I love setting goals, especially when the New Year comes around. It’s a good chance to reassess and create a vision for the year ahead. However, when we work with players, we see a number of common mistakes when it comes to their goal setting and it’s something that is preventing them both stay motivated and achieve their goals.

This blog is here to help you with your own goals and is based on countless years of experience goal setting with players. Hopefully when it comes to your own goal setting you can avoid some of these pitfalls for yourself and smash your goals this year!

Don’t Set Too Many Goals

It’s tempting. I’ve done it myself. You want to improve so many aspects of your game that suddenly your goals become ‘improving my bandeja, vibora, smash, volleys, glass, serve, return’…the list goes on and on. Then you take a step back and it’s all a bit daunting. And not motivating in the slightest!

Now I’m not saying don’t aspire to improve every aspect of your game. That’s a great goal to have. The important thing is to break these down so you have small bite-sized goals you can take to the court and improve. If the goal is to improve the bandeja, you need to be able to set goals that answer this question: How will you improve your bandeja? If you’re not sure on the answer to that, then that’s exactly why we created Our Padel School Membership to help guide you on how you can improve your own game.

Take A Few Specific Goals To The Court

The best approach is to take to the court 2-3 goals each time and work on those. An example goal might be ‘earlier preparation on my bandeja’. Have 2-3 focus points like this per week and then at the end of the week assess your progress. Decide to continue next week with the same goals or if you feel you’ve achieved any, replace them for the next goals to progress. If you go on court with 15 goals, you won’t achieve any because it’s too overwhelming. There’s nothing more motivating than ticking off a few goals each week as you can visibly see your progress every time you step on court.

Your Goals Should Be As Ambitious And Specific As Possible

There is a fine balance between setting goals that are both ambitious and achievable. What we see often is players underestimate their own ability and this is reflected in goals which are too easy to achieve and non-specific. It’s better to set a goal of ‘reaching a 4.0 rating by the end of the year’ because it gives a specific outcome to work towards. If you just have a goal of ‘being confident playing matches’ – whilst it’s something all players would like to achieve – it’s also very broad and so difficult to tangibly achieve.

Specific goals that seriously challenge yourself are the best goals to have. I always say to players if they tell me they want to achieve a rating of 3.0 – I tend to ask ‘why don’t we aim for 3.5 instead?’ They are usually more than capable of achieving it. Shoot higher than you think.

Remember To Set Goals Outside Of The Court Too

Improving your padel in the long-term doesn’t mean just setting goals related to activity you do on the court. Staying injury free and physically strong will have a huge impact on your padel game and this area deserves goal setting too.

Don’t underestimate the amount of progress you can make through small increments. I know you may not feel you have the time in your schedule to include physical goals for your padel but even if it’s 30 mins per week dedicated to padel-specific gym training, this will add up over the weeks and months, and you will see a huge difference. Yes, we want to improve our game on the court, but we can make so much progress for that off the court too.

Let’s Make 2024 Your Year

Make 2024 be the year you take your padel game to the next level. If you’ve sat down and set some goals, give yourself a pat on the back. And if you can avoid some of the pitfalls I mentioned in this blog and also apply some of these aspects, I know you’ll be much more likely to achieve them!