Common Padel Mistakes Beginners Make (And How to Fix Them)

Padel is famously easy to start and quietly hard to master. Most people can rally in their first session — then spend months stuck at the same level, losing to opponents who hit softer, move less, and somehow always have more time. The gap is rarely fitness or talent. It is a handful of habits that feel natural but bleed points. Here are the most common padel mistakes beginners make, and the specific fix for each one.

Why Beginners Plateau

Padel borrows its racket from tennis and its walls from squash, but it rewards neither big swings nor raw power. It rewards patience, position, and using the glass. Beginners plateau when they keep playing the game they think they are playing — fast, aggressive, winner-hunting — instead of the game actually in front of them, which is a chess match of angles where the point usually ends on an error, not a winner. Almost every mistake below traces back to that one misunderstanding.

Mistake 1 — Swinging Like It's Tennis

The clearest tell of a new player is a long, looping backswing. It works on a wide-open tennis court; on the standard 20-by-10-meter padel court with a wall right behind you, it leaves you late, off-balance, and out of position.

The fix: Shorten everything. Take the racket back no further than your shoulder, meet the ball out in front of your body, and finish compact. If you are coming from racket sports, the transition is mostly about unlearning — our tennis-to-padel guide breaks down exactly which habits to drop.

Mistake 2 — Standing Too Close to the Back Glass

New players instinctively back up against the rear wall to get room. It does the opposite. Pinned to the glass, a deep ball handcuffs you with no space to let it rebound.

The fix: Leave roughly a meter — three feet or so — between you and the back wall when you are defending. That gap lets the ball pass you, bounce off the glass, and come back into a comfortable hitting zone, which is the entire point of having walls.

Mistake 3 — Hitting Too Hard Instead of Placing

Power feels productive. It usually is not. A flat, hard ball in padel either flies long, sits up off the back wall for an easy putaway, or sails clean over the glass.

The fix: Trade pace for placement. Aim at feet, at gaps, and into the corners, and let the walls take time away from your opponents for you. Consistent, well-placed balls win far more padel points than winners do.

Mistake 4 — Ignoring the Lob

The lob is the single most underused shot in beginner padel. When your opponents are camped at the net — where good players live — trying to drive the ball past them is low-percentage. Lifting it over them is high-percentage.

The fix: Build a controlled defensive lob to reset the point and an offensive lob to push attackers off the net. Our how-to on the padel lob covers both.

Mistake 5 — Poor Net Positioning and Not Moving as a Pair

Padel is a doubles game played by two people who should move like they are tied together with a short rope. Beginners drift apart — one up, one back — leaving a canyon straight down the middle for opponents to exploit.

The fix: Move as a unit. When your partner slides left, you slide left; when one of you is pushed back, both retreat. Win the net together and defend together. Our beginner doubles strategy guide has the positioning patterns worth drilling first.

Mistake 6 — Using the Wrong Grip

Many beginners hold the racket like a tennis forehand — an eastern or semi-western grip — and never change it. That locks you out of the slices, volleys, and wall shots padel is built around.

The fix: Default to the continental, or hammer, grip: the same hold for forehand, backhand, volley, and overhead. It feels weak for about a week, then becomes automatic. Our padel grip guide shows exactly how to hold the racket — and if you are still borrowing a tennis frame, a proper padel racket is worth the upgrade, because the shape and holes change how every shot behaves.

Mistake 7 — Not Using the Walls

The walls are what make padel padel, yet beginners treat a ball heading for the glass as a lost point and simply stop playing it.

The fix: Let it bounce. A ball off the back or side glass is still very much alive — turn, track it, and take it after the rebound when it slows down and sits up. Reading the bounce takes reps; our guide to the glass walls walks through defending off both the back wall and the side glass.

Mistake 8 — Rushing the Serve

The padel serve is underhand and struck below the waist, so beginners treat it as a throwaway just to start the point — and hand back a free advantage.

The fix: Slow down and serve with intent. Hit consistently to a target, usually low and toward the side wall so the ball kicks awkwardly off the glass, then follow your serve in toward the net to seize control. The padel serve guide covers the rules and the placements that actually win points.

Fix-It Drills & Next Steps

You will not fix eight habits in one session — you fix one at a time. Pick the mistake costing you the most points this week and drill only that: short backswings fed against a wall, controlled lobs to a cone, grip changes on slow feeds. Structured reps beat random hitting every time, and our solo and partner drill routines give you something to run for each one. Tighten up the fundamentals here and you will stop donating points — then, when you are ready to play, you can find courts and check availability near you on Padel Browser.