Lauren Smith is sharing her daily training on her social media. She hopes to motivate other people to pick up the racket when it is again possible.

Lauren Smith medalled in two categories at the 2021 European Championships in Kyiv in April, and with qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in mixed doubles and women’s doubles for Team GB, Smith has enough to think about going into the final preparations.

Team GB is aiming to win the first-ever women’s doubles medal and the first mixed doubles medal since the 2004 Athens Games, and the 29-year-old is one of the names mentioned looking at the chances for the European players to medal in Tokyo in late July/early August.

A lot of training
Lauren Smith is one of the players, who also before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in, was active on social media engaging with her fans. Lately, the Smith followers have seen the doubles specialist posting video tutorials in which the reigning European Games champion shares her daily practise routines.

- One reason, why I share these, is the lack of tournaments at the moment. There has been a lot of training and there has not been much content from actual competitions, Lauren Smith said.

- Another thing is that a lot of people around the world are not able to go on court still, and the home workouts are accessible for everybody and no matter what you are near to or can access, you can have a go.

“Thank you”
With her open-minded approach to social media, Lauren Smith now has more than 41,000 followers, and she hopes that sharing her experiences can get people to pick up the racket, but she also wants to send her appreciations to the thousands of fans supporting her from all over the world.

- I believe it is important to motivate people and give them the motivation to go back on court, when they can. I think it has been a tough year, and I got so much brilliant support on social media, and this is my way to say, “thank you”. I try to give back to the community.

- If what I post motivates just one person to pick up the racket, it is a huge success from my side of things.

Great feedback
In 2021, you have multiple times seen social media being the tool of aggressive comments and hate speeches, but for Lauren Smith, it has been the total opposite. The fans love the English badminton star.

- The feedback has been great. It has been such a positive space, and people ask for things, and I try my best to deliver on those. It has been really lovely.

- The internet gets a reputation of being a space for negativity, but actually, I think it is a small percentage behaving like that, and especially during lockdown interaction through Instagram has been very rewarding and something that motivated me.

You can follow Lauren Smith on Instagram. Find her profile here