Fresh Eyes: All New Approach to Padel Conditioning
When you’re just new to training in a new sport, you obviously want to give it your 101% in practices right? In padel it’s easy to see from novice eyes that this game is an endurance sport. So you’re more likely to run slow and long with long hours. But that’s where we need to shift our focus from. Read on to learn how energy systems connect, function and play together in padel.
Despite this, we still want athletes who can persevere through tense rallies, close sets, and marathon contests. There’s no denying it. So, how do we go about doing this?
Equating length of practice to efficacy is a grave mistake. Many padel coaches and trainers traditionally think that the longer you train yields better results.
To put it bluntly, if we train slowly and for lengthy periods, we will become sluggish. When it comes to adaptability, muscle tissue is very malleable. Slow training, such as jogging long distances or doing side-to-side drills carelessly, will result in players with clumsy, inefficient movement styles.
The muscles will change from rapid to slow fibers. It’s just going to become worse for athletes who are already known as “slow twitchers.”
During each point, how many sprints are the players taking? In how many games, sets, or matches do they switch directions?
A match’s overall distance isn’t as critical to me as the exact nuances of each stroke cycle’s distance (split, move, hit, recover). Furthermore, heart rate data might be deceptive since it fails to reflect the complex movement qualities necessary in today’s sport.
Check out this dynamic pair drills for padel players:
Let’s take a look at a typical padel school environment
On the court, players spend a lot of time doing high-intensity drills and doing additional ‘conditioning’ training off the court.
A wide range of activities, including biking, running, shuttle runs, rowing, and so on, are often recommended, based on the idea that the interval nature of these tasks would increase biomarkers that indicate a well-developed aerobic system.
While interval training outside the padel court isn’t necessarily wrong, there is a concern. High-intensity off-court training should be prescribed to players who are already exerting their bodies on the court.
The blood biomarkers of great pro-basketball players are highly developed in the absence of off-court training. Because basketball players do not engage in aerobic activity, their bodies have created an extraordinarily efficient aerobic system without the need for any aerobic exercise.
The big question here is:
Is off-court conditioning even necessary?
Elite padel players must move quickly and do the same actions repeatedly, which is a crucial attribute. In most cases, coaches are more concerned with the process’s repetitious nature than its explosive nature.