Proper breathing is often a neglected element at amateur level sport, and sometimes even professionals breathe incorrectly, although nowadays with the influence of good coaches and technology this is very rare.

I definitely struggled with improper breathing myself. My biggest issue was holding my breath during padel while playing shots or while lifting weights at the gym. Improving this facet of my game has made a real difference in my performance both on and off-court.

Here are some possible reasons why one might hold their breath when hitting shots:

• experiencing some level of anxiety when the ball is approaching, especially if it’s fast (anxiety affects breathing),
• tensing up in expectation of a “collision” with the ball – even though the ball weighs just 59 grams, and
• wanting to hit the ball very hard or wanting to be “very strong” while hitting the ball – therefore tensing up and holding your breath.

Let’s go through a few common padel breathing mistakes, then some tips, and further tricks you can use to fix your breathing technique.

Common Breathing Mistakes in Padel

Holding your breath right before you hit the ball

Most people hold their breath right before they take a swing. Whenever you hold your breath your body tenses up so as result your swing will not be as smooth as it can be.

Breathing shallowly after a point

After a point is played the emotional response either negative or positive tends to change our breathing patterns.

Holding your breath while you size up your opponent or match

This is an unconscious behavior, but becoming conscious of it can change it. Holding your breath causes you to run out of oxygen quicker resulting in shortness of breath.

So now that we’ve covered the bad habits to break; let’s learn some new ones.

How to Breathe Properly During a Padel Match

Inhale right before you hit the ball

Inhale right before you swing, and exhale as you’re hitting the ball. Your swing will be smoother if you can remember to breathe as opposed to holding your breath.

Keep a regular breathing pattern throughout the game

In padel as with many sports players tend to have moments of accelerated breathing. This leads to shallow breathing and results in a feeling of shortness of breath which can weaken stamina. Maintaining a steady pace of breathing throughout the match will keep your energy levels higher throughout the game and help lower fatigue.

Take time to breathe/relax after each point

After each point you need a moment to recover. Take a few deep inhales and exhales to get your heart rate back down. This will also refuel your lungs and muscles with more oxygen which translates to more energy for the rest of your game.

Even when you’re not in the game you should spend a little time analyzing the way you breathe so you can better apply it in practice. Strengthening your respiratory muscles, for example, can greatly improve your endurance.

Breathing tips off the court

Learn to breathe from your diaphragm

Diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing is how we should be breathing all the time. However, as we age we develop bad posture and bad habits. We tend to breathe from our chest know as shallow breathing. Pay attention to your posture. Try not to hunch over; instead keep a long spine, inhale from the diaphragm and exhale.

Train your respiratory muscles

Use a breathing resistance exerciser like PowerBreathe to strengthen your respiratory muscles. This will allow you to breathe easier on the court and off the court. It will also improve your endurance.

Meditate

Practicing conscious breathing will help clear your mind. It relieves anxiety and helps you think more clearly which can help your padel game as well as your daily routine.

A deload is a planned step back from the volume (sets x reps) or intensity (load on the bar) in your current program. The idea is to give your tissues and nervous system a chance to recover after a period of intense training.

For advanced lifters (or individual training styles like powerlifting) this is important because your tissues heal at different rates. Muscle tends to recover quickly from training sessions.

But other tissues like ligaments and tendons (which receive less blood supply and lack specialized cells that help remodel damaged tissue), recover much slower.

This is where most people get in trouble because ligaments and tendons won’t get sore like your muscles, but they receive just as much abuse from heavy training.

That’s why programs designed for advanced lifters plan in “deload cycles” to help reduce the stress on connective tissue and give it a chance to catch-up to muscle adaptations.

However, most of us are not advanced trainees, powerlifters, or following high-frequency (training 5-6x a week) programs that use heavy loads.

If you’re working out 3-4 times a week, the other 3-4 days should provide adequate recovery time for both your muscles and connective tissues.  

Between vacations, travel for work, sickness, and family commitments, we’re often forced to take a few days off here and there over the year.

Take advantage of these opportunities. Train hard up to your event and then let the time off serve as your deload.

So bottom line: If you’re crushing it with high training frequency, then schedule in deloads — your all-important connective tissues will thank you.

But if you’re training less (3x/week or less), then you likely don’t need to worry too much.

Today I want to address confrontation in sports like tennis and padel, where it is quite common to have opponents try out some gamesmanship techniques to try to put you off your game.

I’ll start by recounting a situation that happened to me recently while playing in a padel tournament in Barcelona.

I’m always a bit on edge about playing in tournaments due to there being no second chances, one loss and you’re out.

Here in Spain typically players don’t warm up, take a break between change of sides etc. It seems that everyone is very anxious to keep the play flowing, unlike their tennis hero Nadal ironically.

So me and my partner like to do things properly, and take a break to towel down, drink and have a few quick words on change of sides, nothing out of the norms allowed by the rules on timings. At the end of a hard-fought first set in our last match, one of our opponents started to accuse us vehemently of time-wasting as we were having our break.

It really took me by surprise as I’m the type of person who likes to abide by the rules very strictly, so being accused of cheating took me by surprise and made me indignant. I made the mistake of engaging with the opponent and giving explanations that had every right to take breaks as the rules stipulate such allowances, and after a 5 minute heated discussion we continued the match. The guy was constantly nervous and commenting during the rest of the match and refused to shake hands at the end, which is totally unsportinglike.

Apart from not enjoying the tension in the atmosphere of this match, I was really bothered about how I lost my nerve and got the jitters after this exchange and played very badly in the second set, almost costing us the set. I think they would have been able to win the tiebreaker had we not narrowly managed to close off the second set.

I then spent some time replaying the situation back home (I actually had recorded the match too so I could re-watch the conflict). I thought about how things had panned out and asked some experienced players for their thoughts on such situations.

Basically:

• What should be my response to such comments and accusations?
• How do I not lose my focus and enter into a state of jitters and feeling of elevated heart rate and breathlessness (stressed)?

What is happening in these situations is that our body’s “fight or flight” response is activated, and then it’s really hard to get back to a calm state. Based on that knowledge, it’s definitely better to avoid or mitigate the confrontation in the first place if possible.

Tournaments have officials around even though there might not be an umpire for every match, so it is not your responsiblity to listen to your opponent’s complaints; they have the option to seek out an official if they feel so strongly about things.

It’s important to make sure that partners support each other if you’re playing tennis doubles or padel. You should not leave your partner exposed alone to the other players’ accusations. That doesn’t mean picking a fight to protect him, but rather to help him maintain his calm and composure and not be influenced by the other team.

On the bright side, the fact that your opponent has to resort to gamesmanship to try and throw you off means he doesn’t think his tennis is good enough to win. That is a sure sign that you’re doing well and you should continue playing and doing whatever has gotten you thus far. That means that you should absolutely not engage into an on-court duel with the offending opponent as this will mess up your game and potentially be exactly what the opponent was looking for.

Think of non-sensical comments, aggression and loud cheering from your opponent as if they were a car alarm that goes off relentlessly. It’s annoying but ultimately harmless, so we ignore it. You should do the same with your opponent.

On the other hand, when there is a real issue that needs sorting out, for example if the opponent is continuously breaking the rules such as by foot faulting, you can simply approach them with a smile and point it out without any emotion. Ask them nicely and see what happens. If they continue faulting you have two decisions. Either stop the match and approach the officials for a resolution, or else ignore it altogether and focus on your return in this case. The worst thing is to continue simmering about the offending foot faults and observing their feet during every serve. This will throw your return off and gift them victory.

Another common problem is players not wanting to change sides. I don’t understand the logic behind it apart from just pure laziness. In these occasions, you can simply point out that you’d prefer playing by the rules if they don’t mind. They might shrug and mutter some complaints but ultimately the rules are clear and on your side, so they have no option but to comply.

Do you have any other tips?