admit that eating junk food, going out for drinks or in general just going to bed late has been a bit of a problem for quite some time. It's really just a bad idea to live that way if I want to give myself the best opportunities to perform as an athlete.

The benefits from losing weight, improving my fitness and changing my lifestyle should be rather obvious. Less kilos means less energy consumption moving around court, which again means I should be able to keep going longer at the same or even higher pace. But losing weight shouldn’t come from losing my strength and power, so I’m also working hard on improving those aspects, especially in my legs.

Eating healthier should also give me more energy to make the hard trainings easier to overcome.

Fortunately I've had such a high level of motivation that I really haven't struggled to change the way I eat and work on my fitness. It definitely shows in a positive way in training as I’m now able to train much harder for more days in a row. I’m down to weighing below 80 kilos at the moment, so quite a bit change there as well. My ultimate goal is to get as low as 78 though, so there is still some work to be done. But just being below 80 kilos feels great for me as it’s really not something I'm used to at all. The last time my weight was showing a number in the 70ies was back in December 2006! 3½ years ago...

I have to go do some running, so it’s time for me to stop writing. I guess this is a very long read anyway, but I still have lots of things to tell you about. As for example what my goals and aims are for the next few months. That will have to be in my next blog though, this will have to do for now.

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going!”

/HK

A New Beginning

2010-07-27T14:47:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

Some months ago I decided to close down my website due to various reasons. I still have plans to re-launch a website at some point. When that's going to be, I don't know, but I promise to let you all know. It will be whenever I feel the time is right...

One of the downsides of not having a website is that I don't have a place to interact with my fans or whoever else wanting to follow my career. Another is that I don't have anywhere to get a lot of thoughts off my mind... These are the two main reason for my decision to take up this blog once again. Writing works as some sort of therapy for me and as a bonus everyone will now again be able to read about and comment on the challenges I stand before in my search for a succesful career in badminton.

Another way to keep in touch with my interested followers is of course by using facebook. Here I've created a fansite where I try to keep the readers updated a lot with short quick updates. Especially when I'm at tournaments.

My facebook fansite

You don't have to be a user of facebook to read my updates, just click on the link above and you will be able to see them all, including pictures and comments.

Obviously I have a lot of things to share now as it has been months since I made my latest update on the now former website... This first post will end here though as it is only meant as a "welcome back blog". Not sure if it's polite to welcome yourself back, but now I've done it and I hope to be here for a while!

I will do another post some day this week to tell you all a bit more about what has been going on in the last couple of months and what I'm aiming towards.

All the best,
HK

www.hkvittinghus.com

2008-07-24T22:00:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

As you might have noticed this blog is no longer being updated. I have decided to only update my website at www.hkvittinghus.com, but this site also has a blog/news section so you can all still keep track on how I'm doing.

Thanks for the interest you have showed in this blog, I really hope you all will keep following and supporting me on my website.

Thanks,
Hans-Kristian

Sucess in Singapore

2008-06-10T17:18:00.004+02:00

Hi all,

I'm now in Singapore for Singapore Open. I arrived here on saturday, so I've had a few days to adjust to a new time zone and the difference in weather compared to Denmark.
Due to a lot of withdrawals I had a walkover and a bye in the first two rounds of todays qualifying stage meaning I only had to play 1 match to make it to the main draw. After a few games my opponent turned out to be a malaysian called Allan Tai. I won the match 21-16 21-18 and thereby qualified for my first ever Super Series main draw! Even though the scores was kind of close I felt in control throughout the match. I always felt like I could step it up a gear if necessary. The draft in the hall was very strong, definetly not something I'm used to, but I felt like I adapted very well to these conditions.

Tomorrow I will play another malaysian Sairul Amar Ayob (WR28). He is a very good player who has troubled a lot of top ranked players in the past, but he is also a player who every now and then loses to lower ranked opponents. I'm very positive about my chances as I've seen my teammate Jan Ø. Jørgensen beat this guy earlier this year, so I know it's possible. If just I can stay focused and make my own game work I should have a good match on my hands.
My match is on at 16.45 local time and you can follow it live here: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/matches.aspx?id=21955&y=2008&m=6&d=11(livescore on top right corner)

All the best,

(Thanks to badmintonphoto.com for the pictures)

Spanish disappointment

2008-05-25T21:13:00.000+02:00

Time to share my thoughts on the very disappointing effort in Madrid on friday.

As I told you in my post yesterday I was up against Andi Hartono, an Indonesian based in Sweden. His world ranking is as low as 400 and he has failed to make it past the first round of the four tournaments he took part in during the last twleve months. My own world ranking is 72 at the moment and I won Dutch International less than one month ago. Obviously results and form pointed in the direction of an easy win for me, but as you all know this clearly wasn't the case...

The first set was a complete disaster for me. For some reason I was not there in my mind at all. Not much I remember about the first set though, it's like a black hole in my memory which just proofs my point about being somewhere else mentally. I think the score says it all: 21-8...
I was able to shake off the disappointment of the first set and played a bit better in the second. Throughout the set I was being very agressive and attacked on every chance I got. Still I was far from playing my best as I was just hitting hard smashes all the time and forgot to use some more variation in my attacks, which is key to make your attacking game more dangerous. Somehow it worked out for me and I won the set 21-19 after wasting a couple of set points.
Third set was much like the first. I don't know where my mind was, but clearly not on court with me! All of a sudden I was giving away the initiative constantly and quickly got down 7-1. I did manage to close the gap a bit before the interval as we changed ends at 11-8 for him. One should think the 1 minute break would do me good and help me get my mind back where it should be, but the complete opposite happened. The first five rallies after the break were horrendous and I lost them all. That gave him a lead that was way too big for me to close with my current state of mind! He finally sealed victory, 21-13, with an easy mistake from my side.

I'm not going to state this as my worst game ever as I have played worse games after returning from my knee injury, but it is very close to my most disappointing game ever. My expectations were much higher than a first round exit for this tournament, that's for sure. Losing in the first round was never really a possibility for me and maybe this is part of the problem as I probably underestimated my opponent.

So many things that disappoint me about this game. First of all the result of course. Leading up to this tournament I have been feeling in excellent condition, moving around court with ease and playing really well, but during the match I never felt comfortable on court and moved around with no speed and power whatsoever. Secondly I was never able to react to the things that happened on court (apart from small periods of the second set). I just kept on doing the same things over and over again even though it was obviously not working. I wasn't thinking at all, I was just playing along, allowing him to dictate the pace of the game. Third aspect of the game that disappoints me a lot is the fact I went on to court without having a gameplan or tactical focus in mind. This should never happen at my level and is just not acceptable in any way! In general my pre-game preparation was just not good enough and I will really have to learn form this. I'm just not at a level where I can take easily on matches like these, I need to prepare professionally for every single match I play. If I don't, my chances of losing will increase dramatically. To be honest it's a lesson I should have learned a long time ago, but for some reason I haven't. Let's just hope I've learned it now!

A possible explanations for my poor effort could partly be donw to the fact we (the danish team) didn't have a coach with us. I'm sure if we have had one, a few of the things mentioned above would not be there. Such as not having a gameplan and not reacting to the things happening on court. I will not use this as an excuse though, as I am at a level where I should be able to handle all these things on my own. I've been on the european curcuit for 3 years, so it really should be a standard routine for me by now.

At the end of the day there is noone to blame for this poor result besides myself. The responsibility is all mine and I will have to take the experience I've earned in Madrid with me and learn from it.

Time to move on, but not to forget...

HK

1st round loss

2008-05-24T10:42:00.000+02:00

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you all know I lost my first match in the Spanish Open. I was up against an Indonesian called Andi Hartono. He's based in Sweden and has been there for a few years now. I'm VERY dissapointed about my effort to say the least, but not much I can do about it now... I'm off to the airport now to get on a flight back home. Will post more about the match and my thoughts tomorrow.

All the best,

HK

New website and Spanish Open!

2008-05-19T19:12:00.004+02:00

Hi all,

It's been quite a while since my last update and a few things have happened since then.

First of all I've been spending a lot of time working on a brand new website. I'm still working on a few things as new ideas keeps comming to mind, but the site is pretty much up and running now, so please go have a look at: www.hkvittinghus.com.
It's possible to subscribe for my mailing list on the site, which will give you regular updates on how I get on in the tournaments I play and notify you when I add new interesting content to the site. I hope you all like the website, feel free to comment on it here or use the forum on the site.

Secondly I've been busy preparing Spanish Open, which is to be played this week. Preparing for this event has been slightly different than usually as most of the players at the national training center has been in Jakarta for the last few weeks for the Thomas/Uber Cup finals. An event I just missed out on as I'm currently the 5th choice for the mens singles and only 4 players get to go... These finals did of course attract a lot of attention from the danish federation and therefore all 3 of the national coaches went along with the players to Jakarta. That left me and about 10 other players with the U22 national coach and our technical coach from China for almost 3 weeks. Of the 10 players only 3 (including me) was mens singles players. So I've been training a lot with the same 2 guys for the last 2 weeks, which is not something I'm used to at all. We always like to mix it up a lot amongst the singles group in training. It's good to have players with different playing styles to train with, makes you a lot more prepared for what you can expect at tournament, where you obviously get to play players with various strenghts and weaknesses. With only 3 singles players present mixing it up is kind of hard, but we managed to solve this matter in other ways. We invited a few players who's not usually a part of the training center to join us for some of the sessions. All of the players we invited were very eager to give their best as this is not an everyday opportunity for them to have training at this level. Therefore the level in training has still been very high and I feel well prepared for Spanish Open!

I'm leaving for Madrid on wednesday and playing my first match on friday morning. The draw for me is very reasonable with a qualifier in the first round. If everything goes according to plan and I make it past the first round, I will most likely play Indian champion and fifth seed Chetan Anand (WR 48). This should be a good test for me before going to Asia in June.

That's it for now everyone, but I hope to get back on here before action begins in Madrid to tell you a bit about my expectations for this event.

Thanks for your interest,

HK

Going to Asia after all...

2008-05-03T16:17:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

After I came back home from my victory in Dutch International I got a phone call from one of the three national coaches we have here in Denmark. He wanted to tell me that they wanted me to go for the Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand Opens in June. Since it was no more than 2 weeks ago I was told not to go as they didn't think I was ready for it, it did surprise me a bit how they had suddenly had changed their minds completely. I didn't ask many questions though, I was just very happy to get the chance to go out there and compete at the highest level. It will be my first time to Asia to participate in tournaments (I've been there for a two-week training camp back in 2004), so I'm sure it will be a great experience for me.

My training the last week has been a bit softer than usual. On monday and tuesday the many matches I played in Holland, in only a little more than 48 hours, was definetly showing as I was feeling very tired in my legs and weren't able to train at 100%. It got better by wednesday, but still I had to wait till friday before I felt perfectly fine again. It's obviously not very good to have four days after a tournament where my level in training is not up to standard and I need to find a way to change this for the future, as I will hopefully play a lot more tournaments where I have to play many matches in few days :)

That's it for now, wish you all the best,

HK

Mission accomplished!

2008-04-28T11:24:00.002+02:00

As most of you should know by now, I won the final of Victor Dutch International yesterday. I beat Wu Yunyong of China i straight sets, 21-12 21-18. It was probably my best match of the tournament, but that was also needed to beat this guy. He is a former semi-finalist at Indonesia Open and was the defending champion at the Dutch International, so obviously a very good player.

In the final I got off to a poor start, quickly trailing 5-1. I let him control the game and he didn't seem interested in giving me any chances to attack. I knew I would have to get the attack if I was to win, so I began to play more aggressively at the net, trying to force him to give me some high lifts I could attack on. This proved to be the right way to play him as I won 14 of the next 15 points! That handed me a 9 point lead which I managed to hold on to all the way through the set to win it 21-12. Playing this kind of game did cost me a lot of energy and as I was already feeling very sore in my legs from the previous days hard work, I was unsure if I could maintain the pace in the second set. I wanted to give it a go, but he seemed to be more aware of my tactics now and didn't let me control the game at the net. We traded point for point up until 8-8, then my coach asked me if I had the power and energy to start playing even more aggressively. I was breathing heavily and felt really bad in my legs, but I convinced myself I simply HAD to do as my coach said to win this match. Again it worked wonders for me and I won the next 6 points in a row! Up 16-10 I didn't think there was much work left to clinch the titel, but my opponent had different ideas and again took up the fight at the net. It made me nervous and I just gave away the lifts way to easily, not knowing how to react to his fight back. He levelled it again at 16-all. I could'nt believe I let him back into the game like that, but it made me even more eager to finish it off as I refused to lose like this... It made me forget about how tired I felt and all of a sudden I was able to play offensively again. I managed to stay calm for the last few points to take the right chances and clinch the tournament-victory 21-12 21-18.

This victory is very important to me! It tells me I'm now back at the level I had before getting injured in my knee. It also proves to the national coahces that I'm still here and they can count on me for the future. It's a great way to bounce back after the dissapointment of not going to the Europeans and the Thomas Cup finals. To be honest, I couldn't imagine a better way!

I'm off to have lunch with Rasmus Bonde and Kasper Henriksen. They came second in mens doubles, while Rasmus won the mixed double title. So we all have something to celebrate!

Thanks for reading,

HK

4 down, 1 to go!

2008-04-27T10:35:00.003+02:00

Hi all,

As most of you probably know by now, yesterday was another great day for me. I won both of my matches after hard fought 3-set games. In the first match of the day I felt very much in control of things throughout the second and third set, even though the scores were pretty close 14-21 21-13 21-17. It was a splendid match all the way through with some very good and long rallies. The match lasted 54 minutes, phew...
My semifinal was a different story. The first set was probably the easiest set I've played so far in the tournament as my opponent made loads of mistakes. Then he really raised his game and made me work very hard for all of my points. It worked out well for him and he forced the match into a decider. I got off to a good start in the third set, but when I was leading 9-6 I suddenly began to make easy mistakes. He won 7 points without a reply, so he was now in a commanding position at 13-9. He kept his lead up until 16-13, then I saved one of his smashed between my legs and ended up winning the rally. This seemed to change the momentum of the game to my side and I managed to wrap it up 21-18. I'm extremely pleased with the mental strenght I have been showing in this tournament, winning some sets and matches were I've been struggling a lot and trailing by quite a margin.

I'm now into the final where I have to play the european based chinese Wu Yunyong. He is a very good player and this will be another tough match for me, but I know I'm both physically and mentally up for it.
I came here to win the titel and that's what I'm going to do!

All the best,

HK

1 step closer...

2008-04-26T09:14:00.002+02:00

Hi,

Late in the afternoon yesterday I made it into the quarterfinal by beating Kasper Ødum 21-13 22-20. We started off quite even with noone having a bigger lead than 2 points up until 8-7 for him. Then I played a few good rallies while he made some easy mistakes, giving me 7 straight points and a 14-8 lead. I felt very much in control of the game after this and build on the momentum to take the set 21-13. He never seemed like he could find a way through my defence in the first set, which obviously made me very confident going into the second set. This confidence was soon to be tested as the start of the second set was absolutely terrible! I was way to eager to finish off the rallies, not playing with the patience needed to suceed at this level. He got up 6-0 before I got back into my rythm. He did manage to keep a 5-point lead at the interval, but when I levelled it at 11-11 I never really doubted I would win the set... And so I did, winning it on my third set point 22-20.

Today I'm playing another dane, Martin Delfs, who is son of former world champion Flemming Delfs. Martin is not playing a lot of international tournaments, but is very active back in Denmark. I've never played him before, but I think it is a match I should win. Of course it wont be easy, but I believe I can do it and make it (at least) one step further than I did in Finland where I lost in the quarters.

That's it for now, keep comming back here for an update on how I get on today,

HK

A perfect start...

2008-04-25T13:22:00.002+02:00

Hi everyone,

My quest for the title here in Holland got off to a perfect start as I won my first round match against fifth-seed Vladislav Druzchenko (WR62) 21-18 21-11 in just 23 minutes. The first set was pretty tight all the way, but when I was down 17-15 I managed to put together a nice streak of 4 points to make it 19-17 for me and eventually wrap it up 21-18. In the second set I got off to a flying start, dictating the pace in every rally. My opponent didn't have any answers and I was quickly 11-3 in front. After the break at 11, I was on "cruise control" for the victory and won the set 21-11 without spending too much energy.
A very nice match to start off with and a good win. Any player ranked inside the worlds top 70 is a good player, so winning by such a clear margin is very satisfying! Hopefully I can keep it up in my second round match against my compatriot Kasper Ødum. I've played him a few times, but our last encounter is dating back to november 2006. Back then I beat him and went on to win the tournament, so let's all hope I can repeat this feat! :)

Hope you are all doing well,

HK

Time to refocus!

2008-04-21T21:52:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

It's now been more than a week since my last update, so it's about time to fill you all in on how things are progressing.

Last week was a bit frustrating for me as I was unable to train for a couple of days due to illness. Nothing serious, just an old fashioned cold! I'm still a bit snotty, but I'm able to train again with no problems at all. Another thing that made last weeks training poor was the fact I seemed to be missing my motivation. That's due to a lot of things: Missing out on the Europeans, the Thomas cup finals and a trip to asia this summer. All of this was a hard one to swallow. Not participating in the big events is never fun, but being told I'm not going for Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand Open this june was the biggest dissapointment. It's the coaches decision and I don't completely agree in it, but I do accept it. One thing is certain, I have now put all of this behind me and has refocused on my upcomming tasks. I'm fully motivated again, giving it a 100% in training and really trying my best to be positive about things.

Next up for me is the Victor Dutch International, which is to be played this week. My draw is pretty tough as I have fifth seed ukrainian Vladislav Druzhenko in the first round. I've never played him before, but he's definetly a tough opponent as he has been performing consistently on the european tour this year. If I should manage to get past this first hurdle, next up will probably be my compatriot Kasper Ødum. Kasper was ranked inside the worlds top 30 about 6 months ago, but is now out of top 100. Obviously not the best of seasons for him, but he has not been very active playing tournaments lately, so that will have to take some of the blame for his loss of form. Again not an easy task, I will for sure have my work cut out on day 1 of the competition! I will just have to focus on keeping my form from Finland a few weeks ago and maybe even improve a bit on it. Then I'm sure my chances of making it through the first two rounds are very good! I'm really looking forward to this tournament, hopefully it will be another step back in the direction of regaining my position amongst the worlds top 50 shuttlers...

My flight for Netherlands is on thursday afternoon, so I still have a few days of training and preparation ahead of me. I hope to get back on here before departure to keep you posted on how my preparations have been going, so stay tuned folks...

All the best,
HK

No European Championships and no Thomas Cup finals...

2008-04-10T14:58:00.003+02:00

Hi all,

Time to report to you guys again, even though there is not much positive to report about right now. Came back from Finland sunday evening and my legs have been feeling like solid rocks ever since. Of course this has affected my efforts in training this week. My physical training sessions on monday and yesterday went perfectly fine, where as most of my on-court sessions in some ways have been unsatisfying. Too many ups and downs have made it hard to maintain a high level throughout the sessions. I tend to get annoyed when I feel tired in my legs as I find it hard to accept I can't move around court with my usual speed. For the last few days this has on some occasions ruined my ability to focuse and stay positive and therefore caused too many downperiods. Good thing is I've been able to work with myself mentally and got a grip of things again to make sure the session weren't a complete waste of time. If we just go one year back, maybe even less, training sessions like these would have been a total waste for me. So it's not all bad, even though I would prefer things to run smoothly all the time!

Today the danish Thomas Cup finals team has been announced. Unfortunately I'm not part of the team. It's not a big shock to me as my results after returning to competitve action cleary haven't been great. 3 first-round losses and 1 quarter-final is not impressive. That being said I still had a slight hope of getting a spot on the team if they chose to go with 5 mens singles just as they did in the qualifications rounds. Didn't happen though as they went for only 4 mens singles; Kenneth Jonassen, Peter Gade, Joachim Persson and Jan Ø. Jørgensen. Now I have to settle for a role of being a reserve along with another guy, Peter Mikkelsen. So if Peter Gade doesn't get fit for the finals (he is currently suffering with a broken rib, but chances of him being fit for the finals are quite high), me or Peter Mikklsen will go instead.

Another big event I will miss out on is the upcomming European Championships. Again only 4 mens singles from Denmark get to go and with Peter Gade out of it due to his rib-problems, coaches decided Peter Mikkelsen would be the better choice for the 4th spot. This gives Mikkelsen a chance to prove his worth on the big stage and show he's the one to go for if Gade doesn't get fit for the Thomas Cup finals. Nothing I can do about it, I'll just have to work really hard in training and try to prove that I'm fit enough to go... Not really focussing on this matter right now though as I believe Gade will be back in action for Thomas Cup. Most important for me right now is just to keep working hard to make sure I stay on track for getting back into the worlds top 50 where I belonged before my knee injury!
Can't help thinking this injury is the reason why I'm not playing both the Europeans and Thomas Cup finals... Anyway, I can't do anything about it, I'm sure my time will come!

My weekend will be quite busy as my sister is getting married tomorrow and all of saturday is booked for a VERY late christmas lunch! It's been postponed several times as it's been really hard to find a time that could fit in to everyones calendar, but we kept on trying and refused to cancel it. So christmas lunch on saturday it is! So don't expect me to update this blog in the weekend...

Lastly I just want to wish all of the danish team the best of luck for the Europeans. Team event starts on saturday with Denmark being the heavy favourite for the gold. Go Denmark Go!

All the best,

HK

No more luck!

2008-04-05T15:17:00.002+02:00

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately I lost my match against Jan Ø. some hours ago, 21-12 21-12. I got off to a good start, but he soon found his rythm and never looked back when he got in front at 11-10. I'm a bit dissapointed with my mental attitude today as I wasn't mentally ready to work as hard as needed. Hats off to him though as he really played some excellent badminton and made it very difficult for me to score points! Overall I'm happy with my performance in this tournament. Playing 5 good matches in a row is something I haven't done since the beginning of september! Today I just lost to a better player on the day, I have to accept that. I'm sure I'll have my chances to beat him in the future!

I'm going back to the hall now to watch the semifinals.

All the best,

HK

2 matches, 2 victories

2008-04-04T21:40:00.002+02:00

Hi,

Things are really working out for me here in Helsinki! Today I had another splendid day and won both of my matches. I did have some trouble beating Brice Leverdez of France in my 2nd match of the day, but managed to come out on top 21-18 in the decider. You can read a lot more about todays matches in an article I wrote for badzine.info: http://www.badzine.info/content/view/954/
All of this means I'm into the quarterfinals now, where I have to play my compatriot and daily trainingpartner Jan Ø. Jørgensen. It will be a very tough match, but I'm confident I will win it if I can keep my focus throughout the match. Easier said than done, but I believe I can do it...
The pressure tomorrow will be on him as he is, by many, considered to be the next big thing comming out of Denmark and he currently holds a world ranking around 70, which is about 35 spots higher than mine. I don't care too much about my ranking right now though, as I know it would be a lot higher if I had been able to play all year!

We will see how I get on tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to keep up my level of play!

Good night,

HK

Main draw!

2008-04-03T22:05:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

A great but also long day has finally come to an end. I played my 3rd match of the day about 3 hours ago, where I beat Kasper Ipsen from Denmark quite easily 21-15 21-13. This was the perfect way to end my day, which has been absolutely fantastic! My game has been working extremely well ever since the first rally I played at 9.40 this morning. I beat all of my 3 opponents with no real trouble at all, which is of course very satisfying. Whenever I had a minor slip in concentration I quickly got it back and it really made it easier for me to overcome 3 matches in 1 day in such an impressive manner.

Tomorrow I'll play Niluka Karunaratne of Sri Lanka (WR82). I don't really know anything about him as I've never seen him play. My good friend Jan Ø. Jørgensen played him some time ago and since he's also here in Finland I'll have a quick chat with him about what I can expect from Niluka. I'm not too worried though, as I will just have to focus on my own game. If I can maintain the focus I've had today I'm sure I will prevail again tomorrow. We will see...

Now I'm off to bed, follow the scores tomorrow at: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=20293&player=260

All the best,

HK

Finland, here I am!

2008-04-02T22:18:00.003+02:00

Hi all,

I'm now in Helsinki, Finland where I'm staying at a very nice hotel only 15 minutes from the hall. Everything about this hotel is perfect, the food is great, the rooms are nice and tidy, internetconnection free and high speed and the showers are excellent! It's nice to stay at a place where everything just works perfectly, makes it a lot easier to focus 100% on what I'm here for: play badminton!

For the first time in a very long time I have to play qualifiers at a european circuit tournament. Not something I look forward to, but I guess it's not too bad either as it gives me a chance of getting some more games under my belt! First match tomorrow morning will be against malaysian Salim Sameon, who is based in Finland. He plays in the 2nd danish league so I know a bit about his game, but not too much. Given the few things I do know and his results taken into consideration I really believe this is a match I should win. I'll try not to put too much pressure on myself though. Will just try to go out there and get my game going, then the result will take care of itself I'm sure! If I beat Salim next up will be Koen Ridder from Netherlands whom I have played once before and beaten! If I succeed in doing so again, Kasper Ipsen from Denmark will probably be my final opponent in the qualifiers. I know him very well from the danish national training center where we both train every day. A really tough match as he is the type of player that just keeps on rallying forever! I have played him twice and won on both occasiones, but it's always hard to play guys you also train with on a daily basis. Obviously we both know each others game very well. Anyway, all of my focus right now is on Salim Sameon as I should really just take this one game at the time. That's the only way to overcome 3 matches in one day!

You can follow the scores on: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/player.aspx?id=20293&player=260

Not sure how much time I will have tomorrow as I hope my schedule will be pretty busy, but hopefully I'll be able to pop in and tell you all a bit about my matches...

Thanks for reading,

HK

Time to get back to everyday life!

2008-03-31T21:34:00.004+02:00

Hi,

After being crowned league champions on thursday night, the last few days have been spent mostly on celebrating. The final match on thursday ended around 23.30 and after being presented with the gold medals and the trophy I (and 5 other players) had to do a dopingtest, so we didn't get back to the club until 1.15 in the night. Noone seemed to care though and we all celebrated the win the rest of the night. The party ended at 6 in the morning, I finished a bit earlier, but still didn't go for my training friday morning :) I'm pretty sure noone did! I didn't do anything friday actually, I felt so tired in my body so thought it would be wise to take it easy for a day. Not hard to figure out why I was so tired... My singles match lasted for an hour, the team match took 3½ hours and I was up till late in the night. Pretty hard both physically and mentally!

Speaking of my singles, it was a good game, very intense and with a lot of good rallies. I started off committing some easy mistakes, don't know why actually as I didn't really feel nervous, but nonetheless the mistakes were there... I lost the first set 21-17 after being 2-3-4 points behind all the time. The 2nd set started off in the same way as the 1st, but when I was 7-3 down my attacking game began to get going and I was up 11-8 at the break. I maintained this advantage all the way up to 18-15, then lost 3 points in a row and I qucikly felt the pressure as he was about to give his team the start they dreamed of. But I managed to control my mind and played the next 3 points to perfection which handed me the set 21-18. The crowd was ecstatic, it was really a great to feel the huge support the fans from Greve gave me. They definetly helped me to get back into the game. The 3rd set saw me have a slight edge, but I never managed to create a gap greater than 2 points even though I had a few good chances. This was the picture all the way up to 17-15, then he played 6 really good rallies where he was very agressive and unfortunately I didn't have any response! 21-17 for him and the game was over. Overall it was a good game and it was another step forward for me. I'm getting closer to a high consisten level of play again. It's nice to see it's going in the right direction. Still I was very dissapointed just after the match and felt like I had let my team down, but luckily they all responded by playing some excellent badminton to make up for my loss and secured us the win. Needless to say, the feeling I had when we won the last point was fantastic. I felt joy, satisfaction and relief at the same time. This combined with 500-600 crazy Greve supporters shouting and all of my teammates running onto the court to celebrate with our mens doubles (who won the decisive match) send a feeling through my body that's hard to describe. But this is exactly that kind of feeling that makes all the hard work worth it! Being a part of this and also playing in an atmosphere like that is something I'll remember for a very long time. Hopefully I'll get to experience this again next year!

Saturday and sunday were tough days as we I had to train again and still needed to go to Greve a few times to do some more celebrations and saturday night there was a huge party where everyone in the world of badminton here in Denmark was invited. Again I stayed out till early in the morning, so when I got to sleep last night I think it was well deserved!

Today life returned to "normal". Training in the morning, a bit of work in the afternoon and relaxing in the evening. I have to start focussing on the upcomming events here in April. First thing comming up is the Finnish International Challenge which I'll leave for on wednesday. I really hope to keep up the good play there, but we will see how big the effect of the last few days will be. I'll try to find some time to tell you all a bit on my draw and expectation for this tournament, but right now I'm off to bed!

Keep well,

HK

We are the champions!!

2008-03-28T21:47:00.003+01:00

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you all know that we beat BS København 4-2 in the 2nd final last night, which of course means we are now danish league champions!! Unfortunately I lost my singles 21-17 18-21 21-17, but that doesn't bother me too much now that we won the gold. That's the good thing about team events!
I'm very tired right now after some heavy celebration last night :), so wont go into details about the match right now. My weekend seems to be pretty busy with training and more celebrations, so I will try to update my blog on monday evening and tell you more about how I experienced last night...

A great round-up on the match can be found here: http://www.badzine.info/content/view/938/

And pictures here: http://www.fjerbolden.dk/begivenheder/bskgreve.htm

All the best,
HK

Another final to come

2008-03-25T21:16:00.002+01:00

Hi,

Less than 48 hours to go before the "kickoff" of the 2nd danish league final. The team sheets were given today and it turned out that both teams have decide to use the exact same lineup as they did in the first final. It's a bit surprising that our opponents didn't change anything, but that's their decision and I wont complain about it :)
Of course this means I will have to play Joachim Fischer once more. Only difference is it will be in the first round (we play 2 matches at the time) now, where it was in the 3rd round last time. Even though I don't mind playing first, I would have loved to play in the 3rd round again and thereby have a chance of winning the match that would clinch the gold for us. Now I'll just have to focus on giving my team the best possible start and I'm definetly ready for that! To be honest I simply can't wait to do this!
The final will be played in an arena called KB Hallen, which is a place with a lot of history surrounding it. The league final has always been played there (this is the first year we have a 2-legged final) and the atmosphere is very special. With somewhere around 1500 people watching and the fact that my match will be broadcastet on live television, I'm sure it will be a very cool experience that I'll remember for a long time!

Tomorrow and thursday is of course days that will go by with all of my focus being on this final match. My preparation for this match has started as early as tonight! After a light training session at the club I spoke to the coach, Kenneth Jonassen, about the tactics and my how my mental approach on thursday night should be. Tomorrow I'll continue my preparation by taking it a bit easy in the morning training session, giving my body a chance to recover some as it feels very tried right now. The rest of the day I will spend on eating and realxing. Hopefully I'll feel fully recovered come thursday morning where I will attend a very light training session just to get my body moving and get a "feeling" of the court and shuttle... After this I will go to see a reflexologist, who will give me a 1-hour treatment to ensure that my body and mind is at 100% in the evening. The last few hours before I meet up with my teammates will be used on drinking a lot of water and realxing a bit. I will meet with the rest of the team 3 hours before the match starts, where we will have some food and a chat without thinking too much about the match. Then we head off to the arena at 18.00 (match starts at 20.00) and everyone will begin to focus in on the things thats important for them to perform at their best! For me that includes having a hit at the court I have to play at, talking about the tactics again and of course do some warm-up :) At 19.55 we will be introduced to the audience and at 20.00 I will be on court feeling all fired up and ready to take the first important step for Greve towards the danish league championship!

Thank you all for reading and your comments are much appreciated,

All the best,
HK

Victory!

2008-03-20T13:09:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

Finally I have a victory to report about! :) Last night my club Greve won 4-2 in the first of the 2-legged league final here in Denmark. It was a splendid match and very exciting all the way. The last match was won by a scoreline of 21-17 in the 3rd set! This was a good 20 minutes after I finished off my game to make the score 3-2 for Greve.

I had to play Joachim Fischer, who is playing mixed doubles at international level, but has been playing singles for many years. So far he has been playing very well in the league, so I knew I was up for a tough match considering my recent poor form! Nonetheless I played absolutely outstanding badminton and beat him very easily, 21-10 21-16. For the first time since I got back from my injury I felt like everything was working out for me. Obviously a fantastic feeling! Still a few things to improve on, but I was very close to the level of play I showed back in august where I played so well. This match definetly gives me a lot of belief in myself again, which is maybe one thing I've been missing in my latest matches! It also gives me a lot of motivation to keep working hard in training as I now see it does pay off!! Oh it feels so good to finally be back! :)

My easter will be spent at home where I will be busy training. I'll also try to find some time for visiting some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while, as well as I'll use a few hours along with my family.

Happy easter to you all,

HK

Looking forward...

2008-03-17T15:52:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

I lost my first round match in Portugal to Yuhan Tan of Belgium. I played very well in the first set and beginning of the second, but unfortunately I couldn't hold on. As of today I'm still not quite sure what went wrong for me which made me feel extremely dissapointed and frustrated just after the match. Now that I've got things on a bit of a distance, I choose to focus on the positive things, like my game in the first set and some parts of both the second and third. In these parts I managed to put everything together and make it work like it did back in august/september where I played so well. Just need to be able to do this throughout a whole match, or at least 2 sets so I have a chance of winning some matches. It's pretty difficult when you only play 1 good set per match :)

Next up for me on the international circuit will be the Finnish Internationl in Helsinki. That's in 3 weeks and I'll have to play in the qualifiers round. Haven't played qualifiers for quite some time in these EBU tournaments, but maybe it's not too bad as it gives me a better chance of getting some matches.
This tournament is not getting much attention in my mind right now though. On wednesday evening I have to play in the first of two league finals here in Denmark. My team, Greve, have been in the final 3 times in the last 4 years, but lost every time. So everyone involved in the club is very eager for us to win it this time and I think we have a good chance of doing so. The league system is a special. A teammatch contains 2 mens singles, 1 ladies singles, 1 mixed, 1 mes doubles and 1 ladies doubles. If the score is tied at 3-3 at the end of the matches one decisive "golden" set is to be played. As the lineups have just been released it could look like my match could be the dicisive factor. I think we are favourites to win the first mens singles (i play second after Kenneth Jonassen), ladies singles and have a slight edge in the mixed. Our opponents look very strong in mens and ladies doubles. My match looks like a 50/50 encounter, so it should be a splendid final as my match is to be played as the last match of the night. There will be a sell-out crowd of 750 people, most of them supporting Greve as we play at home this time. I'm sure it will be very fun and I'm really looking forward to playing. Hopefully the crowd will give me a lot of support and thereby help me to play better again!
Even if we lose on wednesday we still have a chance of winning the league title, but that will require a victory away from home thursday next week. Not impossible, but a very tough task.

We'll see how things get on, I'm positive about it! Sure it will be a night to remember for a long time...

Thanks for reading and your support,

Hans-Kristian

I'm going to Portugal :)

2008-03-11T23:11:00.002+01:00

As you might have guessed after reading the headline of this post, I decided today that I will be going to Portugal on thursday. The physiotherapist said no problem so the choice was easy for me and my coach!
The draw is out and I play Yuhan Tan of Belgium in the first round. He's a tough opponent, but if I play well I should have a good chance of beating him. Anyway the result is still not what's more important for me. I just need to go out there enjoy myself and try to get back to my "old" game of attacking badminton. Will be good to get another chance of doing this, I'm really looking forward to it.

I've had a really tough night. Went to my good friend Jan Ø. Jørgensens apartment to watch Champions League football as my favourite team Inter was playing his team Liverpool. Unfortunately Liverpool won the match 1-0, so now my team is out of the competition! Always fun to spend time with Jan, but not when his team beats up mine! :) Tomorrow morning training at the national centre will be terrible. Peter Gade is also a huge Liverpool fan, so I think I'm going to hear a lot more about this match. Gade and Jan at the same time, oh no! haha

Anyway I'm off to bed. Take care,

HK

Back at it!

2008-03-10T19:18:00.002+01:00

Yes!! I'm back in training now after my knee problems last week. It really made me sad not being able to train, so I'm very happy it's now over. I was afraid these problems would force me to withdraw from the tournament in Portugal this week, but after some training yesterday and today my knee feels fine, so I'm very positive about my chances of playing. The final descision wheter I'll play or not will be made tomorrow, where I'll discuss it with my physiotherapist and the national coach. Stay tuned here on my blog for info of what my decision will be! :)

As all of you probably know, the All England finals were being played yesterday. It was a huge succes for danish badminton with the ladies singles victory for Tine Rasmussen! I'm very happy for Tine, she truly deserves all the praise she can get for 3 wonderful Super Series victories in 6 months. This is a huge perfromance and means a lot to badminton here in Denmark. A big congratulations to Tine and I certainly hope to see more of this in the future!
The mens singles final was quite a dissapointment for me. Lin Dan wasn't at all trying to defend his title. He was happy to let Chen Jin get the victory and important ranking points for the Olympic qualification. This is not good for badminton, but unfortunately it's hard to do anything about it. Anyway, Chen Jin still deserves a lot of recognition for his win. He did beat some amazing players on his way to the final and in an impressive manner.

I'll be going to the cinema in an hour or so, to watch the american movie "Jumper". I don't know much about this movie, I just hope it's a good one! :) We'll see about that...

Hope you are all keeping well,

HK

A wasted 3 days...

2008-03-07T15:07:00.003+01:00

Hi,

The headline of my latest blogpost ended with the words "time to do some training" and I would love to tell you all about how this weeks training has been. Unfortunately though, I got some serious pain in my right knee (not the one I had surgery in) after training on tuesday night. It was so painful that I had to skip training the next day and now I'm on my 3rd day with no badmintontraining. I've been able to do some physical training, but still this is a sad set back in my training for the upcomming events. Next week I'm supposed to play an international series tournament in Portugal, but we will have to wait and see how me knee feels next week before we (me and the national coach) decide wheter or not it's a good idea to play. In the weeks after going to Portugal I have 2 very important matches that I really hope to do well in. It's the finals of the playoffs in the danish top division. The entire season everyone in my club has been working very hard on finally winning the gold and thereby being crowned danish champions. We've had a few obstacles on our road to the final with my injury and more lately top mixed doubles player Britta Andersens serious knee injury (she is undergoing surgery on monday, so all the best to her, I really hope everything goes well for her!). Now we've made it to the final and everyone is very eager for us to clinch the gold, which would be a first time for the club (and me). So obviously I'm very excited about getting fit for these matches and therefor these kneeproblems doesn't come in very handy... But to be honest I don't think injuries ever come in handy :)
The pain is as good as gone today, so I'm hoping to do some training over the weekend without the pain comming back. Then hopefully on monday I'm 100% ready to train hard for a few days before going to Portugal where I hope to get more than 1 match. Would be nice not to lose in the 1st round, just for a change haha :)

As most of you probably know the very prestigious All England Championships are being played in Birmingham this week. I've been participating in this tournament for the past 3 years, not with any succes though, but this year I decided to stay home and prepare for the important events that are to come for me in the near future. Even though it's very sad not to be playing All England, as the atmosphere there is really something special, I'm happy with my decision. I don't think I'm in any condition to play 3 matches in just 1 day as I would have had to if I wanted to qualify for the main draw. I'm sure I will get plenty of chances in the future to win All England :)

Speaking of All England I would like to take the time to congratulate the danish team with a great performance so far. Especially my very good friend Joachim Persson who is now through to the quarter-finals deserves some praise. He hasn't had the best of seasons so far by his usual standards, but reaching the quarters of such a big event is really something special. He had a good draw, but at this level a good draw isn't enough to take you through. You still need to beat top class players, which he has done in a convincing matter. Good for Joachim and I really hope to see him keep it up against Bao Chunlai tonight. Good luck to him and the other danes competing in tonight's matches (Kenneth Jonassen, Tine Rasmussen, Lars Paaske and Jonas Rasmussen).

Wishing you all a very nice weekend,

Hans-Kristian

Back home and time to do some training!

2008-03-02T21:39:00.004+01:00

Hi all,

I got back home from Germany early morning yesterday. Had to wake up at 4am to catch our flight, so obviously I was pretty tired when I finally got back to my house. When I saw my bed it didn't take me long to decide I could do with a nap! 3 hours later I woke up feeling much better. Still I decided to take it easy for the afternoon and then do some training in the evening. After dinner I went to a fitness room to do some running and a bit of strenght training. It was a nice workout that lasted a little more than an hour. Running is really not something I enjoy doing, but I do love the feeling of satisfaction I get after I finish the running :)

Today I had a 2-hour training with Kenneth Jonassen and Michael Lamp from my club. It didn't start off very well as I felt a bit tired in my legs (probably due to all that running last night) ;), but eventually I began to feel better and it ended up being a really good training where I got a good feeling about my game. After this I went to coach some young players for 3 hours. I'm assistant coach in a project called Badminton4U, started by danish top mixeddoubles player Thomas Laybourn. His partner Kamilla Juhl is also part of the coaching-team. We only do these training sessions on sundays and only when it can fit into Thomas and Kamilla's busy calendar. It's a great succes and a lot of young players are interested in being part of this project. This is my first season with badminton4u and I still haven't decided if I want to continue next season. Sometimes I would like to have more sundays off and do stuff that doesn't have got anything to do with badminton. Anyway, I'm not going to make that decision right now as I'm heading off to bed. Have training at 9 tomorrow morning to prepare for.

Take care and thanks for reading,

HK

1st round loss, episode 2!

2008-02-29T00:07:00.003+01:00

Hi,

First of all I want to apologise for not updating my blog the last few days. I'll do my best to assure this won't happen again :)
Just like in Austria I lost my first match of the tournament here in Germany. I played my good friend Joachim Persson and lost 21-19 21-10. The first set was not too bad, but still my offence wasn't working very well. I actually think it was a bit worse this time compared to my game in Austria. This is really where I need to put my main focus the next few weeks! Fortunately there is also a few positive things to take from the game. My defence worked well again and I felt like my movement was a bit better than in Austria. So this was still a small step in the right direction! But I must admit it's frustrating to lose even though I know I'm still in the proces of recovering from my injury!! Hopefully this period will soon come to an end!

Talk to you guys soon,

HK

1st round loss...

2008-02-23T13:04:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

As you may know by now I lost my first round match against englishman Aamir Ghaffar. I started off quite well and took an early lead, but I couldn't keep it up so I ended up losing the first set 21-13. The 2nd set was much alike the 1st. I flew off to a 5-0 start, but then he began to closer down the gap and he took a lead at 17-16. This time however, I managed to keep my cool and closed the set 22-20 on my 2nd setpoint. The third set was the complete opposite... Now Aamir was the one who got a good start and unfortunately I weren't able to catch up with him, so I ended up losing 21-17.
Even though I lost I'm happy about some parts of my game in this tournament. My attacking game still wasn't as good as it used to be, but I kept on trying to use it and play fast. It did cost me more than a few mistakes and also really made me feel tired. But this is exactly what I need to do to get back to where I want to be! I'm also happy about how my defence worked throughout the match. That's one thing that can definetly boost my confidence a bit. It's nice to feel I can rely some on my defence when my offence is obviously not working to it's full strenght yet!

I'll leave Vienna tonight, my flight takes off at 19.45, so now I've really got some time to kill! I won't stay home for long though as I'm going to German Open on tuesday. I was meant to play in the qualification rounds, but I got promoted into the main draw a few days ago. The sad thing about this is that I now have to play one of my very best friends, Joachim Persson (seeded 11 WR 29), in the first round. First of all that's a tough draw and secondly I'm not happy about the fact one of us has to leave this tournament at such an early stage. Nothing we can do about it and of course we both want to win. Anyway, I'm still looking forward to playing and continue working on getting my game back to a higher level!

Thanks for your interest,

HK

Austria International

2008-02-20T12:00:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

I arrived sound and safely in Vienna yesterday about noon. I'm staying at a nice hotel and the hall we're playing in seems to be good as well. I went there to do some light training with some of the swedish players which was fine. Tonight I will have a session with austrian no. 1 and home-favourite Jürgen Koch. My back hurts me a little, but I don't think it's too bad. I'm sure it won't affect my game here in Austria. I am meant to a qualifier at 10 tomorrow morning, it will probably be Aamir Ghaffar from England or a guy called Endra Kurniawan who's originally from Indonesia, but now represents Germany. No matter who it will be I will just have to focus on my own game. I'll do my very best to try and get back to the game I played before I got injured. A fast and attacking game. This has been really difficult for me during the team matches I have played both for my club in the danish league and for my country in the european championships. I think its mainly down to the fact that my confidence is low at the moment, so I feel a bit insecure every time I hit an attacking shot. So I will have to force myself to keep on attacking and play fast, even though I may not be able to do this with much succes right now. This is the only way for me to get back to the game I want to play (and have to play to suceed at a higher level). So for this tournament the result is not what's important, but I would still love to win :)

I will keep you posted on how I get on, but for the 2nd straight week the connection to the internet at my hotel is not very good...

Thanks,

HK

European champion!

2008-02-18T11:28:00.003+01:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that along with the rest of the danish team I won the Men's Team European Championships yesterday, beating England 3-0 in the final. My first senior european gold medal, but hopefully not the last :) The danish girls also won their competition, so now we are all going to the Thomas/Uber Cup finals in Jakarta in may. Given we are being selected for the team again of course!
After a very quick prize ceremony and a crazy chase in our rented mini-vans (and a lot of help from the airline company) we made it to our scheduled plane and I arrived back home at around 10 in the evening yesterday and today I have to play a league match for my club Greve. We have to go to Århus which a few hours of driving from where I live and since the match is to start at 8 tonight, I'll be back home quite late... So this is going to be some very stressful days, as I'm going to Austria International tomorrow morning at 10! I'm sure it will all be fine though!

Hopefully the internetconnection in Austria is a bit better than the one we had in Holland, so I can keep you all posted on how I progress.

A last little note, check out badzine.info, they have a really nice article up on me: http://www.badzine.info/content/view/846/. It's a great article so please have a look :)

/HK

Dissapointment!

2008-02-15T13:47:00.002+01:00

Last night we played Scotland in the final match of the gropu stage. We won the match 4-1 with my singles being the only one we lost :( We were leading 4-0 in the tie when I had to play, so luckily it didn't really mean anything for the team. Nonetheless it was a great dissapointment for me to lose. My opponent, Gordon Thomson, fought hard and played well, but I'm very dissapointed about my own standard of play. I know I have been out of competitve badminton for a long time and of course it takes time to get back at the same leve as before. But I really thought I was much further in my progress than what I showed last night. There were moments that was good and a had a big lead in the 2nd set, but I still didn't manage to hold on and force the decider. I made some really stupid choices, especially from the front of the court where I really doubted my own skills. Generally I felt quite insecure throughout the whole match, my confidence is not what it used to be. I will have to work on getting this back as it is essential for me to believe 100% in everything I do on court. I'll get a few chances the next few weeks when I have to play an international series tournament in Austria and a grand prix in Germany. I don't think I'll get the chance to play any more matches in this Thomas Cup, which is fair enough! All I can do now is to cheer for my teammates and hope that we bring home the gold as I think we should with our current team! Right now I'm actually in the hall rooting for the danish ladies team to beat Russia, they are currently up 2-0 in their quarter final encounter against Russia. So things are really looking good.
The mens team will play Sweden in the quarter final later today, which shouldn't cause us too much trouble now that Peter Gade and Kenneth Jonassen has joined the team!
I'm off now to watch the rest of the Denmark-Russia match and then do a little training with my good friend and teammate Jan Ø. Jørgensen.

All the best,

HK

Undefeated!

2008-02-14T10:29:00.002+01:00

Hi all,

Sorry for not updating my blog earlier, but the internet connection at our hotel is the worst ever!
I had my debut on the national team on tuesday evening, playing against Israel. I was to play 3rd mens singles and 1st doubles with Mathias Boe as his regular partner Carsten Mogensen hurt his back a little in the morning. I'm haven't played doubles for ages, so was a bit funny to suddenly get a chance to play on the national squad! Luckily I won both of my matches without breaking too much sweat! I won my singles in only 15 minutes, 21-7 21-6. My doubles lasted a bit longer, having to use 20 minutes and a scoreline of 21-10 21-16. We won the team match 5-0, so it was a nice start to the tournament and a really good debut for me.
Yesterday we didn't have to play, so we did some training for a good hour or so and watched the danish girls play their 2nd group of the tournament. A match they won 5-0 against Belarus.
Tonight we will play Scotland and this time I will only play singles! It will be a tougher challenge than playing Israel as Scotland beat them 4-1 yesterday. So I really look forward to playing a match with a little more intensity.

Follow the scores here (livescore in top right corner, we play at 18.00): http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/matches.aspx?id=18141&y=2008&m=2&d=14

That's it for now,

HK

Leaving for Thomas Cup/European Championships

2008-02-10T14:44:00.000+01:00

Hi,

It's been a few days since my last update due to the lack of spare time I've had lately! I've been working very hard on getting ready for Thomas Cup Qualifiers/European Mens Team Championships. We leave tomorrow afternoon and play our first match on tuesday against Israel, where I'm set to make my debut for the national team :-) To represent my country at the highest level is a dream comming true and obviously I'm very excited about it. I feel ready for this task even though I've had a little trouble with my back the last few days. It's nothing serious, but has just annoyed me for the last 2 trainings I've had. Not to worry though, it's getting better and I'm sure it won't affect me on tuesday! I'll be high on andrenaline so won't be able to feel any pain whatsoever! =)

In my last blogpost I told you all about how close to a place in the final my team Greve got after we won our league match. BS København did their job and beat Aarhus (coached by legend Morten Frost) 4-2, which means we are now in the final against BS København!! We still have to play 1 more playoff game before the final, but the outcome of this match cant change the fact that it will be Greve vs. BS København in the final. The final will be a 2-legged final, where we play 1 match at home and 1 match in BS København. The team that finishes first in the playoffs will hold the home-advantage in the 2nd final. The finals are being played on the 19th and 27th of march. Usually it's a very intense match with loads of spectators and live TV coverage, so this will be anoter huge badmintonmoment for me as this is also a first time experience! Most of my teammates have all tried it before, so hopefully they can pass on some of their experience :)

I have to go now, have some coaching to do for a group of younger players. I'll try and update this blog during Thomas Cup, but not sure if we have internet connection on the hotel. If not, you can all follow my progress here: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/teammatches.aspx?id=18141&tid=1

Hope all of you are enjoying your weekend so far,

HK

What a way to get back at it!

2008-02-05T14:09:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

I won my match last night and so did the team. We beat the 4th ranked team in the league with a score of 4-2 which means we are now very close of a spot in the final. If the match tonight between the league leaders and no. 3's turns out in favor of the leaders (as everyone predict) we will be ensured a place in the final against this team, no matter the outcome of our last league match. So keep your fingers crossed and root for BS København to beat Team Aarhus tonight!:-)

Back to my game, I had a decent game were I won with the score of 21-15 21-19. Not the best I've ever played, but no wonder after 4 months with no competitive action! I started off a bit slow, but soon got the feeling of it and went into the break 11-9 up. After a little chat with my teammate and coach, Kenneth Jonassen, I quickly build on my advantage and took a 17-11 and 20-12 lead. He saved the first 3 setpoints, but I finally managed to wrap it up 21-15.
In the 2nd set I had a very poor start comitting lots of unforced errors, especially my attacking game was lacking in precision. It made me lose a bit of my confidence and he was suddenly up 7-3. But I got myself together, played it more safe and made him work harder for his points. The effect of my new tactics was pretty obvious as I got back in front at 10-9. I kept control of the match with a 17-13 lead, but a few easy mistakes from my side and a good fighting spirit from my opponent allowed him to tie it up at 17 all. Again I regained my focus and played a few good points were I pushed him around the court which gave me 2 matchpoints at 20-18. He saved the first, but I hit a beautiful smash right down the line on the next one and the celebration could begin!

It really meant a lot to both me, my teamates and the club to win this one as the guy who took over for me during my period of injury, didn't live up to expectations and lost a few close matches. It has been costly for the team as we lost a few points in the league, so it was really nice to show everyone that I'm back and we can now again rely on winning the very important 2nd mens singles.

Still 1 thing is more important than everything I mentioned above: I didn't have any pain whatsoever in my knee during the match. Nothing to report today either, even though the rest of my body is a bit sore. It's hard, but fun, to get back on court!

Hope you are all keeping well,

HK

Danish nationals...

2008-02-02T09:24:00.000+01:00

The danish nationals is being played this week, but ufortunately without my participation. 3 weeks of training after a 4 month break isn't enough for me to feel completely fit for playing a tournament. I'm sure I can play 1 or 2 matches, but not sure how my knee will react if I was to play more matches. So I decided it was best to skip this event and focus my training on being ready for the teammatch on monday and then Thomas Cup on the 12th this month.
Due to the nationals many of the players I usually train with is not around, actually Peter Gade is the only one I can train with right now. Not too bad when it's him though :-) I did some training for 1½ hours with him on thursday, which was a very good session. Later in the day I had a massage and then went on to do my strenght training. Yesterday I took the day off as my body felt tired and I knew the next few days will be very hard for me, so I could do with a little break.
Today I'm going to train with a chinese coach called Lian. He works at the national training center and has a tremendous knowledge on footwork and technical training. He is an amazing a coach so I really look forward to this session with him. Peter Gade was supposed to join us, but he had to cancel just a few minutes ago. After the training session I will be watching the danish nationals on TV. Will be interesting to see how my friends and sparring partners get on.
Tomorrow I'll have a very hard training with former world champion Peter Rasmussen, former world no. 3 Anders Boesen and former danish international Niels-Christian Kaldau! Not a bad crew is it?!? :-) They all still play in the danish badmintonleague so they are still playing at a very decent level. I will for sure have my work cut out playing with these guys!! It's good that I have the possibility to train with such high-quality players now that everyone else is playing the nationals. I'm positive playing with these guys will make me feel ready for the teammatch on monday evening, which by the way will be live on danish television. I will get on here and post a lttle about how my first competitive match since 31st of september(!) went on as quickly as I can...

Thats all for now,

HK

Thomas Cup!

2008-01-29T16:22:00.000+01:00

Hi,

Just a quick note to let you all know that I have been selected for the danish mens team that is going to Holland in february to try and qualify us to the Thomas Cup finals in may! The tournament in Holland also counts as the European Championships. I got notified about it yesterday when our national head coach called me and said I was going. It was such a surprise, I had completely written off my chances of going after my long-term injury, but apparantly the coaches doesn't think my level has dropped too much. The coach told me I should also see this as a sign of them believeing in me for the future. Of course I'm extremely happy about this and I'm really looking forward to the tournament, where I'm set to have my debut on the national team! It's definetly a big dream comming true and I'm very excited about it! Wohoo! :)
Training has been going well the last few days as well, my game is still getting better every day and I'm pretty sure the next few weeks will be even better with this big event to look forward to!

Hope you are all keeping well,

HK

Every day is an improvement!

2008-01-26T11:13:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

After a very nice and hard week of training the weekend has now come and it's time to take a it a bit more easy. Here in Denmark we only have training at the national center monday-friday. The weekends is always free, but we are all supposed to do some training at least 1 of the days. I'm not sure if I will be training today or tomorrow, actually I might even do some training both days! This last week of training has been excellent, I really feel like my timing, touch and movement on court is all getting back to where it used to be. It's getting better everyday, so hopefully I can keep on improving for the next few weeks and soon begin working on taking my game to a higher level than ever before!
Physically my body has felt good all week as well, which of course is very satisfying as it means I'm able to train as much as I want. I think this is probably my reward for keeping up the hard work in the fitness room during my injury! Now it's important for me to keep this level of fitness, so that my body continues to feel strong and doesn't "break" to the pressure now that I'm playing a lot of badminton again...
Next week the training will be a bit different as all of the national team players are going to play the nationals. Unfortunately I'm not playing as I don't feel 100% ready for playing a whole tournament. 1 or 2 matches would be ok, but I don't know how my body will react if I was to play more than that. There are still things to look forward to though. As I have mentioned earlier my club Greve has a very important league match on the 4th of februar where I really do hope I can be helpful by winning my singles. If we win this league match, we will probably be assured a place in the final of this years championships! So as you can see, it is very important! This is what I'm looking forward to right now and I'm keen on working hard to be in the best possible condition come the 4th...

I want to wish you all a pleasent weekend and thank you for your interest,

HK

Back in the game!

2008-01-22T15:41:00.000+01:00

Hi,

After a nice and quiet weekend with only some light training on sunday, I'm now back on full training. Yesterday I had a really hard 2-hour session at the national training center in the morning. We did a lot of offence/defence drills for the first 1½ hours which was really hard, so I was very happy when the coach said we should just do some easy stuff for the last bit! A couple of hours later in the day I had to do my strenght training. I do this along with a few other top-athletes from Denmark. We have a coach by our side all the time and he is the one who decides what to do from session to session. This gives us a lot of variation in our training as he (the coach) know a lot of different excersises and doesn't want us to always just do the same. He makes sure that we use all the muscles and not only a few. It's a bit untypical way to do strenght training as most people usually just have a program that they stick to. I like my way of doing it much better, it makes my body feel more "complete" and I really enjoy the training with other athletes from different sports.
Anyway, that was it for yesterdays efforts and I really felt tired when I got back home. So I didn't really do much in the evening, just ate, watched some TV and went to bed.

Today I had training at 9 in the morning. We were supposed to do some physical drills on court, but a lot of the players at the training center are going to sweden on thursday to play an EBU curcuit tournament, so they really wanted to get some match practice. That meant I had to play a game for the first time since october! My movement around the court wasn't the best, but considering how long my break has been I guess it was not too bad either... Actually I managed to win a set off my opponent, not bad after a 3-4 months break!
Besides the match I also had some offence training as this is the area that has suffered the most during my "little" break from badminton. As I said my movement isn't very good and that makes it difficult for me to get in the right position to hit attacking shots. But I'm getting there, even though it may take a bit longer than I want it to!

Later tonight I have a training in my club Greve. It's been a while since I've been there so it will be fun to see all of my club- and teammates again. Add to that the fact I had a massage after my morning session, so I really feel ready and look forward to the training tonight! Hopefully it will live up to my expectations :-)

Lastly I just want to thank you all for reading and I will be back on here soon,

HK

Happy birthday (a little late)!

2008-01-17T16:02:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

Time to update my blog again. Not much to write about though, as I got sick again the day after my last post. I went to training in the morning and felt ok, but when I got back home I went straight to the bathroom and got really sick... So I had to take the rest of the day off and unfortunately also had to cancel all of my plans yesterday which was my birthday!! So I was just at home lying on the sofa, not being able to eat anything at all! Not exactly the way you want to spend your birthday... That's not the worst part about it. The days with no training, just after recieving the message that I'm now good to play 100% again, is what's really frustrating.
However I'm feeling much better now and will begin practising tomorrow morning. I don't hope this little break will ruin my chances of competing for my club, Greve, in the very important league match we have comming up on the 4th of february. I'm planning on this match to be my first competitive game after my injury, so I really hope to fullfill this aim.
Tonight my closest family will all get together and celebrate my birthday. There will be a lot of cake and hopefully plenty of nice presents as well :-) So I guess you can all see why I'm looking forward to this night haha. It will be very cozy and I'm sure we'll enjoy it. By the way I'm turning 22, let's us all hope this will be a good age for me, ok? :-)

Thank you,

HK

It's a new week and what a perfect way to start it!

2008-01-14T17:29:00.000+01:00

Hi,

First of all I want to apologise for not updating this blog the last 3 days, but on friday I began to feel really sick. Got a really bad stomach ache during the afternoon, which just got worse and worse. Come friday night/saturday morning I felt so bad and ended up having a fever. I also had to do a couple of unpleaseant visits to the toilet! Fortunately I felt better on sunday and today I feel almost like normal again.
Even though I felt pretty good this morning I decided it was best to skip my morning session of badminton training. It really drains your body of energy when your sick, so you have to be a bit careful about your training when you start again. If your body is not on a 100% the risk of injuries is of course much higher and injuries is not what I need right now! Skipping the morning session was the right choice as I really felt much more ready and full of energy when I went to see my physiotherapist in the afternoon. That is extremely important as I do 1 hour of very tough strenght excersises for my knee with him as my supervisor. This session went really well and after we had finished it the physio told me, that he thinks my knee now looks strong enough to play badminton with no restrictions at all! Can you imagine my happiness when he told me that? After more than 3 months with not a single rally played, it now looks like I might be able to play some "real" badminton tomorrow :-) I know I still have to start off a bit slow, but my comeback to the competitive court is not far off now!
I don't know if it was the happy message from my physio that gave me extra power, but I decided to do some extra strenght training for 40 mins along with some other national badminton- and tabletennis-players. The others continued for an extra 20 mins, while I just did some extra stretching as my body was really feeling tired.
Now I'm back home where the rest of todays program is just eating and relaxing, doesn't sound too bad does it? :) Maybe I will just watch some DVD's or listen to some music tonight, I'm definetly too tired to go anywhere. It doesn't really bother me though, 'cause it's a new week and what a perfect way start it! :-)

Best wishes,

HK

Getting back to work is not easy!

2008-01-10T19:23:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

As you may know I suffered a serious knee injury a few months ago. Unfortunately it required surgery to fix it. I had the surgery done on the 12th of november 2007 after being unable to play the game I love so much for 1½ months at the time. Now I've been back in training for almost a week and I promise you, it's not anything like taking a walk in the park :) Every part of my body is aching, but luckily my knee is not affected by it! I guess more than 3 months with no badminton played at all is not good for me! I've been working hard on my strength training during the injury break, so I really feel my body is in as good shape as possible after such a long break. Hopefully that means the pain in my body it will get better during the next couple of weeks as I get more used to the badminton training again. Only time will tell :)
Today I had a 1 hour 20 minutes badminton session in the morning. Usually it would be a 2 hour session, but due to the fact I'm only just getting back on court, I've decided to start off a bit easy. With my body aching so much, it might be a wise decision... I did a lot of multi shuttle excercises with Kenneth Jonassen, which was really good. It amazing to be training with a guy at his level. All the good advice he can give me, is really helping me becomming a better player. After the training I spent a little extra time on strecthing as I figured my body probably needed it! Then I went out to have some lunch with 2 of my good friends from the national training center here in Denmark and only 2 hours after that I had to go to physical training! Oh my, just the thought of it was nearly killing me haha. Fortunately the coach was a bit late, so the training was postponed for almost 45 mins, giving me some extra time to relax... The best 45 mins of my day :-)
I got through the training and now I'm back home and have just eaten dinner. Not much time to relax though, I'm going to the cinema in a few minutes with some friends, watching American Gangster. Hopefully it will be a good movie and I'm sure I will sleep pretty tight went I get to it later tonight! Hmm I really have to go now if I don't want to be late. So I'll be back on here tomorrow.

Thank you all for your interest and take care,

HK

Welcome

2008-01-08T13:20:00.001+01:00

Hi all,

I want to wish you all a very warm welcome to my new blog. My name is Hans-Kristian Vittinghus and I'm 21 years of age (turning 22 in a few days). You can read more about me in the "about me" box on the right hand side and in my complete profile. Please feel free to have a look and comment on it here if you like!
I play full-time badminton and my aim is not only to make it to the 2012 Olympics in London, but to win it! This will be an extremely tough challenge, but I'm up for it... This London games is still pretty far in the future, so obviously I have a lot of other things I want to achieve before then. My target this year is first of all to be fit again after some serious knee problems. This should happen within the next couple of weeks, so I can be back at the competitve court in february. Apart from that I want to be a part of the danish Thomas Cup team in may and get my worldranking up back around 40, where I almost was before my injury! I will try to keep you updated on how I progress.
Thank you all for your interest and support, please leave a comment if there is anything you want to know.

All the best,

HK