Off-Court Training Secrets: How to Improve Your Padel Game Faster

So we're going to talk about what players can do off the court to improve their game more quickly. Like, we obviously do a lot of training off the court, you and me, particularly when we're in performance and we're competing. But what can recreational club players do to make those improvements on the court?

Yeah, I think there's a bit of a myth or at least a perception at the moment with players that the matches are the solution. So play as many matches as you can. Also, they're fun, the matches are fun, which is, which is great, which is why we love padel. But it's this idea that the more matches I'm going to play, the better. And matches are good up to a certain point, but there are so many things that you can do off the court to help you improve, and that's what we're going to talk about today.

And I've heard the excuse, and I call it an excuse, but it's not really an excuse, it's more of an opinion that Players say, well, courts are so expensive that I can't train because I'm going to play 3 times a week and each of those is 90 minutes. And if I were to train outside of that, I have to pay a court fee and therefore it becomes too expensive. And I think that this mentality that you can only really improve on court, we need to dispel this really in the— like we have so many exercises like on our platform, we have lots of footwork exercises to get faster, ball control. Lots of things that players can do off the court to improve their game, and I just don't think players even think like that or realize it.

Well, also it goes, goes back to as well the element of you've probably got a few times a week that you could play padel, and matches are fun. So when you think, okay, I'm going to play twice this week, the idea that you're gonna just play matches— people want that, don't they? Because they're probably playing with friends. Maybe you've got an internal rivalry that you have, and you've got the same group of players that you're trying to beat, and It's understandable why, why players think that way. What we're saying today is actually, if you're a player that has that but also wants to improve, because I think a lot of the time players say they want both, but they perhaps don't understand, or perhaps they're not willing to give up those, those matches to train. But if you are one of those players that does want to improve, perhaps you have a goal of a certain rating, or maybe you want to win your, your local tournament, or just generally start competing more. The training side is massive.

I think you or I, if we were to put a goal now, like let's say hypothetically if we had a big tournament in 6 months' time and we wanted to reach the highest level possible, me definitely, I would need to put 50% of my time off court, like in the gym, on footwork, in training, like, like physical training, in order to, to compete at my best. I think maybe you, that the percentage might be slightly lower, like you probably say I need more court time, more match time, but there would be a chunk of that that would be we need to do this off court, like, because it's really— I know I will play my best paddle if I'm fast, like strong, fit, etc. You know, really the paddle is almost, you know, what happens when you, you know, the gun goes off for the race, right? Like, and it's having that mentality. And I think so often particularly for, I think, players coming up through the sport, like recreational players that want to improve their grip, as an example. Maybe they, they haven't got the continental grip, but they're only playing matches and they think, oh, I'm going to try and fix it in the match. Well, it's impossible to fix that in the match, really, because you're so focused on the match and what to do. It's like this work that goes on off court makes such a huge impact when you step on, on the court.

Yeah, let's look at traditional padel player's journey of how they might discover the sport and their progress through the sport. And a typical journey is you discover padel, you love it, you become addicted to it, you're playing it a lot, but you're only playing matches and you're playing and they're fun, but you're playing maybe 2, 3 matches a week and you do start to see an improvement from day zero to let's say you're 3 months in and you've played lots and lots of matches. You naturally do see that improvement. But what happens is, is that you start to ingrain bad habits if you're not getting the right coaching, you're not getting the, the quality training in. And then what happens is you end up hitting a bit of a plateau because your improvement starts to, starts to stall because you haven't got the right techniques, you haven't got the right training in. And you might even find that you plateau for periods, but then actually you start to even decrease in level because you start losing confidence. You talk about there about the grip, but maybe you're trying to work on a shot like a bandeja and you can't, you can't actually hit it because you haven't got the right grip. We haven't got the right foundations in place. And that, that's like a typical journey, which, which is a little bit deceptive at first because, because you do see that initial improvement. You think, well, if I just keep playing matches, I improved at the start, so why don't I just keep going? Because that, that's the way. But what we're saying actually is that you need to integrate training into your into your daily or weekly schedule when it comes to padel? Because if you don't, inevitably you're gonna hit that, that sort of plateau.

Yeah, it's tempting, is it, with padel? Because you start and you start hitting the ball and you think— your immediate thought is, I'm a natural. Like, you— that, that's what you think, whether you're from a racket background or not, or you—

it's easy to pick up.

Yeah, it's easy to pick up. And, and so, so players start hitting a little bit and they go, I'm a natural at this, like, I've got this. And you're improving, and you're improving, you're improving those first few months. And, and that's often when people jump into becoming a coach when they think they're a natural. And but it's like, it's not that you're a natural at the sport, it's that the barrier, the technical barrier to entry to the sport is low. So it's everyone is a natural, everyone is picking the sport up at the beginning, and you go into that plateau like you said. And often people in that plateau, they get frustrated and their thought is, I need to play more matches and I need to play against better players, I'm not playing enough good players. And so They put— try and play lots of good players, and, and what happens is they, they feel like there's a rise there because they're playing against good players and they don't let them get away with stuff and they're faster. But then they play a lower level player and they don't win and they don't know what they're doing. And it's—

and to play Tomic rating—

yeah, yeah, then we throw the discovery of the place on it. Yeah, and you have to work out your level and someone else's level is different, and it just, it just ends up messy at that point. And I think that I would love, if there's one thing I could do like for paddle generally with my magic paddle wand, I would be like, I wish people would get lessons in that early journey. Like really just to start getting a few of the basics right, get good habits. And then instead of the plateau at 3 or 4 months, the plateau is at 6 or 7 months if you get a few in at the beginning. If you have continued coaching and you've got a good coach, you actually should continue to improve a lot longer than that. But It's like understanding that, you know, the training is part of like, like to learn is part of the, of the journey.

Yeah, because, and you mentioned there the word habits, that's, I think that's so important, is it is about building good habits, good technical habits, uh, good routines. And we talk about improvement off court and all those exercises, and we're going to go into those in a moment, but what they're doing is they're, they're building habits. And if you want to improve long term, It's all about those, those habits, all about those foundations. Because at every level, when you step up a level, it always comes back to, have you got the foundations in place to be able to step up? And have you got those right habits in place to be able to step up? And you can only do that through training, through quality repetitions, through getting the right habits, routines in place. And I think that there's a window, isn't there, for, for paddle players in that early moment. You talk about your magic one, but it's that it's that moment at the beginning where it's like, right, you have a chance now to build the foundations. And if you do this now, you will see your improvement long term. If you don't— and it's a tricky one because just playing matches is fun and everyone is doing it, and the rating and everything else that comes into it— you, you won't be able to build those habits. And what will inevitably happen is you will, you'll hit that, that ceiling. And, and we talk about this with our members. So much of what we do on the platform is about Building the right habits, building the foundations, getting the skills. We talk about the off-court exercises, the footwork, the grip, the ball control, all of those. They don't sound like, like super, super fun things to do. They're not, they're not like, you know, the topspin smash and I really want to work on my kicking the ball out. But it's these foundations. If you get these in place, those are the things that are going to take you from beginner to intermediate really quickly, intermediate to advanced really, really quickly. It's is how are you going to fast-track your game.

And like you say, it's routines. It reminds me of— as you were talking there, reminds me of when I tore my ACL. So I tore my ACL and I was playing for GB at the time, like not when I tore the ACL, but I was at that level. Tore my ACL, 9 or 10 months off, and obviously very frustrated, injured, couldn't go on court, etc. And I did the rehab for it, and part of my rehab was building a routine for when I came back to court that I needed to add 5 or 6 exercises to my warm-up you know, like a lot of glute activation and, and bounding and things that I needed to protect my knee. But also at the same time, I needed to do those rehab exercises. So I just made it part of my routine. Yes, my warm-up went from 10 minutes to 20 minutes, but all of those exercises went in there. And I just made it because I'm not one— because I'm not one who's very good— who is very good at like standard, like, go sitting and do my own exercises in the evening. It's much easier for me to make it part of the routine. So I did the warm-up had those other 10 exercises, 5 to 10 exercises in there, strengthened the knee, and then was able to get back to, to competition because it was part of the routine. And that's really like what we are proposing to players, is like we have footwork courses, follow-along videos that, that players on our platform use, but we are suggesting making it part of the routine, make it part of the warm-up. So there's a 5-minute warm-up on there. If you've got 8, 10 minutes, do a 5-minute warm-up, a 4-minute footwork exercise, then go on court. And the difference in the level of the player is, is huge. Like, instead of going 3 or 4 love down in that first set, they are— they're starting like firing on all cylinders. And that's really what we're, we're trying to get players to do, is to use these off-court exercises to, to form a routine so that they can actually perform better on the court.

And what would a typical week look like? So we talked about the traditional paddle player's journey, perhaps at the moment being just playing matches during the week. Maybe it's 2 or 3 times a week you go and play a match. What would be the, the ideal weekly schedule? What would that look like in terms of training versus matches?

If I were to take a recreational player now, and let's say the player has got 3, 3 to 4 sessions a week that they have court booking time on, and In an ideal world, we would tie in some education, and for us, that's why we built the platform really, so players can, can study at home. They can study what they need to work on, they can send in their videos, they can work out and get a clarity of focus on what they're going to be training, watch some content around that so that they know what they are focusing on. Well, that's a big one, is players not knowing. They're, they're working on 25 different parts of their game, but like get a clarity, clarity, small focus, 2 or 3 things that they are focusing on.

They're not binge-watching the content, are they? That's the important thing there. I think that's what you're trying to say. There's 1 or 2 things. Don't spend hours, hours at home in an evening watching 3 hours of online content. It's 1 or 2 things, really zoning in.

Yeah. And picking the area that is hindering your game. Like if you're playing and you feel like your Banneka is struggling and you keep missing it and you know, take some videos of your bandeja, identify what you want to work on, and go to the— and if you're an intermediate level, go to the intermediate bandeja course and, and study that. And then say, right, I need to work on these few things with my bandeja, and do some practice. And actually, bandeja, as an example, you can do some practices off the court, for example, throwing for yourself, controlling the shot, the contact point, things like that. If you can do a training on the court, brilliant. Like, if you've got an area or a time in the week you could do an hour with a training partner on the bandeja, fantastic. And then when you go to the match court, like, then it's like, right, I need to focus tactically, but I want to consider my bandeja as part of that tactic. So it might be I'm going to work on getting back quickly for the bandeja and recovering position, for example. And it would be, if we use the bandeja as the example, it would be some work offline, get my clarity and focus, do some, some training and some focus off the court, and then I would in my matches concentrate on those areas. And in the meantime, make part of it the, the, the warm-ups and the, the bits in between. So if you're playing 3 times and you want to work on the Van Ecker, do some shadow movements as part of your warm-up. So do a 5-minute warm-up. You can use the one that's on our platform, or, or there's, there's a few on there that you could use. And then put in some Van der Heijde volley movements. So you're moving back, hit the Van der Heijde shadows before you go on court, because all of this is repetition, muscle memory, building up those movements. The crossover step that you need from the moment— Van der Heijde is crucial to getting back in time, right? So, and that, that's how I would, that's how I would be as a recreational player. But we always come back to this point of clarity and focus, knowing what you need to work on and then working on it off court, particularly footwork patterns, and then trying to build it into your game.

Yeah, because a lot of that stuff can actually be done off the court. Like, like we talked about at the start around having perhaps 3 sessions, 3 sessions in a week. Well, those shadowing exercises can be done at home, and it can be done in short windows. And you might have— maybe you've got 10 minutes if you work from home, or maybe you've got like an hour at home, and, and maybe you do home workouts, but you can integrate something into that, maybe 5-10 minutes of just footwork repetitions. It's one of those skills that little and often, I think, is, is, is the best approach. So if you, if you're able to, to shadow footwork exercises, shadow this, these quality repetitions at home, let's say a few times a week in between those sessions, you'll see a massive difference. It, it doesn't, it doesn't take a lot, but it takes that clarity, doesn't it? And it takes that, that intention to go and spend a few minutes really focusing in on, okay, let's, let's use a Van Decker in the recovery example, is at home shadowing the shot, recovering with the footwork. If you're able to get those repetitions in a home, you'll go to the court and you'll see like a massive improvement.

I mean, particularly around footwork, right? I mean, we built that Faster Feet for Padel course with the view that everyone of every level can improve their footwork. And it will make them faster on court. It means they'll have better preparation for all of the shots. And I do— you and I do those exercises, we do them as part of our warm-up. There's a 4-minute footwork drill on there that you follow along, and I'm doing the exercise, and I do that when I go to the gym. Like, if I'm going to the gym and I know I'm going to do lower body or even upper body, I do a warm-up, and then I'll do those 4 minutes, and then I'll get on with my, my session. And it's just like you say, little and often, building up repetition And if you get faster on court, like the whole, your whole game evolves. Like it literally takes you up like a rating or two. And I think if people are interested, we'll put the link in, in the description down below of the membership. If you sign up to the membership now, you can get access to the Faster Footwork course. There's also lots of exercises you can do within ball control that you can do off the court to help control on the ball. Um, but it's a crucial part of, of the game.

Some players come to us and say, I do my training and I go onto the match court and it all just falls apart. And we know the importance of, of training off court, these repetitions. Why is it so important for players to do this, to avoid that feeling of going on the court and feeling like it all just falls apart?

I think the repetition in a way gives, gives comfort and, and clarity. And you're like that. I remember this from your tennis days, and it's the same with your padel. It's If you feel something's not quite right with the vibora, you will go out and do it 200 times in order to the next time you play, you, you feel confident and comfortable with it. And I think it's exactly the same when it comes to the split step or a part of the game that you want to build into your game. It's just, it's literally just repetition and doing it. But if, if you don't do it off, off court, it's very difficult to do it on the court. Like, and use the example of a vibora, you're not going to get 200 viboras in a match. So when you're not going to practice it because the balls go in different places, it's difficult to, to get those repetitions. So all of that comes from off-court work, really.

And using the Vera as an example, let's say you have a ball machine or you have a coach that you're going to do those repetitions on court. You can spend time before you even get on that session of at home shadowing the right technique and getting that, that movement pattern ingrained, because it's all about it being ingrained, right? It's about getting that movement pattern, that those, those like motor skills in your system, so it just becomes second nature and, and you're able to, to get in that right position straight away. And then what you'll find is when you go on to the training court with your coach or a ball machine, you've got enough reps in already that you can start focusing on, on perhaps different parts of the shot, like getting the spin on the ball, but you know that you've got that foundation in place. So yeah, the being ingrained is, is so important. That's where the reps come in, and that's why the off-court exercises are so important.

Yeah, and it helps you under pressure. Like if I think about learning to drive, right? Parallel parking at the beginning.

The pressure.

Yeah. I mean, you don't do it in your first lesson, right? You don't go out and go, oh, let's just have a crack at this. And you learn to reverse first and you learn the dimensions of the car and then you practice it several times with your teacher and then you go to an empty car park and you practice it there. And then, you know, you build up. You don't go into the centre of London and say, I'm going to try and parallel park because You know, it would be too stressful. But you build up the repetition so that when you do go into a city centre and you need to parallel park, you can actually do that under pressure because you have done it so many, so many times before.