Sandy FarquharsonFounder at The Padel School | Elevating Padel Players' Performance

One of the biggest mistakes players make is treating warm-ups as optional. 🎾

25 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Sandy Farquharson stresses that even a brief, five‑minute warm‑up can significantly reduce the risk of turning minor soreness in the shoulder, leg, or knee into a serious injury. She advises that if a sharp pain or any abnormal sensation occurs, players should question whether they should play at all. Sandy and her partner are described as very selective—avoiding play when they feel ill, have lingering injuries, or when external factors such as wet or windy conditions, poor equipment, or inappropriate shoes could compromise performance. Their cautious approach stems from a history of repeated injuries, reinforcing the importance of prioritising health and optimal conditions over simply getting on the court.

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And I think particularly this is the case if you have like a little niggling injury, like if your shoulder's a little bit sore or your leg or knee is a little bit sore, instead of thinking, oh, I'm just going to jog this off in the first set, it's like do 5, it's only 5 minutes, it's not a lot, like 5 minutes of warmup and exercise before you get on. It just means you're less likely to turn that into a more serious injury. And if it is a more serious injury and it is painful and you feel a sharp pain or you feel something that doesn't feel right, it's probably a question then like, should you actually even play? Play at all. Yeah, I mean, you and I are, I would say very fussy when it comes to when we train and we play. If we're feeling ill or we're like injured or something is sore, like we won't play. We won't play if the conditions are bad, like if it's wet conditions or, you know, it's really windy or it's something that will put us off the game in terms of how we play, we won't play. If we don't have good balls, like the right racket, shoes, we would never play if we don't bring the right shoes. Like these are all things that, yes, you could probably say that we're fussy when it comes to that, but also like we've been injured between us many, many times, right? So we don't want to be injured again.