In short: most padel beginners lose points to the same five habits. A wrong grip, standing too close to the glass, hitting too hard, ignoring the walls, and staying silent with your partner. Each one takes only a few sessions to correct, and the change shows up in the score almost immediately.
You have been playing for a month, the shot looks clean in warm-up, and then in a real match the ball sails into the fence. It is almost never a lack of talent. These are five small habits that show up in nearly everyone who starts out.
Grip, positioning and power
The grip. A lot of new players hold the racket like a hammer, fist clenched, palm lined up with the face. The wrist locks and the ball flies high. The grip you want is the continental, where the base of your thumb sits on the top edge of the handle. It gives you the same angle on both sides, so you are not swapping grips mid-rally. If you are still building a feel for the court, run through the basics in our padel for beginners guide first.
Glued to the glass. The back wall is an ally, not a threat. A beginner sees a ball heading for the glass, chases it, and then has no room to swing. Stand about a metre and a half off the glass and let the ball rebound back to you.
Too much power. The urge to smash everything is huge, but in padel the force almost always works against you: a ball hit too hard bounces off the walls and lands straight back at your opponent in the middle. Good play is built on accurate shots at a third of full power. Instead of slamming every high ball, learn the controlled overhead in our bandeja in padel guide.
The walls are part of the game
In tennis a ball that touches the fence is dead. In padel it is just getting started. Beginners give up on any ball drifting toward the wall instead of waiting for it to come back. The back and side walls are a legal part of the game, and they hand you time that tennis never does.
Talk to your partner
Padel is almost always a doubles game, and two players who say nothing bleed points down the middle. That gap between partners is where most balls drop, because each assumes the other will take it. The fix is loud.
- Call "mine" out loud before you hit any ball down the middle.
- Signal to your partner when you move to the net or drop back.
- Agree in advance who covers the high balls through the centre.
- After every lost point, say in one sentence who takes it next time.
- Keep a steady distance between you and move as one unit.
It also pays to arrive ready. A short warm-up loosens your wrist and shoulder, the areas that suffer most from a bad grip and heavy hitting. Padel started in Mexico in 1969 and is now one of Europe's fastest-growing sports, so you can read more on its history and rules in the Padel entry on Wikipedia.
Pick one of the five and focus on it in your next session. Fix one habit a week and you will move up a level within a month.