The SECRET Pros Know About Training

How can you train as a player without a coach? How can you still get the training in that you need to improve? The topic of today's episode, Sandy, is why you don't need emphasizing the word need here. A coach to train like a pro. And this is aimed at recreational players, isn't it? It's not aimed at professional players. This is why you don't need a coach to train like a pro if you're a recreational player.

Yeah. And I think players of any level, right, like the top pro players, don't necessarily need a coach to set them up with drills and to talk to them about their technique, and they are able to train on their own. And it's important that the players of all levels are able to do this. And this is something that almost made me think of the tennis coaching days. And I remember almost coaching you through tennis and thinking, really, if I do my job as a coach, I want to teach you and to train you to be able to manage without me. That's really like the goal of the coach, like, you know, a bit like a bit like a good parenting, I suppose, is almost like you want to bring the child up or the player up to not need that supervision, to be able to think on their own, to be able to analyze the game and they match on their own. That's almost the way I think of good coaching.

Oh, yeah, I agree. And I think when it comes to the topic of today, it's almost like, how can you train as a player without a coach? So what can you do if you don't have a coach on court? Maybe you don't have access to a coach at your club. How can you still get the training in that you need to improve? Because I think there's also a bit of a misconception among players, which is if I want to train, I got to have a coach. And I think those two are married together now. Of course, there's. There's an element of, yes, you need a coach to do certain, maybe technical trainings that might help. There's certainly, it's important to have a coach on the training call with you, but that's not the only option, is there, if you want to train?

But I think as well, like, if you genuinely want to get better at the sport, I think the amount of dedicated practice that you do should be more than the amount you are playing matches. Right. And as a ratio, you might say, right, training or practice 60% of the time matches 40% of the time, whereas most people are playing social games or matches 90, 95% of the time. And I think players think, oh well, you know, I can't access a good coach or the coach at my club is busy all the time or when I do have a lesson, you know, I'm ending up part of a group and I stand there in a line and I hit one ball once in a while and I don't get to really train properly. And okay, some of those are reflected in the quality of the coach. But also some of that is you being a self learner, like a self improver. Like there's so much you can do without a coach to improve your game that it's like you just almost need to be pointed in the right direction or you need to understand that direction in order to improve.

Yeah. And let's talk about a few different ways that a player listening to this could train without a coach. And I think the first one for me, and this is obviously depending on how accessible this is, but I know it's becoming more accessible as more clubs emerge, is a ball machine. And a lot of clubs will have a ball machine. We've worked with slinger paddle, they've got their own ball machine. We've also created a slinger paddle course, which is a training course designed specifically for, for the slinger machine. And it's essentially drills covering every aspect of the game, beginner, intermediate, advanced levels. And so it really teaches you how to use this slinger paddle machine to the max. But Sandy, that's a way that players can train by themselves, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I love the ball machine because it's something that a player can work on a shot and they get a consistent feed to that shot. Like let's say the bandeka for example. I mean, you can't practice a bandeka in a match because you'll get one lob where you want it to practice it and then you might not get it again for three or four games and then three or four games later you get two or three of them in one point and then you might not get anything again for another two games. So it's very difficult to get consistency of technical action if you are not getting consistency of the oncoming ball. You know, it's kind of send and receive skills that essentially the, the players are working on. And if you are being sent the ball by the ball machine consistently, then you can practice the technique in your own time and hit as many as you want. So I'm a big fan of that ball machine.

I also think that a lot of Players don't understand how difficult it is to feed in Padel. As a coach, I think, particularly coming from tennis, I can say, having done both, that feeding in tennis is a lot easier than feeding in Padel. If you wanted to feed a player in Padel, even just the side glass, return to feed that consistently time and time again. That's such a challenge. And don't get me started on the double glass. I mean, that's a real challenge for coaches to feed that shot over and over again in Padel, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, you and I are pretty accurate feeders. I mean, I've put us in the top percentile of coaches that can feed accurately given I see a lot of coaches that really struggle with that. And even we cannot feed as accurately and consistently as the ball machine. You set the ball machine up and it will fire in that exact same spot. So, yeah, fantastic tool to work on your game. But almost in order to do that, you have to be very clear on what you're working on in terms of the technical focus. So, yes, you can go on and you can do your bandeka, but it's almost like, right, I need to be really clear on what that focus is when I go on to the court and I use the ball machine so that I can practice that technique while I'm there.

Now, if you don't have access to a ball machine and some players might be listening to this saying, well, I don't have access to a slinger, what can I do instead? And you can do training instead without a coach. And that is, for example, Sani, we talked about this before, is if you're going on with four players, perhaps you've got three other players that you want to play a match with, they're very keen to play matches. You can still get training and drilling in, can't you? You don't have to just only play matches. That's something that we always talk about, is definitely a pitfall for players. Don't just play matches. You can get training in and this is how you do it.

Well, I think you can either do it where you kind of strong arm a partner or ask someone to train with you, in which case you feed them and they feed you and you can do some drills together, like just the two of you, or you can dedicate a small percentage of your court time as a four to doing some drills. If you've got a 90 minute court, can you spare 10 minutes to do some drills at the beginning to build consistency before you start? Probably is the answer. Right. And so it's just being dedicated enough to do that and that the point of drills is it builds up muscle memory, it builds up consistency and importantly confidence in those shots. So when you come into a game, you know you can rely on them. Like I think that's a really important understanding as to why you would do this practice.

Yeah. And a theme that we have a lot of the time is around long term improvement and something that players experience is plateauing and improvement. Plateauing. And what you just talked about there is the incremental gains that you get from adding in just a short amount of drilling. Now obviously the idea would be like you say finding a partner and maybe you do a full session of just drilling. That would be great. Maybe if you found another three players that be interested in doing that again, that's the ideal. But there are workarounds. If you do have a group that prefer to compete. If you can just get a 5, 10 minutes drilling into that 90 minute session you have over the long term, you will see massive improvements. And it's that incremental improvement that will stop you hitting that plateau.

Definitely. And I mean it's so, it's so important if you want to, if you want to actually improve and to raise your level. And again though, I'm going back to this thing of you need to know what to work on. Like if we were to go down with four players and say, right, right, let's do this drill and you might know the drill and it might have come from our drill book, for example, or a drill that someone likes to use. You've also got to know what to work on yourself. And I think that that's a really important skill is almost this self analysis, self identifying what shots and what techniques to focus on. And if you're not sure, I mean we have roadmaps for all the different levels, but also a section where you can post videos in our platform thepowerschool.com for our members. You send in your video, myself, Tom, the coaching team get back to you with advice or tips on what to focus on. Normally one or two tips is more than enough to go to the court and then to start working on that.

Yeah. And what it means is over the long term you will improve. And like you say as well, just we'll put in the show notes that the drill book as well, another great resource. I'll also drop information on the slinger below as well. But I think for all those listening out there, if you don't have access to a coach There are ways to train and we talked about these today. It's a short bite size episode, but if you are in that situation, you're looking to get better. Do check out these ways of training because it will help you improve long term.

Yeah. And just to jump in, like, you know, a final plug for the platform is so many players can actually improve. Like training off court. Like, part of that is also like, we have a strong for paddle course, we have a TRX for padel course, we have our physio course. All of that is within the membership to avoid injury, to get stronger off the court. You don't even need to book a court for that. Like you literally can do all of that training off the court and it will make you a better player.