The Inside Scoop of Our Week at Padel Tampere, Finland
Spoiler alert; the Padel School team had a blast during our player-to-coaches workshop at Padel Tampere in Finland.
In this article, you’ll learn why we can’t wait to go back. We’ll share:
- What prompted us to travel to this beautiful country.
- A short rundown of our activities in Finland.
- Takeaways from the trip you can emulate and use right away to improve your own padel game and/or coaching ability.
- How you can bring the Padel School to your door.
It all started about six months ago with a brief phone call with Kaarle Wirta, the Operations Development Manager at Padel Tampere. He expressed an interest in having our team fly in and do a week long clinic for their coaches. Despite roadblocks from COVID-19, we finally made it happen.
During our week-long workshop at Padel Tampere we worked closely with ten of their top coaches throughout the week. Our goal was to improve their level of play and coaching ability through directed drills, tactical discussions, and guided learning.
To our absolute delight, throughout the week we were treated with Finish hospitality as we took a numbing swim in an icy lake, warmed up in a sauna, and watched an ice hockey game. Their gracious hosting, and eye for our experience throughout the week, guaranteed our return.
To round out the week, we attended player clinics led by their coaches with support from our team. Over 100 players came through to develop their skills, which was just icing on the cake for us.
We wanted to give a special thank you to Nick Williams, our head of coach education here at The Padel School. He was instrumental in the success of this trip. His commitment to developing coaches and 20+ years of experience as a coach tutor shined through. We’re thrilled we brought him onboard the Padel School team so that we can deliver an unrivaled coach education experience.
Here are few lessons learned from workshop attendees that you can put to use right away to strengthen your padel game or coaching ability:
- Reflect: After a session, brainstorm one thing that worked, and one thing you could improve. Coaches shared that this process was incredibly helpful for remembering what they needed to improve upon.
- Be open-minded: Players and coaches benefit from having an open mind and a willingness to grow. The best coaches are coachable themselves and willing to take direction.
- Do it together: One of the major highlights from our time at Padel Tampere was the fact that the event brought various coaches from the club together so they could see each other in action. This is exciting because bringing coaches together for a training session is a simple tactic any club can implement!
When asked how many stars he would give the Padel School, Kaarle Wirta said:
“Five plus. We got everything we wanted and a bit more because of the nice way The Padel School is doing their stuff. Their personalities added that extra twist to it.”
If you have the means, we highly recommend visiting this wonderful city of Tampere, Finland. In 2022, the city will play host to an exhibition of the World Padel Tour which you can sign up for here. Adventuring to a beautiful city and watching high-level padel at the same time sounds like a no-brainer to us! Along the way, stop at Padel Tampere and say hi for us.
If you or a nearby club want us to come and do a workshop just like this one, please get in touch. We’ll be doing many more of these excursions in the months and years to come to advance the game of padel throughout the world.
If we can’t come to you, come to us instead. See our updated list of in person UK events right here. We run these workshops for people to progress from players into coaches. We do this through skill development and easy to remember drills even casual club players can do with their friends.
Let’s see if incredible workshops just like this one will boost our mission to spread padel all around the world.