On-Court: Drills, Tactics, and Takeaways

Good to see the intensity, the fitness level of everyone. You know, generally players enjoy this training. They enjoy training. So, Tom, excited for this podcast episode. Live streaming to our members on the platform. We've just finished our GB squad training for the weekend, which you participated in. 8 hours of grueling paddle.

And you were the coach?

I was the coach for it. How'd it go? How did I do as coach and how did you do as a player?

Well, I was going to say this is like a joint, joint review, isn't it? Well, it was eight hours of training and it was super tough at the time because I think for all of us involved, we're obviously in training a lot of the players that were in and so. But eight hours in a row over the weekend was tough and we did a lot of intense drilling. So my legs were feeling it a little bit this morning. But overall I felt. Felt really good.

Yeah, it was good. I mean, we had Augustin Salingo, so for those of you that might not know him, I mean, he's ex top World Padel Tour player. He coaches quite a few players. I mean, he was coaching LeBron and Dineno. He's coaching a lot of the top male and female players at the moment. He is joining the GB coaching staff. Essentially. He's going to head up the women's coach and he's going to work with me to deliver the men's as well. And so it was great having him. And, you know, part of the reason I chose him is I've bumped into him and you bumped into him at Diagonal Academy and things like that. You feel like he's. I mean, he's so dedicated to the sport, isn't he? And he's got so much experience, both as a player and as a coach. And it was really, it was super interesting, I thought, having him for the couple of days and I mean, you've done some training in Diagonal with him before. Like, I think a lot of that training, though, was quite new to our GB players. What do you think on that?

Yeah, first of all, he's such a nice guy. That was when I first met him in Diagonal. He was such a nice guy and so it was so nice to see him again. That's probably the first thing. And yeah, he's so experienced and actually I met him probably three or four years ago when I think his English has improved a lot. When I first met him, he was still competing on the tour. I think it was towards the end of his career. So actually I was lucky enough to get on court and train with him whilst he was still competing. And I mean, if anyone knows Salingo or Cena, he's a beast. Like, he trains in the gym, he trains super, super hard. So I was lucky enough to get on court with him, managed to somehow try and keep up with him training at the end of his career and then he's gone into coaching at Diagonal as well. And yeah, it was super nice because when I trained at Diagonal, he was very open to helping all the players, but also because there are so many players and they have so many top, top players there, it was nice for him to come here to the, to GB training because I felt like because the group was a bit smaller, we could almost like try and pick his brain on so many different aspects. So it was really nice to have him on court and so experienced and we're super lucky to have him.

Yeah. So, I mean, over the weekend we had like 14 men's players and nine women's players and we kind of set the exercises up so that it was a little bit, I would say, more, more drill focused, more condition focused and it almost went into a bit more play. Because part of this is for us as the coaches, is almost like selecting a GB team. So we need to try and select the team. We need to also put some pairings together and to see how they work right side versus left side players, etc. And then also try and give an opportunity to like, for people to train parts of the game and get into good habits and understand as much as they can. Because I feel like the difficulty for the majority of those 23 players that attended is so few get regular training, like regular conditioning training. I mean, we do a weekly training, but it's almost like we want to try and hit the idea of doing good matches, but also hit the idea of conditioning and also hit the idea of working on techniques or tactics, etc. So it's not something that a lot of the players are exposed to, especially like with the top players in the country. I mean, you know what it's like, you might be lucky in a range with one or two players a hit, but yeah, it's difficult to get that regularly.

Yeah. And I think to get that regular training, but also to get experience coaching alongside that drilling. And I think one thing we chatted about was how in Spain the drills are set up and then there's a lot of discussion within those drills. So you might drill for say 10 minutes and then the coaches will come in, the players will come in as well. And you'll almost talk about the different tactics and the different shots. And if you play here, where you should play the ball. And for us English players, we're used to just drilling, and this is the drill, and you go and drill it. And we're not used to having those. Those little discussions in between points that sometimes can last like a few minutes. But to have that tactical understanding and to have experience, like, Selinga would come onto the court and we would talk about the different points that have been played for each player, how they should have played those points. And so for me, that was a massive learning experience to have him come on and talk about the tactical side of the game and not just like, drill super hard for 20 minutes and come off and not really have any. Any kind of tactical discussion.

Yeah, it's quite interesting, isn't it? And I wonder how much of it is, like being British, for example, versus how much of it is. Is almost from, say, tennis. Because if you think about setting up a. A tennis session, for example, a group, you'd say, right, five minute warmup. Do that five minute for this exercise. Okay, Minute or two, water break, next exercise. Like, do you know what I mean? It's very regimented. Whereas the Spanish Argentinian style is very much like, we'll do this and we'll maybe do it. And he was like, maybe cultural. Yeah, well, he was like, you'll do it for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 minutes. And then, you know, do that and then we'll, like, talk about it. And it's interesting because it's not just the coaching that's like that. It's also the playing. Because after, you know, the end of the first day, he was like. We were chatting afterwards and he was like, no one talks to each other. Like, none of the players are not talking to. Like, no one is talking to each other about a game plan or what's going on. You know, you'll go up and go, come on this one, or, okay, I'm gonna serve glass. But you're not saying, right, let's go here, go here. And then actually we did a really interesting exercise which was you get a incentive to aim for a certain shot. So, like, as a pair, you were picking, right? If we hit to your forehand, for example, on the opponents, and you lose the point with your forehand, then. Then we go 40 love up in the. In the game. And sud. The pairs were all talking to each other because it was like, how am I going to get to this forehand? And how am I going to do this. And suddenly it was amazing watching from the outside, how it just kind of opened up players to communicate with each other. And I think that this is something that is difficult to translate when you come from tennis and tennis coaching and you move across to Padel and even across cultures. I think it's really important as well, because if I think sometimes when I deliver on my own, a two hour session, it's exhausting, right? Because the drills are intense, there's a quite a quick break and then you go back at it. But if, for example, I'd led that session with all the, the British team and we'd have just had a chat for five minutes, everyone be like, oh, come on, like, let's get back out there.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's, it's a really interesting, like cultural slash sport divide that.

Yeah, I, I completely agree. I mean, I think at our level, I think that we, we need those, like, we need those discussions though. And I think that particularly for me, I mean, a big part of, I think the reason a lot of our players don't talk to each other as much is that we all know each other. Like, the group is so small. And I was talking to another player about this around. When we go out during the weekend, we would pair up and we'd play matches or play sets against other pairs. And because we know each other's games so well, I think that we're used to thinking we know where we're going to play, we know those weaknesses. And I think a big learning that Salingo was talking about during the weekend is almost how during a game you need to constantly be refining the tactic. So if we're playing against you, we might know what your weaknesses and strengths are. But on the day, how well are you hitting the shot or how well are you not hitting this shot? And it might be your strength, but actually today you're not hitting that shot so well. So let's play more like in that part of the court. And I think we're so used to playing that the group is quite small in the UK still. It's probably only around like eight or ten players that are at that level where we can play matches. So I think there's definitely an element of that being it's a small group, so we almost feel like we know each other's games a little bit.

I mean, I don't want to say that that's an excuse, but that's an excuse. I mean, if you got to think like like the premiere, like every week Milan and Chingotto are playing Tapia Kuela. Like those, those guys have been the same group for 10, 15 years. And like if you watch their tactical discussions at the change of ends, it's. And the coaches, it's so like animated, you think they're playing them for the first time.

But I think though that that goes back to what you said around tennis versus Padel. Because if I was, if I think about tennis and a lot of the guys, we always talk about tennis paddle and compare. But a lot of the players that are in the GB team have converted from tennis or play tennis. So there is that element of that. But I think in tennis you take your game plan onto the court and then it's like, okay, you might change it, but really you're sticking to your game, your sport. Yeah.

You're implementing your game.

Yeah. And only slight changes would you make depending on how your opponent's playing. But really you could win a match, your opponent could be playing lights out tennis. But if you bring your game and it's better than theirs, then you don't change anything. Whereas I think we almost need to get our heads around that. Those ex tennis players that have converted to Padel, like you say, I agree we need to change that, but I think that's what we're currently doing.

Well, I think also we are currently doing that and I think also it takes a while to build the confidence to say to your partner, right, this is what we need to do. And I feel like a lot of the players, if you said, right, what's your tactic? They're almost like they're not 100% sure. Like if you think of all the years you train tennis and you go on for the match and you've got your game and someone changes something, you know what to do. And now I think it's just we're not as a group probably because we're not having these discussions, but it's not 100% clear on, like, right, this person's struggling in here, other than just we're going to fire everything there because that's not the right way to do it because you end up making mistakes, going for difficult balls. But it's almost like I feel like the group at the moment haven't quite form, like don't quite know how to form that game plan. And actually like a real something I'm taking away from the weekend is how to create tactical situations and game plans and get players to think about that with different numbers on the court. Like for me, that was really interesting. Like, even though we had four on a court, you know, we split up into sometimes two player drills, cross and two player drills, line and three player drills within the four, and then sometimes three player drills that led to an open situation with four players. And I think that so many people think, oh, well, I can't train because I haven't got four people, or I can't train because, you know, I need training for me is one on one with the coach. And it's almost. Well, it's definitely not one on one with a coach because that you can't do any tactical stuff really, and you don't need that, that full player. I mean, like, it was a real testament to, you know, that Salingo and his training, that we could do many exercises with two and three players.

Yeah. Like you said, I think a lot of players think training is with one on one, but also not seeing the value, like the value of those three player drills. I do have to say though, that if I compare the training we did at the weekend versus diagonal when I was in Madrid, I found this weekend a lot more intense and a lot tougher because if I think of how we train in Madrid, we train the drill, then we have a discussion and we'll either have a discussion within the drill and then we're also going to have a discussion when we have a drink because. And I'll add that it's in Spanish, so it's good on both fronts. So. Yeah.

What are you saying in those discussions?

A lot of nodding. A lot of nodding and smiling.

Yeah.

No, normally, to be fair, in Madrid there's a translator. Normally there's one player that their English is better than than everyone else's. So they, they do translate. But we did with Solingo there and with yourself there. We do add those discussions in, but it is just a different type of training and I do think it's important. I don't think it's just a cultural thing. I think that it is. If you have that coach. And that's the big if, isn't it? If you have that coach there who's experienced, who can give you those tips, it makes a massive difference.

I actually think so much of it is just gained from the conversation around discussion. Yeah. Because sometimes I'll be the first to say I try and do intensity within the session. But those discussions that happen is not only a time to discuss the tactics and understand the game, game plan and what you're trying to achieve within the drill, but it's Also time for you to rest a little bit, like to kind of catch your best so that you can give 100% in that next exercise. And so often we'll have a discussion and you and I were talking about like the Chiquita before and after glass and it's, I had that discussion all weekend with lots of players because it was a bit more open and a bit more conversational and they were like, oh, I'm doing this. And I'll be like, why? Why are you doing that? Like, but it's not something I would have brought up. And they normally wouldn't bring it up because normally we're like onto the drill. And so, you know, this idea of open conversation when you're learning I think is great. Like you said, if you've got the experience. Like I think it's almost against a little bit like a recent podcast we've done around, you know, club players advising each other on what they should be doing and everything like that. But I think, you know, definitely at the top end and, and also, you know, we find that with, with intermediate or beginner players as well, it's like, understand the why. If you're not sure, ask and have that discussion with the coach and make sure you really understand. Like, you know, if you're changing a technique, why you're changing it and how does it fit into the game. And I think that's super important at any level.

Yeah, that ties into my one thing that I would take from the weekend and it was just, it actually came off the back of asking Zalingo after, after day one because I actually hadn't gotten caught with him for probably about over a year. So I just said to him, I said, oh, I'm hoping that I'm a little bit better than when you last saw me. And he said, yeah, you've improved a lot. But the one thing that you could improve is actually playing slower with your overheads. And it's funny because if I think of I'm a left sided player and I like coming across and hitting a fast vibra and a lot of times.

You hit it well as well.

Yeah, and I like to hit it and a lot of the time I feel like even against some of the top GB players that I can win the point. If I hit a very fast vibra I can, I can usually win the point. But I have found that sometimes if I'm pushed back a bit more, it's like a bit bouncy. And he was really interesting. He was saying that against the best of Us, I need to play like, just a lot slower with a lot more slice. And because at the high levels, if you play fast, it's going to bounce, they can defend better and it's just not going to be effective.

Less time to recover position, and I love less time.

And he said, more importantly is that you're actually, you're looking for that next shot. You're looking to set up, you're looking to play the ball and set up the next one. Which I thought was an interesting theme of the weekend that seemed to keep coming up was a lot of the time we're seeing a shot like that and thinking, I'm going to try and almost create or overplay this overhead to try and win the point. Instead of thinking I'm going to play it slower, I'm going to play it to a space that puts our opponent into a survival position and then I'm going to finish on the next one.

Yeah, it's quite interesting. I mean, we almost experienced that firsthand when we. Do you remember when we were with Paquito and like we were having a bit of fun on court, he was hitting some vibras into your corner and he was fizzing that into the corner. Like, I mean, the ball was going like a bullet, wasn't it?

Yeah.

But then when you watch him in a game, he's not hitting that.

Yeah.

And he's not hitting that because his opponents can block it, they can get into positions, it might bounce slightly more. And if you watch him in a game, he hits a slower one because he's trying to set up that point. He's trying to force them to play a contra parade, a boast against the back glass. And so there's almost a mentality and it still comes from tennis. But even if you're not from tennis, this idea of like, power wins the day. Right. Like, like hitting fast. If you can hit fast and I could potentially hit a winner. Let's go for it. And it was interesting. Another kind of takeaway from the weekend was almost like if you've got a shot and you could win the point, but it carries risk and you've got a shot like, versus a shot that carries no risk, but you maintain a good position, he's like, take that every time. Like the no risk 1. Take the no risk percentage shot, which maintains your court position every time. His feedback really for the whole group for the end of the weekend was as a team. He uses the word volume like, as in volume of training. But. But in a way he's almost meaning patience in terms of. In that position, if you hit three balls down and you're defending before you want to go in, hit five, hit seven, hit nine, or you hit the lob and it's not qu enough. Stay and hit 2, 3, 5, 10, lob. Like, he's almost like, you've got to be patient. You've got to have volume in your shots. That's what he was kind of meaning by that rather than taking that risk.

Yeah. And particularly for him, like I mentioned, he's built like a gladiator build. Yeah. And so you think if he's saying that, given that he's all about strength, power from his physique, like, even he's saying slow it down, play soft. I mean, obviously, when he can up it, the speed, he will up it. But he's not thinking fast, fast, fast every time. Given that he's, you know, he's got that power in him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and now we're going to be seeing you hitting percentage, which just means.

The points are probably going to be longer and.

Yeah. Gonna have to love that, though. Have a good think about the point.

What was your summary from. From the weekend? I think we've obviously got the. The Euros coming up.

Euro selection.

Yeah.

Exciting.

And there's a few fips. I'm playing a few fips as well, so.

Yeah, well, you're playing an FIP this week, aren't you? And then I think another one next week. Right. And it was good. I mean, it was good training. Like, it was super interesting to see everyone play together, try and do different partnerships. I mean, you, you know, you played with four or five different players this weekend to try and see how that would work. Good to see the intensity, the fitness level of everyone. You know, generally players enjoy this training. They enjoy training. It's almost like we just don't have an opportunity to do more of it. Right. Like, there's not a lot of performance clubs around the country, if any, and there's not a lot of opportunity, but it was good. There's going to be some tough decisions when it comes to selecting the team, for sure. You know, we're fortunate to have a growing number of strong players to select from.

Yeah. And certainly watch. Watch this space. I'm sure the announcements of the team will be out soon.

That almost sounds like a request.

Yeah. Everyone's wondering. Everyone's wondering who's on the team. Can we push that forward?

Push that agenda up? Hearing it here first.

That's. That's it. No, but it's been, it was a really fun weekend and look forward to the next one and to the fips that are coming up.

Perfect. And we'll finish the podcast with. I've got a couple of questions I see come in from Gary, who's listening in or watching in question is how many people are in the GB squad in total? I think there's also a senior squad. Do the seniors ever train with the regular squad? So as a nation, every federation, once they register with the fip, they are able to enter an open team, which is essentially the, the men's and the women's team and then they are also able to enter a seniors team. Now, seniors, and I don't want to be misquoted in this, but I think now the categories are 55, 50, 45, 40. I don't know if 35 is included, but it's at five year brackets basically and each of the age brackets you can take four players usually, and between those four players you need to put a pair on. Generally at the moment, the seniors at the moment in the UK are training, like organizing their own training and working with each other. We tend not to train with the regular squad. Partly a strength thing. I mean, I'm 41, so theoretically I qualify for the vets, but it's almost like the strength of the main team is a little bit strong for the seniors. And you know, I think it's just organized slightly separately at the moment. I mean, as a growing federation, it's difficult. Like almost the priority, the performance players and the support packages for the younger players coming through is the priority. But not to say neglecting the seniors, but it is being worked on and there are groups and there's committees set up and there is a procedure in place.

I imagine it's like even with us on the men's GB team, being able to organize that and to train with the other players is probably quite tough. I know a few of them and they're scattered around the country.

They're all around the UK and outside the uk and then you've got the whole thing of the selection process and trying to come together for camps and it's not easy. The administration and organizing of national teams generally is not easy. And even more so with the seniors because you've got the different age groups and the, the categories there and then you're trying to find people for right side, left side. It's not easy. I think as the sport grows and it gets more regulation, more governance, both with the federation, but also, you know, with the Clubs, I think it will be easier. Right now, it's a little bit difficult, although it is much more organized now than it was a few years ago. And another question from Gary is how would your coaching style differ for the different age groups? And I would probably almost answer that more based around, like, physicality and mobility and capacity to train as well. Right. Like, you know, I know some of the senior age groups are super fit. I mean, we've got, like Abby Tordorf, for example, is in the women's team and she's 42 and she's super fit and, you know, trains as well as any of our female players. And I know some, like in the 50 or 55 category that are, again, super fit. And so, you know, I think it's more around the physicality and the mobility rather than the age. But then what you would end up doing is almost you would organise your sessions so that you can maximize what you're doing on court, maybe giving more rest if required, doing more tactical exercises to buy yourself time on the court. The use of lob and chiquita, etc to buy time, those are usually, you know, good ways. Good ways to do that.

Yeah. I also think it depends how often you get to come together as a team, because if you think of now, the men's and the women's team, they have a regular slot every Tuesday. And actually, we talked about this, didn't we, in terms of what should that slot look like? Should it be more drilling? Should it be more match play? I think it's difficult, isn't it, if you don't come together that much and you've got a championship coming up, you almost want to just get the pairs playing with each other, don't you? To get. To get used to it, rather than drilling, probably. Whereas if you have more regular sessions, you can build a bit of momentum, do more drilling.

Exactly right. And that's why when you go to these Spanish academies, if you do the sessions on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they're often drill focused because they're all playing matches from Thursday, like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So it's. And that's a difficulty for us, is almost combining the need for matches versus the need for training.

Yeah.

Last question in here from Maria. When you're in the rest of the competitions, when you don't always know the players, the warm up helps you sometimes get the advantage. Disadvantage approximately of the opponents, but the tactics, really, you wouldn't always be able to format them till potentially after the second game, when you have settled, know a bit more about your opponents and the way they play this super interesting because this is something we discussed and we did this weekend as well. And, and really the question is almost when can you form the game plan for your opponents? I think it starts in the warm up, particularly if you don't know your opponents. But even if you do, you start saying, oh, you know, what are they doing here? Are they feeling comfortable defending here? Are they hitting their lob well off my bandana? Like little things like that. And then you would form your game plan for the start of the match. And a bit like the exercise we did, you'd aim to this part of the court to try and do that. But you might find actually they do a really good job of hitting that or defending that or punishing you in that situation. And then when your next change of incomes or between another game, you might change your game plan and you know, then you go for a different plan and that may work so you continue that for a few games but then it may stop working or they might adapt and then you need to adapt. So it's a, I think it's a constant flow of, you know, like tactics. It's not, it's something that's quite fluid. It's not like this is my tactic and I have to stick to it. And I think when you play at the premier level, they know each other, they're probably watching previous game footage and forming the tactic before they even step on court. So I think it's all part of that. Right?

Yeah. I think going back to this weekend, the biggest thing for me at least was changing my mind from thinking, okay, I've got a game plan for this match and maybe it might change to actually thinking I might have a game plan going in or I might create in the warm up but in a way expecting it to change and actually thinking, okay, every few games potentially I might have to change my, to change my game plan. Now you might not because it's working and you're winning and that's fine. But most of time if you play competitive matches, they're hanging in the balance a little bit and probably you could adjust that game plan and you should be, and you should be communicating with your partner about what you think you could change. And I think that for me is probably a big mindset shift is actually okay, I need to expect that during a match our tactic might change two or three times and not almost thinking I'm only going to change my tactic if we're getting beaten badly.

Well, and it's the conversation Right. With your partner.

Yeah.

Oh, let's try and do this. What do you think about this? Is this working? Let's do that. You know, like, it's. It's constantly flowing. Not like, I'm gonna stick with this. And then let's assess in five games time. And if we won the set, then we'll keep doing it. And if we don't, we have to change. Like, it's. It's constant. I think. I think that's important to take away.

Yeah. And communication with your partner and I guess also finding someone that feels comfortable with that, because a lot of people, I know that perhaps they find it distract. They might think it's distracting to talk about the game, and they just laser focus and they don't want to. They don't want to talk about. So you have to find the right. The right person who's. Who wants. Who's on the same page with that. Right.

Certainly, certainly.

That's a great question.

A very good question. Thank you. For those tuning in live, we will pop this on. On our podcast probably in the. In the coming week or so. Tom, an absolute pleasure to discuss this. As always, good performance this weekend. I look forward to the upcoming fit.