I must humbly confess, the player of padel that I am suffers from a very widespread syndrome: that of the “advocating male idiot”. Attention, do not confuse with the syndrome of the "misunderstanding", even if the two sometimes come together.

What I and countless males struggle to understand and accept is that the brutal power of a smash is not enough to score the point for sure at the padel. It's true at the amateur level but it's also true for professionals: even Juan Lebron or Ale Galan sometimes hit very hard... and yet are pitifully countered.

Send stubs

Conversely, girls – who play smarter – use much less force and much more precision, patience and strategy to close points. The alpha male, on the other hand, foolishly persists, with all his might, in "advocating." Mean by this to “practice the pronation”, this rotation of the wrist and the forearm which makes it possible to send stumps while smashant.

How vain to think that the male players of padel may renounce the ancestral conditioning that drives them to brutality, try instead to help them practice more effective pronation. In other words, to increase their percentage of winning smashes. Do this with the help of five tips.

■ Have the right grip is essential to practice pronation, use your wrist to direct the ball in the desired direction and optimize its power. Concretely, to smash well, you will have to adopt a continental plug, slightly more closed than the hammer grip. In addition, the index should not be glued to the other fingers, but a little higher, in order to give more amplitude to the wrist.
This grip is much better than the forehand grip often adopted by beginners. The latter limits too much the ability to direct the ball in the desired direction and to use the weight of the body.

If you look at the professionals, you will see that many of them adopt a backhand spike grip, which allows them to put more spin. This grip is not necessarily recommended for beginners, as it requires significant technical mastery.

■ Mastering the Seesaw.- Because hitting the ball with the wrist and forearm is not enough, a good smash must take advantage of the weight of the player's body. For that, it is necessary to place itself below the ball and in profile compared to it and to make rock the weight of the body of the back towards the front. Pointing the ball with the left hand (for a right-handed person) promotes precision and swinging motion.

The arch of Lebron's back

■ The leg thrust.- In addition to the rocker, a smash will gain even more power if it benefits from a push emanating from the legs: bending and extension (sometimes followed by a jump) allows them to relax like an arc. The master in the matter is called Juan Lebron, who adds to this gesture an impressive arch of the back (see photo below).

Juan lebron smash babolat viper
Juan Lebron is able to land winning smashes from the back of the track

■ Elevation by the lift.- Most good spikers don't just hit hard flat, but brush the ball up and down, picking it up slightly behind their head. The strike is then less violent, but the topspin, amplified by the back glass, gives the ball an upward effect. At high level, it has become essential given the vertical expansion of the defenders.

■ Don't smash too far.- The further you are from the net, the less likely the smash is to win: it's obvious and yet, we forget it, like frogs who want to be as big as oxen. So remember: beyond 4 to 5 m from the net, it is preferable to make a bandeja or an vibora in order to keep the net and try to get a more candid opportunity to end the rally.

Aim for the right areas.- There's no point in smashing hard if you don't know how to aim. Touching two panes, for example, is to be avoided on power smashes. Similarly, a short hit smash risks hitting the baseline fence: if luck is not with you, the ball will be easy to defend.

Conversely, several zones are to be favoured: hitting very close to the back window will allow a tense and parallel smash to come back very quickly and overtake the opponent; aiming for the ground just in front of the service line will make your ball go high on the glass, giving you one more chance to lob the defence; a topspin smash hit at the last joint between windows will have a good chance of finishing in a par 3; finally, a par 4 will be obtained by hitting with the right angle, provided you are close enough to the net.

These are just a few recommendations among others to prevent your favorite weapon from turning against you. And of course, it is by advocating that one becomes a penitent...

After 40 years of tennis, Jérôme falls into the pot of padel in 2018. Since then, he thinks about it every morning while shaving… but never shaves pala in hand! Journalist in Alsace, he has no other ambition than to share his passion with you, whether you speak French, Italian, Spanish or English.

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