Timothy Gallway spoke about the inner game of tennis in his two books on tennis psychology several decades ago, although all the principles remain true to this day.

He observed that we think of ourselves as one person, but when playing tennis or padel (and certainly in other areas of life) there really are two selves in play; self 1 and self 2.

Self 1 constantly tells the other part what to do. It seems to know everything there is about tennis – how to bend the knees, watch the ball, follow through and so on. And then there is the other part, Self 2, who is a silent doer.

And yet, the Self 1 doesn’t trust Self 2 much and even takes things in its own hands and starts moving the body, tightening all sorts of muscles and makes the arm go where it thinks it should go. Since all the fluidity and timing is gone by now, the arm usually mishits the shot and Self 1 gets one more chance to degrade Self 2.

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In Barcelona, many of the tennis clubs available only allow members to use their courts. That means having to pay a monthly membership fee apart from a hefty sign-up fee and possibly a minimum time period for membership.

Here are some of the famous ones:

• RC Polo
• Barcino
• Real Club de Tenis (huge entrance fee some 60k)
• La Salut

This makes it inconvenient for those who are only visiting Barcelona or come and go frequently during the year and need something more flexible.

These are the clubs I know of that allow renting of courts by the hour to non-members:

• VallParc Club
• Vall d’Hebron
• Complex Esportiu Tennis Hospitalet (20 euro)
• Club tenis Andres Gimeno
• Club Esportiu Hispano Francès (weekends only for 9 euro)
• Montjuic Real Societat de Pompeya

Prices tend to start from 18 euro going up to 30 euro per hour depending on the club, time of day and whether you need court illumination.

None of them allow a non-club coach to give lessons on their courts. To get lessons you have to approach the club’s reception and ask for a lesson with one of the coaches that the club employs.

Hope this helps, if you live in Barcelona and want to play tennis, you can also get in touch with me as I can suggest a very good coach or even set up matches.

Tournaments

If you want to compete in amateur tournaments, these are the two I know about in Barcelona:

• Playtennis
• Tatenis

Since starting to train and play tennis, I’ve invested in several online training courses in a bid to improve as fast as possible. Here are the ones I recommend:

• Ian Westermann’s Essential Tennis
• Will Hamilton’s Fuzzy Yellow Balls
• Jeff Salzenstein’s Total Tennis Training
• Craig O’Shannessy’s Brain Game Tennis
• Jan Metelka’s PLB Method
• Tomaz Mencinger’s FeelTennis
• Daily Tennis Lesson – FREE!
• Jeff Greenwald’s Fearless Tennis
• Florian Meier’s OnlineTennisInstruction
• Clay Ballard’s TopSpeed Tennis,
• TennisResources.com
• Udemy Tennis 101

Specifically for Doubles:

• Bill and Matt Previdi’s The Previdi System

I will also note that these courses are super helpful, however there is no replacement for court time with a good coach. If you’re starting your journey, I would recommend training 2-3 times a week and playing once a week. Always try to maintain a 2-1 or even 3-1 ration between training and playing in order to improve rapidly.

When you’re playing a match you’re concentrated on winning and not thinking about your technique, so you won’t really be improving.

For example, since I started playing tennis after playing padel, I have a very good tennis slice compared to other tennis beginners or even intermediate players. I am also very comfortable approaching the net due to my padel habits, which is also something lacking in beginner-level tennis. I can win a lot of points against other tennis players of my level by utilising these two weapons, simply because they wouldn’t be used to these shots and movements, but I wouldn’t really be improving my tennis game.

Your hips are essential for proper padel form, so we need to make sure they’re both strong and have excellent mobility.

Here’s a video introducing the concept of hip rotation mobility and an assessment to see where you’re at. Whenever you attempt to improve something in your body, always start with a good assessment followed by thinking about your objectives, then implementing daily habits in order to reach your goals.

Here’s some padel and tennis specific hip work:

Here is another post about hip stretching, with very helpful photos of each exercise:

https://www.self.com/gallery/hip-stretches-your-body-really-needs-slideshow

 

Most padel players at any level enjoy watching World Padel Tour matches and dream of imitating the moves of their favorite padel players. However this might not be the most effective way of spending your time if you’re an amateur player and are trying to win more matches.

What does being an amateur player really mean? It just means what you play below pro level—you may do some aspects quite well, but you still muck things up that a professional never would. It might be that the way you move is not the most efficient, and you tire yourself out halfway through the match, or that you simply lack certain shots in your repertoire, or even having a less developed sense of anticipation.

There’s a huge upside to being an amateur, however. One thing that is crucial to know is that the pros aren’t simply better than amateurs, but that they win their matches in a completely different way.

When pros play, matches are decided mostly by a slight edge one player has over the other—in speed, awareness, or some other highly-trained quality. Their rallies go back and forth, all players knowing where they need to be, until one player puts hits a shot that forces a mistake on the other end. Pro players have all the fundamental elements mastered, and they win by being slightly better than their opponent at one or more of them.

When amateurs meet, they don’t edge each other out by being slightly more skillful. Instead, it’s a contest of who makes the fewest huge, gaping blunders. Amateurs constantly make egregious point- and game-losing mistakes, of the sort that pros no longer make. The outcome is decided by who makes the fewest—or least catastrophic—such mistakes.

And of course it works that way. Getting to the pros is a long, arduous process, one that filters out players with major flaws in their game. Coaches leap on those flaws as soon as they see them and drill them out of their athletes. Amateurs don’t go through this filtering process, so the flaws and bad habits remain, costing them bigtime every single time they play.

Everyone’s strategy, therefore, should be to identify and eliminate these big, costly rookie blunders, one by one. This is far more effective than getting quicker, hitting harder, or making that one brilliant shot now and then.

Just one of these blunders, made consistently, can undermine almost everything you’re doing right. Each is like a hole where your success leaks out. If the hole is big enough, or there are multiple holes, it’s hard to get anywhere beyond “struggling,” no matter how good you are at other parts of the game.

The good news: this also means that fixing even one such hole, or starting to, will make you immediately better, and not by just a little. What are your chronic amateur mistakes? Think about where you’ve been stagnant, and ask yourself what you do that the pros would never allow themselves to do.

What are the big holes in the tub? If you don’t know, any veteran can surely tell you.