Even the Best Padel Players in the World Need Unique and Focused Coaching

When it comes to getting lessons for padel tennis, the longer you wait, the worse it’s going be. It’s better if you rip off the plaster sooner rather than later!

In this article, we want to encourage you to start lessons. Our aim isn’t to scare you into them, but we do want to share what could happen if you skip this level of personalized education.

And better yet, there’s no reason to avoid padel lessons. They are actually a fun way to improve your skill level. 

Everyone gets stuck or plateaus at some point, it’s impossible to avoid. If you skip lessons and try to figure it out yourself, you’ll likely develop bad habits that will take even longer for a coach to help you fix.

What we’ve seen across a variety of players in various countries is the same bad habit of waiting far too long to get help…

Inevitably, this happens:

“Ahh! I did it again. Sorry guys.” Tom says sadly as skyrockets the ball three courts over.

Tom’s friends sigh and wait painfully as Tom runs off the court for the seventh time to pick up the ball he sent soaring. He had tried to smash a ball he should have let bounce off the glass… AGAIN.

“I’ll figure it out eventually.” Tom says as he rejoins them on the court. His friends roll their eyes; they’ve heard it all before.

Andy speaks up, “Tom, you really need lessons, mate. You can’t keep playing tennis on the padel court.”

Tom’s visibly upset, but his wheels start turning and he thinks, “Right! Maybe they’re right… Maybe it’s time I get padel lessons after all.”

Tom finally shows up for his first padel tennis lesson, and his coach immediately sizes up the situation. Tom’s swing is all wrong, he’s afraid of the glass, and he’s still using a semi-western tennis grip. Uh oh.

Eventually, Tom improves and can play with Andy and his friends again.

Sadly, most friends won’t be as candid as Andy was to Tom. Most people won’t tell you to get lessons. It’s much worse than that…

They’ll just stop playing with you. No more invites to padel games, events, and other tournaments for you. Nobody really wants to play with someone who’s stuck in a loop, making the same mistakes.

The sooner you decide to have lessons, the sooner your skill level will rise along with your friends and the people you like playing with.

Avoid the inevitable plateau by prioritizing your personal learning.  

The great thing is that padel tennis lessons come in many forms; it doesn’t just have to be one-on-one sessions on court with a coach. Actually, if you are working with a good coach then group lessons can be the best way to learn, afterall padel is always played in a 4 so training should be too!

Top 3 reasons you should get lessons at the start (as opposed to after the bad habits):

1. Skill Development: Padel tennis lessons provide structured training that focuses on building fundamental skills necessary for the sport. Whether it’s learning proper techniques or developing physical abilities, lessons help lay a strong foundation for further progress. Importantly it can also avoid getting any bad habits early on.
2. Safety: Padel players become addicted very quickly and can often be playing several times per week once they take it up! Good instruction helps newcomers understand and follow safety guidelines, reducing the risk of injuries, as they increase the amount they play. Coaches or instructors can teach participants how to warm up, stretch, and perform exercises safely to minimize the chances of accidents.
3. Networking and Community: Taking lessons allows individuals to connect with fellow padel enthusiasts, forming a community of like-minded people. Particularly for those that have recently taken up the sport, to find a group of players you can arrange matches with is a big help. Otherwise it can be difficult to always find players to have a game with.

Ultimately, getting padel lessons when starting a sport can accelerate the learning process, improve technique, help avoid injury, and provide a supportive environment for beginners to grow and thrive. It sets a strong foundation that enables individuals to enjoy padel tennis to its fullest potential and increases the likelihood of long-term improvement and success.

There a variety of strategies for learning padel tennis

1. Watching a recording of your padel game and having a coach analyze it for you. We regularly post match analysis videos on our YouTube playlist here.

2. Not playing a match with your friends and instead doing drills. I know this suggestion sounds almost blasphemous in the padel world, but if you only ever play with the same three people all the time, you might not be growing in skill. Take 20-30 minutes out of your reserved court time and practice a few drills together and help each other grow.

3. Group lessons with a coach – join a padel focused clinic.

4. One-on-one lessons to break bad habits and learn technical skills.

5. Use video lessons to give yourself areas to focus on! There are quite a few on our YouTube and some great step-by-step courses on our website!

Many of the shots in padel tennis are taught when the player reaches a certain level, for example a coach is unlikely to teach a ‘vibora’ until the players are able to hit a bandeja (because bandeja & vibora are different shots!) and show at least an intermediate level. We have had so many players come to our lessons asking to learn the exciting kick smash or vibora and we have had to go back to the basics of the correct grip and basic overheads.

The longer you play padel tennis the more you realise it is a different sport and therefore needs to be treated like one. Even something as simple as your basic court positions can mean the difference between you winning and losing a match at the start.

What our first padel tennis lessons look like

Fortunately there are many places you can learn the official padel rules, so you do not need to establish those in your first lessons.

At The Padel School we really believe in getting players comfortable in a game setting as soon as possible. This means explaining the court positions, the objective in a padel point and working on some basic techniques that we consider the foundations. As a coach, if you can do a good job of teaching the back glass shots it will be much easier to teach the return of serve, the double glass shots and any others from the back.

The same applies to the overheads, if you can learn the correct principles at the beginning you will find it much easier learning and understanding the variety of smashes you need in padel!

The same goes for padel equipment – if players can understand that from the beginning that will help their performance and avoid injuries! If that first lesson is early in the player’s padel journey that is even better, before they have bought the latest premium model used by the World Padel Tour top 10! We would cover what to look for when buying your first padel racket!

At this stage it is about enjoying the game of padel tennis and learning some fundamental building blocks to be able to grow on later!

One of the biggest mistakes you can make

One of the most common things we see at clubs, regardless of their size or the country they are in, is players giving each other advice. Quite often there is a lack of experienced padel coaches and so new players are trying to teach other new players how to hit certain shots and tell them what they should be doing.

Even if a player is regurgitating the advice they have been given by a coach it does not necessarily mean that advice is applicable to the other play. Much of the advice is also “this technique worked for me” tips and those are even more difficult to agree with, because it is not clear in the long term whether that helps or hinders the player’s performance.

So our advice would be to get your information from recognised sources, ideally a qualified padel coach in person or a quality online resource.

Part of the reason we have developed such an extensive library of content and a roadmap is so that we can guide players on their journey of learning padel tennis!

We’ve found that the players who grow the quickest use a combination of in-person instruction and online advice. They are not afraid to ask for feedback so they can improve. And that is exactly how we work with our members, through a video feedback loop of their games/shots and our analysis.

So, don’t delay any longer. Schedule your next lesson, record your upcoming match, sign up for our membership (with a free trial) and start working on the padel tips we provide! A great piece of advice we give to all our students having lessons…always ask ‘why’. You need to know why you are changing or working on a technique!

Cheers!