Why Your First 10 Minutes Decide Your Match

Sandy, most players lose their matches within the first 10 minutes of their game. We're going to talk about today how players can maximize those 10 minutes so they can go onto the match court and win more.

Yeah, whether we are working with like national players, and I feel like that when I'm on the bench with the GB team, or whether it's an Americano, like I can tell in the first 10 minutes when they've started that match, like how that match is going to unfold. And I think that that start of the game is Like, it's so important, isn't it?

Yeah, well, I think of recreational players and so many players, and I'm sure people listening to this as well, is rushing from work, trying to get to the court, maybe a bit late, getting onto the court feeling like their mind is still somewhere else, and before they know it, they're down in a match. And that 10 minutes is so important. How can players maximize those minutes.

Well, I think it's also not just like they go down in a match. It's like the biggest question we get is, why am I so inconsistent? I played well yesterday, why do I not play well the next day? Or I haven't performed to the level I can perform. And so much of it is around consistency of routine. And we're talking about the 10 minutes of when you start the match. But I actually think we should rewind slightly and talk about the 10 minutes before you step on court. Like, that for me is the most important, is are you one day rushing from work and you run in and you drop your bag and you're on court and you're playing, and then the next day maybe you've got 15 minutes and you grab a coffee and you speak to your partner and you have a bit of time to process what's going to happen. Those will be two very different performances on the court.

Yeah, let's talk about how players can optimize those, those 10 minutes. What about— I'm trying to think of, of players that I've spoken to about this in the past. About preparation, getting to the club early, and players say to me, well, I don't have time, I don't have time to do a thorough warm-up, or I'm trying to fit padel into my life, how can I do this but also make sure that it coordinates with my schedule?

Yeah, and I don't think we need to go too heavily into the benefits of a warm-up, right? Like, less likely to get injured, better performance, but also better, like, focused, like you step on court and you feel you can concentrate on what you're, you're going to do. And it doesn't need to be long. I think people in their mind, they think, I need to be there half an hour before and I've got some massive warm-up routine. I think it can literally be 5 minutes before you go on. And actually, in our Faster Feet for Paddle footwork course, we have a 5-minute follow-along warm-up, and that's what you and I do. We probably extend it a bit, we do a bit of agility, a bit of other, other things around it, but 5 minutes there not only for your body to mobilization, to, to get activate some of your muscles, but, but also just to get yourself in a routine. I think that's the most important thing is a routine before you start. If you're a player that wants to improve your speed on the court and you want to get better in your matches, there's so much you can do off the court. And that's why we made our Faster Feet for Padel course. There's a 4-minute, 8-minute, 12-minute follow-along as well as a 5-minute follow-along warm-up. And these are crucial to making you a better player so that you can do this on court without thinking about it. If you sign up to our membership today, the link will be in the description, but you will get access to this course as well as our ball control course, as well as many other courses on there to help develop your game.

So let's take ourselves to match day. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a player, and what is the best way that a player can approach those games?

Well, I think if we take it literally step by step, we get into the club. Now, you and I, we would get in 30, 45 minutes before a match. We're not— if it's an important match, we're not saying you have to do that. Even if it was 15 minutes before, 10 minutes before, and I think that the first thing you do, you go in, you find a bit of space that you're not like immediately chatting to people. And it's difficult because you want to be sociable and there's probably your friends there and you're already having a bit of a back and forth about the upcoming game and you're giving yourselves a bit of banter, and I get that. But it's almost like you want to find a minute or two where you've just got a little bit of time to think about it. And it might be before you step in the club, it might be in, in the car journey on the way there, or you, you go and grab a coffee somewhere and you have a little bit of a thought and you think to yourself, right, what is my focus for today? Now, if it's a training, it might be something technical. If it's a match, it might be something tactical, or with a partner, like, what am I going to try and do in this match today? And get really clear. I think the big problem with a lot of players is lack of clarity. And that's actually why we made our journal. So, on Amazon, we have a journal, a training and match journal. And the idea is, is we prompt these questions. So, we have a pre and post-match, we have a pre and post-training, different questions because they are different focuses for a player. We have an online section as well. So, you can talk about or focus on the different bits from our online content. But the idea is to get clarity. Like, that's why we use it. So, you get clarity. This is what our focus is today. You go on and then you would start your warmup. So, get the clarity first, do your warmup. You can do a follow-along 5 minutes or you can do your own warmup, that doesn't matter. And then you really are preparing your body to step on the court.

The concept of that, the timing, I think is so important. And I just want to go back to that because this idea that your match is at 10, but really it starts for you in an ideal world at 9:30. You take that half an hour before and say, okay, I'm playing at 10, but actually I get to the club at 9:30 and that's when I start my routines. And I think for players, obviously there's work, there's schedules, and if it allows to be able to do that, but I think that concept is quite hard for players to grasp because so many players think, well, I'm playing at 10, that's when I got to be there. And if I get there a few minutes early, and that's good because at least I'm not gonna be late to start the game. But it's a big mindset shift, isn't it? To think, okay, I'm actually gonna dedicate a portion of time before I even hit the first ball to creating these routines and to doing warmups, knowing that once you step on the court, the quality is gonna be so much higher.

Yeah, and I think for our national level players and performance players, I'd say half an hour, like get there half an hour before minimum, but obviously, a lot of club players are rushing from work and, or picking their children up from school or whatever it might be. And so it's like, if you can get there 10 minutes, like, I would be happy with 10 minutes before. I so often go around the clubs, and you and I, we're at loads of different clubs over the course of the year, probably hundreds. We see thousands of players playing. How often have you seen a warm-up? Yeah, not often. Yeah, right. Sometimes I go on, they'll stretch a little bit, they'll have a you know, have a bit of vape and then they'll go on.

Well, I think we'll get to this, but I think again, I think there's a mindset of, well, we're going to warm up on court, that's the warm-up, and we're going to talk about that in a moment, aren't we, about the importance of that on-court racket warm-up, very different to a physical or a mental warm-up by using the journal. But yeah, we see it a lot and you and I are the same, when we see that we think, Oh, that's, that's a missed opportunity really. It's, it's time. If they'd got 15 minutes before, before the match, there's an opportunity, there's a window there that really can optimize their play. And, and I say this a lot to players as well, is that they book a court for, for 2 hours, let's say, and they play for, for 2 hours or even 90 minutes. And I say to him, well, actually, if you spend that, that half an hour— let's, let's take a 90-minute session and take, take half an hour off, and you're going to spend that first half an hour before you step on court getting routines, getting really clear on what goals you're gonna, you're gonna try to achieve in the session, you're going to do a good warm-up, you're going to have a really good intention on this, on this practice, those 60 minutes are going to be so much more valuable than rushing to the court and playing a full 90 without doing that preparation time.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I think even just looking at unforced errors, like if you look at the unforced errors in the first set, you will make more unforced errors in that first set if you don't have a proper warm-up routine before you step on court. And let's get to that stage now. So we've done maybe our journal or your own journal, or you've got your focus, you've done your warm-ups, you've done your 5 minutes, you now picked up your racket, you're going to step onto the court with your partner, and now you're going to start playing. Now, if it's in a training, I highly recommend doing a little consistency exercise, playing, you know, short with the ball, maybe inside the second post, just some control first before going back. If it's a match, sometimes it's difficult to do that. Your opponents want to start, but often you don't have to go straight to the back and hit at full speed straight away, or even worse, step on court and immediately start practicing your smash 3 meters over the fence. We've just come out of a pretty cold winter, I would say.

I love your optimism. We're out of it already.

We're out of it now. We're in spring. We're in summer. People are doing that in the middle, it's cold. Like, even in warm conditions, the injury risk is huge. Like, there are so many people getting injured in padel, and I think the warm-up is a big factor for that. So when you're on court now, it's like, right, go to the back of the court if you want, but start slow. Start by controlling the ball, like, get your footwork moving, like, focus and be alert on what you're doing rather than like playing all sorts of balls, chatting to your partner about what you're gonna have for lunch or where you went last night or whatever it is. Like, use that time to focus and think about your performance.

[Speaker] I also know from experience, and you'll have the same, that if you do spend a bit of time before you step on court and doing the racket warmup, the physical preparation, the mental preparation, and setting some goals, when you do step onto the court, to do that racket warm-up, you just feel so much clearer and, and you have a better intention of what you're trying to do on the court. Whereas, like you say, if you rush onto the court and you start that racket warm-up, even if you try to focus in on those few minutes, it's really difficult because your mind is somewhere else. You're, you're not grounded and you're not clear. But if you do spend that time beforehand, it's, it's just such a— I feel like it's one of those things that you have to experience it. It's difficult to explain it, but once you do it, you'll almost never want to not do it.

Yeah, and I think that's probably a challenge from this podcast is for players, and let us know how this goes and comment on whichever socials, but how does it feel when you actually do this properly? And I would go even one level further. I think if you don't do a warmup, let's say the player plays at a level 2.5, if you do a warmup, then maybe they play at 3 or a 3.5. Like there is that much difference really between that extra consistency and an even greater unlock is get your partner to do it with you. Like, if you do it with your partner, you do that clarity together, you do the warm-up together, you step on court, you've already formulated a game plan of what you're going to do when it comes to, you know, playing that match. Like, that's something we do with the GB guys. Like, our national team players, they warm up as a pair. Like, they warm up together, they spend the time together. Even, you know, often we encourage like pairs to have lunch together and really like spend that time to get on the same wavelength. So If you can do that warm-up together, you get onto court, you're feeling the ball around, you're trying to work out what your opponent's strengths and weaknesses are, you then come together as a pair and you discuss what your simple game plan is going to be for that match, you are so much more likely to succeed if you're both doing that before the game.

And if you use the journal, you can even jot some notes down. The approach of jotting down using a pen and paper, it's a different part of part of your brain. Like, from our experience, the reason we created the, the training match journal is because we've always used it in, even in our professional tennis careers in the past. We were, we always use journaling. It's so, so powerful. And before that match, if you and your partner can come together, like you say, jot a few notes down, it will just, it will be so clear when you go onto the court what your tactic is, and odds are that you will be able to execute it effectively as well.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges for pairs, and at every level, like you and I, we might play play a tournament, we go on and we want to play a certain tactic in the match, it's so easy to get distracted, to not do that tactic. And so often as a coach on the bench, I'm like, right guys, this is our tactic. You play 2 games, you change ends. Guys, don't forget the tactic. That's what our tactic is. Let's execute the tactic. And I think if you've got it in your bag, in a journal, you can just reference it and you can say, okay, and it helps keep you on track because during the course of the match, you will probably change tactics, particularly at a good level, you will change. But having a, a clear focus to start makes a massive difference. So those first 10 minutes before you go on court, but also the first 5 to 10 minutes when you start, are absolutely crucial for having a good performance.