Should You Listen to Other Players' "Coaching" Tips?

Paddle in the uk Summer coming. It's. It's a big, big year, I think, for the game.

Tom, we are back in the uk, back on the podcast couch, excited to be here. I feel like it's been ages since we've actually been in the same place. You're in the us then. I went to Tenerife pretty much the day you landed and now we're. We're reunited.

Yeah. I get to see all those, those tropical pictures of you and Tenerife, loving life.

Yeah, well, you were in Florida for a few months, so.

Yeah, that's true.

Can't complain too much. And we've come back and it's been pretty, pretty nice weather. It's been tropical weather here in the uk, so it has.

Summer paddle is on its way, isn't it?

It certainly is. And all of these outdoor courts around the country are rubbing their hands together because finally they're going to be able to get some dry court time.

Yeah. And actually the news won't go too off topic, but it was nice to see in the news lately that paddle is growing in the UK a lot. I was actually surprised. I think the figure was 893 quarts, I think now, which was actually a lot higher than. Than I thought. I thought we were probably around 5 or 600 by this point. I don't know what, what you thought, but yeah, really, really exciting statistics for. For paddle in the uk.

Yeah, no, I mean, I knew the. I knew the figures, so. But no, I mean, it has grown like rapidly, hasn't it, the last few years? Definitely growing faster than expected. Not as growing as fast as I was thinking it would. I mean, you know, we've obviously been going through our difficulties of getting planning permission for. For clubs and loads of investors and club owners are having that. But yeah, it's something that I can see these next few years, it continuing to rise.

Yeah. And 400,000 padel players, I think, in the UK, which again, you obviously knew the stat.

I didn't know that one actually, but.

I thought that was pretty high. I thought that was. That was a good stat. So, no, I think. Well, all in all, paddle in the uk, Summer coming. It's a big, big year, I think.

For the game paddle in the world. Right. Like, I think, you know, the U.S. it's, it's starting to take hold. Obviously, U.S. is compared to the UK in terms of geography, is massive. We're seeing it around the world now. So everywhere you travel, it's worth you taking your paddle racket.

Absolutely. Now let's get into Tenerife then. So you did two paddle school holidays over in Tenerife. Give me an update. How did it go over there?

Yeah, it was great. We did two holidays. The first one was. Well, both of them were. They're kind of three and a half days essentially of training. We finished with a little mini tournament and we. We basically take players through a guided structure of a point and work on the technique and tactics. And the first one there was a. It was quite a mixed group. It was like some different levels. But I know that people worry about that when they come to sessions. But I think if you manage it well as a coach, like, you can still get really good training. And you. You organize the groups and you make sure the drills are appropriate for. For those levels and you organize it well and works really well. And then, then we had the empower ladies group for the second group out there. And it was great. I mean, the weather was fantastic. Everything set up there. Isn't it like, you got the hotel right next to the courts, good food. The buffet, which you. You made such a big deal out of it last time you went. I had to. Had to check it out. And you weren't wrong. I mean, it was a delightful buffet.

I thought you're gonna say I underplayed it, but. No, it was. I was missing that more than.

More than the paddle.

Anything else when I was. When I saw you out there, I thought, buffet, buffet time.

Yeah. But it was. It was good. And it's interesting, you see so many similarities from players around the world. I mean, we have, you know, a player from Australia come. We had like, a few from Switzerland, we had a few from South Africa. And it was, you know, a lot of people are coming from. From different club setups, different coaches, different, you know, organizations. But it's amazing how similar, some of the. I don't want to say the errors, but the. How similar some of the areas that we should focus on in order to improve and particularly this idea of misinformation. We hear that a lot, like, from players. Wherever we're doing the clinics is, I've been told to do this or I should do this, or, you know, and we're seeing it now in content. Right. Like, I remember when, you know, I first was making the video content, the tutorial content, there were so few of us doing it that the only ones doing it were the ones that were quite experienced and quite professional in terms of understanding of paddle. Nowadays, anyone with a racket is giving out advice on what they should be Doing a little bit like a club, right? Like, you see that a lot. So Bob down the club is, is giving advice to, to his friend on, oh, you should do this and you should do that. And then they come to Paddle School Holiday and you're like, where on earth did you hear that? And they say, oh, my friend down the club told me that.

Yeah, it's such a common, common question and I suppose common predicament a lot of players have, don't they, when they're on court with another player and they notice that the player is trying to coach them on the court. And what are your general thoughts around that? Or how do you. As a, as a player, you're either receiving that coaching or as a player and you're thinking about giving coaching to another player perhaps on your team or even on the court. What, what's your general feeling around that?

I think it's really difficult because we did, we did those, those three days and at the end of the three days, the group said, wow, this is fantastic. We have great understanding the game. We know where we should be, court position, what we should be doing, when to move forward, et cetera, what happens when we play with someone who doesn't know. And, and so then you've got this situation where you want to try and help them and guide them and tell them what they should be doing, but at the same time you don't want to be critical and, and almost a bit of a bossy, you know, being a bit bossy on the court. And almost what happens is you can, you can very quickly find a situation where you butt heads with your partner and you don't want that either. You've almost got to, to find a way to. We were explaining this on the, on the trip is that find a way diplomatically to help them and to tell them. So, for example, instead of, you know, when you hit a lob and you go to net and your partner doesn't come, instead of shouting, go in like, or something like that. When you, when you go, you would then almost have this conversation around. After the point you say, oh, when I lob down the line, like int. My intention is that we take them there. And you know, it'd be great if we came up together and doing it diplomatically. And I think that that's one thing is if you're discussing tactics as a pair, I think it's quite separate as well. If it's, you know, oh, you should be doing this, you know, or, or this should be your position or actually on your Shot try and come round the ball more. Like A, that doesn't help in a game because, you know, the person then starts thinking technically instead of tactically and they start overthinking their shot and they end up making more mistakes. And. But B, also, it's like they don't understand the technical process of how to actually improve the player's technique. And it's something we said on the trip again, is like when we got a group session and we go and we give a demonstration for the bandeka, let's say. And we say, right, everyone, you turn your shoulders, you move back, get your arms up, contact forehead level, right? Like that's almost your general advice that you give to people. But then when you go round, you say to someone, oh, you know, when you're contacting a little bit behind, you need one extra step. But it doesn't mean that everyone needs one extra step. Someone else might need to take one less step, you know, because it's is then individual advice. And that's the bit that people don't understand. They think, oh, well, this works for me. So I'm going to tell my friend that you do this as well. And it's like a bad game of Chinese Whispers, really.

Yeah. And I think it's really, it's really quick for your partner to lose confidence in their game, like you said, overthinking, but also losing confidence in their, in their, their own game and actually just, just playing worse the more, the more things they have to think about, especially as if you as a partner is giving them even more information. I think you just have to be a little bit careful because that can, can make them lose confidence. They stop enjoying it. And then that's almost the, the last thing, almost the opposite of what you want out there.

It's really difficult, isn't it? Is it? You've just taken up this new sport and you want to get coaching, but either the coach is super busy or there isn't a coach or you can't, you can't somehow access this person. And so you really want any advice and you think, oh, this person's been playing for a while. You know, they must know what they're. They're talking about, right? And so it is difficult. And, and look, we're talking about players advising other players, but we see that with, with coaching. You know, we, we had, you know, one lady on the holiday who was saying, oh, our coach told me to, to be in this position for the ready position. And you could see that it had affected all of her game, like, it was the wrong advice and it affected the way she was contacting the ball for all of her shots. And I, you know, I said, why on earth are you in that position? Like in a ready position? So. Oh, well, I, my coach told me that that's what I should do and I should be. And, and so, you know, then you spend the time trying to break that habit because it had become a habit, intentional habit that she had done. And yeah, it's, it's really hard. I mean, that's, that's in a way actually speaking to her. She's a member on our platform. Speaking to her, she was almost like, I use the videos and the tutorials as a reference for my lessons. So when my lesson and the coach tells me something about the Bendeka, I then go on to our tutorials, go to our Bandeca courses and, and look up the tips that you can almost study that alongside those lessons just to make sure you get a good understanding of what you should be doing.

Yeah, exactly. I was just about to say that's, that's the essence of, of the platform, isn't it, that players that. Well, to, to stop the spread of misinformation on a paddle court, but also for players to feel more confident understanding what they're doing on the call. And not only the courses, but players can upload videos to the community. They can actually get that personal feedback that you were talking about on the, on those holidays as well. So we are doing a free trial on the platform. So if you go to the paddleschool.com you can actually try out absolutely free and just see if you like it. We're sure you're going to love it, but yeah, you can check it out on, on the website. So, Saniyah, overall then, if you had to take one summary from Tenerife, what would that be?

One summary from Tenerife, One sentence in a summary. Well, I think it's interesting what you were just saying there in terms of feed, you know, feedback and what we do, we do this with a video analysis. And it's almost like if you go on our membership and you look at the video feedback we give, we give like one or two pointers. So someone sends in a video and actually I literally did one, you know, an hour ago on someone sending in their, their Bandeka and, and, and you give one or two, like pointers that will help improve that technique. You're not telling them the 15 things that they could have changed that could be better because then you just confuse the player and so I think my, my one takeaway is like, just be really simple and clear with what you want to work on and just break it up bit by bit. And it's what we say to people with our videos, right? We're like, look, watch a video, go away and practice those little tips, then come back for the next video. There's no point binge watching 45 videos and then trying to implement all of those things. And it's the same on coaching. It's take one or two details that you know that can improve your game and focus on that. And when you build up confidence with that and you get better at that, then you focus on the next thing and, and the next. And it's almost like, like chunking it, essentially.

And probably the most important question, top of my mind was, did you get a good coffee out there?

Yeah, the coffee was, I mean, the coffee was okay. It was like, you know, when you go to, like, Spain or France or something like that, and you, you know, it's a, a cafe con leche or whatever, and you, you, you pretty much like, cross your fingers and hope that there's, you know, something frothy ends up in, in front of you. It wasn't bad. I have to say. It wasn't bad. Like, if you're thinking about this holiday and you're thinking, shall I go? Don't let the coffee decide whether you're going to go or not. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't. Yeah, I, I have to say, when I came back and I had a coffee, I was like, oh, I'm home.

Yeah, we're talking about being diplomatic on call. That sounds like a very diplomatic answer.

That was a diplomatic answer. Yeah, but, but, but no, I mean, all of it was pretty. I mean, the food was great, obviously. Coffee, coffee, decent. Nice weather, lovely hotels. The hotels are brilliant.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And this weekend, Sandy, we've got the GV training camp in Reading.

Yes.

So you're, you'll be leading that, Leading that session.

I'll be leading that. You'll be on it.

I'll be on it.

You'll be, we'll be there.

I'll make that one then.

Yeah, yeah, we'll be driving together so you won't be late.

Yeah, no, I look forward, look forward to doing that training together and. Yeah, we'll catch up more on the next podcast. Always great to have you back here on the, on the podcast couch and look forward to the next episode.

Chat soon.