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Your first 10 hours of padel

Padel looks like tennis, plays like squash, and clicks faster than either. The walls confuse everyone at first — then they become the best part. Here's what your first ten hours actually look like.

By The JustBeginning Editors · Published May 24, 2026

Padel is the one racket sport where being a complete beginner is genuinely fun. The enclosed court means balls stay in play longer, there are far fewer outright misses, and rallies happen — real ones — within your first thirty minutes. You don’t need a tennis background. You don’t need a particular level of fitness. You need a pair of court shoes and someone to show you the wall rules.

This is what your first ten hours actually look like.

Hours 1–2: Learn the court, not just the rules

Most beginners spend time on the wrong things at the start. The rules of padel are easy to explain but take longer to absorb in the abstract than in practice. Here’s the minimum you need to know before stepping on court:

  • Serves are underhand, below waist height, hit diagonally into the opposite service box. No overhead serves. This is one of the biggest surprises for people coming from tennis.
  • Scoring is identical to tennis — 15, 30, 40, game, sets, tiebreak. No new math required.
  • The walls are live. A ball that bounces once off the floor and then rebounds off the glass or metal mesh is still in play — you can hit it back. This is the single most confusing thing for new players and the single most important rule to internalize.
  • The ball can only bounce once on the floor before you must play it. If it hits glass after that bounce, the glass is now part of the shot, not out.

Hold your racket like you’re shaking someone’s hand — a continental grip. Don’t attempt to copy tennis topspin yet. Flat strokes, controlled swings, get the ball over the net. The goal in your first two hours is to keep rallies alive, not to win them.

The fastest way to learn is to show up to a beginner’s social or open play session at a club. Most padel facilities run these on weekday evenings. You’ll rotate with other players, pick up the etiquette, and absorb rules in context rather than from a video.

a man and woman shaking hands on a tennis court
Photo by Vincenzo Morelli on Unsplash

Hours 3–5: The walls start to make sense

By hour three, something shifts. The glass walls stop being an obstacle and start being a tool. This is when padel starts feeling like its own thing rather than a confusing version of tennis.

Reading the back glass. When your opponents smash a ball into your back glass, the ball comes back towards the net. Your job is to let it bounce, watch where it rebounds, and play the wall ball — often back over the net with a soft lob. This exchange, the glass-wall defense and recovery, is what makes padel so different from every other racket sport. There is no equivalent in tennis. Most beginners tense up and try to intercept before the glass. Wrong call. Let the glass do the work.

Position on court. The best real estate in padel is the net. Both you and your partner should be moving forward together — up when you’re on offense, back when you’re under pressure. A common beginner mistake is to stay at the baseline while your partner charges the net. Now you’re staggered, with a large gap down the middle. Move as a unit.

Don’t smash everything high. A high ball feels like a gift. You will smash it into the net or out of bounds seven times out of ten in your first five hours. The right shot on a high slow ball is often a controlled overhead into the back corner — aim for the glass, let the geometry do the damage.

Hours 6–10: Finding your game

Around hour six, the game starts to feel like something you actually play rather than survive. Rallies go longer. You start reading opponents rather than just reacting to the ball. The wall becomes an ally instead of an enemy.

This is when the bandeja starts to matter. The bandeja (Spanish for “tray”) is padel’s signature overhead shot — a sliced, controlled overhead played with a flat wrist that sends the ball into the opponent’s back corner, bouncing to the glass, and dying behind them. It looks effortless in pros and feels impossible in your first attempts. Watch one video, try it a few times, and let it come gradually. You’ll have a rough version by hour ten.

Lobs are underrated. The defensive lob — hit high and deep over the net players — is genuinely powerful in padel in a way it isn’t in tennis, because the opponents have to retreat and deal with a glass wall behind them. Beginners assume winning means hitting harder. The players improving fastest learn to lob well and force opponents into difficult back-glass positions.

Around hour eight, you’ll have your first satisfying match. Not a perfect one — a good one, where the tactics feel intentional, you make a few unexpected points, and you start to see the patterns. You’ll want to come back the next day.

The addictive thing about padel is how quickly strategy becomes visible. Even watching a pro match in your first week is educational — the volleys, the lob sequences, the back-glass smashes — the patterns are clear at any level.

Things you’ll fail at — and why that’s fine

Every padel beginner fails at the same handful of things. You will too:

  • Playing the wall ball too early. You’ll go for balls off the glass before they’ve finished rebounding, catching them in awkward positions. Let the ball come all the way back, set your feet, then play.
  • Forgetting to move forward together. One player charges the net, one stays back. The middle opens up. The other team exploits it. You’ll both feel it immediately. Fix it by calling “up” or “back” out loud until it becomes instinct.
  • Over-hitting from the back. Baseline power in padel mostly goes out or into the net. Beginner padel is won in the middle of the court and at the net, not from the baseline.
  • Ignoring the side walls. The side walls are also live — a ball rebounding off a side glass is playable. Beginners often leave these balls, then feel embarrassed. Don’t. They’re part of the sport.

None of this is a character flaw. These are the exact mistakes everyone makes. The other players have made them all.

What to do at hour eleven

A few things that compound your improvement dramatically once you have the basics:

  • Book a technique session around hour 15–20. Not a beginner intro — a technique session. You now have enough experience to know what to ask. A qualified coach can spot the two or three mechanics that are holding you back and give you specific things to work on.
  • Find a regular group of four. Padel is always doubles, so you need three other people at roughly your level who’ll play weekly. The game is fundamentally social — most of the fun is in the group dynamics, not just the sport.
  • Watch pro matches on YouTube. Premier Padel and World Padel Tour both post full matches for free. The first time you watch professionals play the back-glass defense and glass-to-lob sequences, the strategy of the game clicks into place. Ten minutes of pro padel after a few hours of playing is worth more than any textbook.

You’re not a beginner at hour ten. You’re someone who understands the game — with a lot of interesting things left to learn.

Ready to buy your first racket and balls? See our padel gear guide for the specific picks worth buying on day one and the half-dozen things you can skip entirely.