I look like sh*t when I play

Now imagine the same idea but on top of looking like a total newbie you see your baldness progressing and your skull is starting to look more and more like Zidane’s.

This is a psychology thing. If a coach said any of this to you, you’d find another coach because it’s toxic as fuck right? Or like if you replace “I” with “my friend” in this, you get the point The more you watch with an intentionally positive demeanor, the easier it is to get past the cringe. Soon, self tapes become an insanely useful tool to improve. This is totally normal, just gotta fight the pull to be mean to yourself while you do it.

Yes this is normal. Luckily I only ever see short clips of myself playing (my club installed the pushit cameras a few months ago). But my god. I think I’m holding my racket up like some kind of hyper-alert padel ninja. In reality I may as well be dragging it on the floor along with my knuckles

Yeah I had the same awakening, but I just decided to cut all the crappy footage and made a highlight reel instead, made me feel good about myself :D

I had the same with muscle dysmorphia. Accept it and move on. It's probably nothing mate.

Yep, I have the same thing. Hit a big smash or nice vibora and think wow I bet that looked good, then watch it back and it looks awful 😂 the upside though is I'm aware what I'm doing wrong and can work to fix technique. But remember, the person/team who hits the best looking shots doesn't win, the person/team who make the best decisions do.

It’s because your comparing yourself to pro padel. Everyone looks shit compared to them, that’s why we aren’t pros lol first time I watched a video of me playing I couldn’t believe how slow it looked but it never felt slow in the game

Yeah it’s rough. I look like a cave man with a 10kg club walking round the court. I record nearly every game now. Focusing on Small improvements each time and results. If I’m winning games it might not look the best but it’s working

Step 1 - stop watching the men play pro padel, and start watching the women's game for a more realistic comparison of your physical ability (and even then you're going to look like shit because those women are fucking animals). Step 2 - use it to your advantage, matching feel and real is a big thing in all sports. Now you know how inactive your feet are, start working on it. You will make it through exactly 5 minutes at the right intensity before you're exhausted, which means you're actually doing something new

Got news for you my friend. If you think your mental image and your actual padel form differ by a lot, it’s the same or worse in ALL aspects of your life. Your tone and voice when talking to others, your singing, the way you look naked or when you have sex … you probably look a lot worse than your mental image. And that’s ok!

Have experienced exactly the same 😂 Pro tip- adjusting it to 1.25x speed makes it look a lot more palatable!

This is classic psychology:) No worries at all, and 2 things to keep in mind. 1. Time dilation. Time perception feels faster the more you age. So in the game you feel fast pace, fast shots, ball is flying fast, etc. But in video, you see reality. So you are naturally frustrated about yourself, b/c you expect yourself to be faster and you are not. Diff b/w this hits hard on emotions. 2. Same here, diff b/w \_imaginary\_ image of yourself and the \_actual\_ you. You never see yourself from the 3rd party, so naturally you perceive the image of yourself \_in your head\_ as let's say Person A. So when you think or remember you playing, you imagine that Person A making the shots, running, etc. Then, you film yourself, and you get \_actual\_ Person B (real you) as a matter of fact. Now, diff b/w Person A and Person B is about the level of self-esteem (inflated = overestimating yourself, low = underestimating yourself). If it's inflated, then youd be expecting Person B to be close or even better than Person A and they are not even close, which naturally leads to frustration. Which is your case :-D So, next thing is to accept yourself as you are and now start comparing recordings/videos of your play to each other and seeing the progress, and not to the so desired images in you head:)

Tickled me this thread 🤣 Coming from a long term golfing background in to Padel, one thing I've learned is recordings of yourself performing never ever look pretty! You can hit the purest drive you've ever hit, look back at the video and think how the f**k am I even managing to do that. To coin a golfing term "no pictures on the scorecard" or in this case, the score board.

Everyone I know has had the same experience. People I know were thinking of quitting because of it. But this pain is part of the progress. Start analyzing and understand what’s the main problem. Often it is balance, straightened legs, no upper body rotation etc. Padel shouldn’t be played like tabletennis. You should be sideways, one or the other side, most often.

EVERYBODY looks like shit. Juuuust Don't worry about it :-)

I feel you! Had that revelation last weekend when the other team recorded our match. What made it worse was that I was actually the best player on court but on the video it looked like I had just learned how to walk 😂

Yep same. Never gonna be a pro or anything close so will just keep enjoying playing regardless of what it might look like

Just remember you play for fun. When people- even strong intermediate players- see this, should really be a moment of reflection imo because so many take themselves way too seriously

Don’t compare your self to others. As long as the matches are good just keep on practicing and enjoy the game!