Is a 1-week padel camp in Spain worth it vs many lessons at my current club?

I’ve done this a few times now. I go to Spain for a week and train padel pretty intensively, usually two sessions a day. I have usually just found a cheap charter trip for a week, and found a good local padel academy and contacted them and asked to organize a week of intensive training. Usually the rate is 35 euro per hour when I have ordered like 16+ hours of lessons in one week. The main thing I always tell people about trips like this is that the biggest reason to do it is simply that it’s fun. It’s honestly just a great week. You spend your days training, thinking about padel, recovering, and then doing it again the next day. For a little while you almost feel like a pro athlete. That alone makes it worth it. So I’d say go mainly because you think it’ll be a fun experience, not only because you expect huge improvement, and you got to enjoy training padel, and not just the fun stuff. I’ve done it four times so far. When it comes to improvement, it’s good to keep expectations realistic. One week of training won’t suddenly transform your level. You’ll definitely get better if you work hard and focus on the right things, but the change isn’t usually dramatic right away. And for some poeple I've talked to even dropped a little bit in their level after returning home just because thay made so mange technical changes. What I’ve noticed is that the biggest improvement actually happens in the months after the trip. You come home with new habits, better technique, and a clearer idea of what to work on. Then over the next two or three months those things slowly start showing up in your game. Looking back after a while, that’s when I usually realize I’ve improved quite a lot. But yeah, the main reason to do it is still the fun of it. Most of us here are never going to be professionals anyway, but it’s pretty enjoyable to pretend for a week.

By your maths the camp would need to be x3 times better coaching which I just can’t see this being the case. Equally building a regular coaching habit and letting things settle in over a longer period of time is probably the right thing to do to see serious progression.

You should not go to those pre made camps. Go to Spain, rent an Airbnb, get a coach and train with him. I know places in Madrid where it is 32 euro roughly per hour, for individual training. And it’s top class!

I have no idea, but my intuition says local lessons. Im eager to hear what others here might say

I've done this calculation as someone in North America, its not worth it for me to go to Spain, pay for accomodations, food, travel, etc. And also lessons and games and also the cost of keeping my rent back home. Math wise it made more sense to stay here and do lots of lessons with the local coaches. I still want to go to Spain for the experience one day but not yet.  Especially at your current level, it may be more worth it to do the 50 lessons with your local coach and once you get to a real good level after like 2 years of playing, then it may be worth it to invest the time and effort and money to go to Spain. Right now, at only 6 months playing, although you may have improved a lot, you are still a newbie.

40-45 private lessons vs 15 hours in a group? No contest mate. Private coaching with someone who knows your game will always beat a flashy week away. Academies are more for the experience, networking, and getting out of your routine not better value for pure improvement. Use that money to lock in weekly lessons for a year and you'll come out way ahead. Save the academy trip for when you're advanced and need that specific high-level polish.

I was in a pretty similar situation to you. I started playing about 6–7 months ago with zero racket background and got hooked immediately. I was playing almost every day and taking regular lessons with a coach as well. Because of that I improved pretty fast and also started wondering if those Spain academy weeks were actually worth the money. I eventually decided to try one, mainly because I was curious whether the “padel immersion” effect would make a difference compared to normal weekly lessons. 1. Did I see a noticeable improvement? Yes, but maybe not in the way I expected. The biggest improvement wasn’t necessarily new shots. It was more about: • Positioning and decision-making • Understanding the game structure • Tempo and shot selection When you train 3+ hours a day for several days in a row, you repeat situations so many times that things start to click faster. It’s a bit like compressing a month of learning into a week. That said, it’s not magic. You still need to keep training afterwards to consolidate it. 2. Experience vs actual development Honestly it’s both. The environment in Spain is very different: • Everyone around you is playing padel • Coaches are usually very specialized • You get lots of live-ball situations and match play • You often train with players from different countries and styles That environment pushes you in a way normal weekly lessons sometimes don’t. But yes, part of the value is definitely the experience and motivation boost. 3. Coaching over time vs academy week Purely from a technical learning per euro perspective, consistent coaching over time probably wins. If the choice is: • 40–45 private lessons with your coach vs • 15 hours in a week then purely mathematically the private lessons are hard to beat. Where the academy week wins is: • Intensity • Game understanding • Exposure to new coaching styles • Playing with different players It’s more like a reset or acceleration moment, not a replacement for regular coaching. 4. What level makes it worth it? From what I’ve seen and experienced: • Beginner (0–3 months): probably not worth it yet • Improving/intermediate (your stage): actually a pretty good time • Advanced: still useful but more about fine details At intermediate level you already have enough control to actually absorb tactical concepts, which is where these academies often shine. One thing I noticed while researching Before booking anything I spent a lot of time comparing camps and academies across Spain. A lot of them are structured very differently (coach ratio, match play vs drills, accommodation, etc.). I actually ended up using Padel Globo to compare a few options and booked a camp through them. The nice thing was that it helped me see programs beyond the big-name academies in Madrid — some smaller camps had more court time and smaller groups for the same price. The camp I did through them was honestly great. My personal takeaway If you: • already play a lot • love padel • want an intense week focused purely on the sport then doing one training week can be really fun and useful. But I wouldn’t replace regular coaching with it. The best combo in my opinion is: Regular lessons + occasional training week in Spain. That way you get both long-term development and periodic jumps in understanding. Curious though — do you mostly play matches, or are you doing more drills and structured training right now? That actually changes how much value you get from a camp.

The Problem is, teaching and lesson is not linear. Someone sees Something you lack or could improve and its the thing that was blocking you. When this happens, is completly open.

It's also a holiday brother, I wouldn't worry too much about which is statistically better.

Go abroad because it’s fun. But to truly improve, it’s better to pace your learning so you have time to absorb and practice each lesson. Otherwise it’s overload and you won’t necessarily absorb everything you learned. I prefer to take two lessons a week and then use those to improve my games during the other days of the week.

Nice, you are doing great and it will pay off for sure. I did a structured camp but only padel focused. It was a lot of technique but also built in with match play, situational tactics and repetition. It would indeed have been nice if there was a physical component as well, because this is definitely the aspect that then falls behind but I haven’t found anything related to that. The mental part would also be great to get but I guess that is more on the high competition level. I feel like without the fitness, I have seen so many get injured when they are just pushing their padel volume, and then also reaching a peak because, at the end of the day this is a sport that requires high levels of fitness to improve. I went with a great academy in Spain through Padelglobo.com. It was with Jose Solano who has a group of coaches and does full day training. You can definitely discuss with them to do some fitness aspect and even mental aspect as well and leave even with a fitness program that you can continue doing.

M3 academy is supposedly amongst the best in the world. My local coach has been and said it’s extremely intense, but worth it for a high level player looking to make a shot at FIP!

I’ve completed the M3 Camp, both weekend and week and I’m exploring another week this year. M3 was superb, for a number of reasons. You have approx 3 hours of padel a day, plus a gym session, plus most people booking additional private sessions to work on particular issues. Now, how much do you actually improve in a week? Vs a number of months with a private coach and lessons? Not that much, yes, but there’s so much more to it. For me it’s the fitness, the people and social side, the group lunches and dinner, there’s lots of camaraderie and overall it’s the total immersion in Padel for the week. If that’s not important to you, then stick with your coach. In terms of investment, I put the week into my actual coaching plan, so it becomes a part of the bigger picture. I have my weekly coaching, my matches, my box leagues and then I have padel travel, either camps or just booking new coaches in padel clubs wherever I go away. So far I’ve played in 6 different countries that way. If you have the money, book it, the immersion is totally worth it. If it is strictly to only improve padel the same way a private coach does, you’d have to question it.

worth it - enjoy and change routine

I haven't trained in Spain yet, so I can't answer your questions directly. However, I was at the exact same crossroads as you and was asking myself the same things (same 6 months of experience, progressing fast). Here's the thinking that made me stay and not go to Spain — yet. During any camp, you get an enormous dump of information and techniques that need time to be absorbed and to build that muscle-memory connection. It takes time and repetition. There's very little benefit in them showing you the correct footwork for overheads and how to use your non-dominant hand today, only to move on to víboras tomorrow. I hope you get the gist. So instead, I decided to book two private sessions per month in my country and play more games in between. Practice, practice, and film yourself. Then after a couple of weeks, when I notice something else that needs improvement, I go to another private session and fix that. My thinking is that after roughly two weeks post-camp, you'll forget 90% of what you learned because you didn't practise it enough or give yourself time to absorb all that information.

The M3 program is quite expensive, and I don't think you'd benefit much of anything on your level from specifically that program vs a good local coach. Padel vacations are definitely fun though, but there are cheaper ways to set that up. There are great coaches in other countries too, so you could consider South America as well. Flights cost more, but life in general, the canchas and the coaches will save you a lot of money. For me, the best approach has been a mix of individual classes, using a ball machine and group classes, that I've varied over time. Also having a plan and identifying your key technical goals for the next 2-3 months makes a lot of sense, as true technical improvement is quite slow after the first 6-12 months of playing. Going into a session really trying to drill something and getting to that point where the failure rate of your shot is less than 5% under easy settings takes quality repetitions, not just mindless bouncing around. All of this goes out the window if you are talented, of course, since some people just pick up shit much more easily. Also, this methodological approach might be a bit much unless you are a certain type of person, so make sure you are having fun and not putting too much pressure on improving. It's still a hobby.

How much is it actually?

Spain change you