Well, what can we say about 2020? It was a real shit show for the whole world really, and my padel journey got heavily affected by the whole COVID crisis and lockdowns.

I started the year strongly, winning the first tournament I participated in. The rest of January was quite tough though, as right when I was hitting top form I got injured during a match and had to nurse my shoulder for the rest of the month, doing physio and recovery work.

I took the opportunity to do some reading and continue watching video tutorials of padel and tennis. I had bought some tennis courses and had then on my todo list for a while, so I worked through those during these lower intensity days. A lot of things transfer over to padel from tennis, but we’re now starting to see the first baby steps in English padel tuition as well, which is a good thing for the expansion of the sport.

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My third year of padel was a real mixed bag. I started out 2019 at peak enthusiasm for padel, and I wanted to train even more regularly and as similar to a pro as possible.

I approached Marcela Ferrari, then coach of number one player Fernando Belasteguin as well as Gemma Triay and Lucia Sainz, to see if she could mimic their training routine for an amateur player like me. It almost worked out until I got hit by a mysterious illness that really threw my plans off course big time.

All plans thrown off course

The situation was that after certain matches, I would get a high fever and be weak and bedridden for the next 2 days, then the fever would disappear and I’d be back in full fitness again.

As you can imagine, there were several problems with this situation:

1. I had a newborn back home to take care of, and I didn’t want my wife to end up taking care of both him and me.
2. I was worried about this fever, as I had never experienced anything similar, so I wanted to know what was causing it.
3. The fever seemed pretty random, so I could not plan anything, much less daily training sessions.

This was around February, so I had to abandon my plans to train at Marcela Ferrari’s academy, and notify my padel partners and other coaches of the situation, and that I might have to cancel things at last minute depending on how things went.

This obviously led to a decrease in my padel commitments, as I didn’t want to leave anyone high and dry due to a spontaneous episode of fever on my end.

I visited several doctors and they had me undergo a ton of tests, none of them which led to any conclusions. As a side note, I learned that with private insurance, doctors have an incentive to have you undergo as many tests as possible, while with the public system, it’s the other way round. The ideal is to be somewhere in the middle, but unfortunately, the onus on striking that balance rests on the patient, as doctors are incentivized to do otherwise. I have to say that I felt very frustrated with the situation, as it felt like nobody was ready to actually listen to me describe my symptoms and try to see what diagnosis could be had.

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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.