Key Takeaways
- Players who rely exclusively on competitive matches risk stalling their progress, Sandy Farquharson warned: “are basically only using the skills that you already trust.”
- Farquharson said players can break through a plateau by identifying precise weaknesses and “building up repetitions with the correct technique.”
- His advice was to give games a tactical purpose by introducing specific constraints: “which is not just winning.”
Why club players reach a development plateau
A familiar pattern affects many amateur padel players: fast gains at the beginning are followed by a spell of little or no progress. Learning court positioning and how the ball rebounds from the glass often produces those early improvements, but development can soon stop unless players commit to purposeful technical practice.
Sandy Farquharson, co-founder of The Padel School, highlighted the common problem created when amateurs depend solely on competitive matches.
“If you only play matches, and they’re always competitive, whether we like to admit it or not, you are basically only using the skills that you already trust,” Farquharson said, explaining why players can struggle to make further progress.
Technical improvement also suffers when players do not set aside time to practise, he added: “The other important thing is that, if you are only playing matches, you never get the opportunity to practice your techniques.”
Using focused repetition to address weaknesses
Farquharson proposed a five-stage process for moving beyond the plateau, beginning with an honest assessment of what is going wrong instead of a broad sense of frustration.
Players should begin by “Clearly identify what is holding you back. It’s really important that you hone in and you get clear on that technique,” Farquharson advised. He also stressed: “You can’t train all of your game at once. You need to pick a specific area, focus on that, and therefore work on that technique or tactic to improve your overall game.”
After choosing one weakness to address, players should practise the movement outside an open game. Farquharson explained that changing ingrained habits calls for controlled drills that allow new muscle patterns to develop.
“Now, you need to identify what is actually going wrong with that skill,” he said, stressing the value of this approach. “Because what you’ve got to do now is break a bad habit and you’ve got to form a good habit. And forming a good habit is building up repetitions with the correct technique.”
Building difficulty gradually and using tactical cues
Training should return to match intensity in stages rather than immediately placing the player back in competition. Farquharson’s progression starts with shadow swings and footwork, advances to self-feeds and partner exercises, and finishes in match-based situations.
Once players resume competitive sets, he suggested adding artificial restrictions so that the newly developed techniques remain reliable under pressure.
“Get this into your game by adding a tactical reference,” Farquharson said. “And that will give you a focus for the session, which is not just winning, where you can actually practice what you’ve been working on so that you can actually improve your game and therefore get better under competition settings.”
Sustained improvement ultimately requires players to spend consistent time training outside their usual club matches.
“You need time to actually train and improve. Because the reason that you’ve plateaued will almost certainly be technical or tactical and it’s relatively easy fix if you actually practice this,” Farquharson said in conclusion.
