What is the most common mistake beginners make in padel?

Standing still in the transition zone around the service line. It leaves balls arriving at your feet and open space behind you. Decide whether the pair is defending near the back or attacking at the net, and move fully into that position.

Where should you stand during a padel point?

Either both partners at the net or both partners near the back of the court, adjusting sideways with the ball. The in-between shape, with one player up and one back, opens a diagonal gap that opponents can find with an ordinary cross-court shot.

Why do my padel shots keep going long?

Usually a long backswing with a late contact point, or too much pace from a defensive position. Prepare earlier, keep the racket in front of your shoulder line, meet the ball in front of your body and aim for depth rather than speed.

When should I let the ball hit the back glass?

When the ball is deep or fast. The rebound slows it down and gives you an extra beat. As a beginner guide, balls landing behind the service line are usually easier after the glass; you just have to return them before the second bounce on the floor.

How can I stop leaving my lobs short?

Open the racket face slightly and swing from low to high with an upward follow-through. Aim to clear the opponents and land beyond their service line, but short of the back glass so the ball does not rebound into an easy overhead.

Why do my volleys keep going into the net or out?

Because the racket drops and the swing gets long. Wait with the racket above net height, block firmly against a fast ball and push through a slower one, always making contact in front of your body.

When should I use a bandeja instead of a smash?

Use a bandeja when the lob pushes you backwards. It is a controlled, sliced overhead played deep and low that lets your pair hold the net. Keep the smash for a ball you can attack from a balanced position with your body under the contact.

Should padel partners move together?

Yes, in depth. You advance and retreat as a unit and adjust laterally to the ball. If one of you is lobbed or pulled deep into a corner, the other drops back too instead of holding the net alone.

How do I shorten my backswing?

Turn your shoulders as soon as you read the ball and set a limit: the racket head stays in front of your back shoulder. Practise it in a slow rally where you count clean contacts in front of the body rather than winners.

Which padel mistake should I fix first?

Positioning and recovery. Pair movement changes more points than any stroke correction, and it makes the technical fixes easier because you meet more balls in a comfortable position.

12 Common Padel Mistakes and How to Fix Them

A practical diagnosis of the positioning, shot-selection and teamwork errors that lose points, plus clear corrections and court drills.

GuideBy PadelFormat Editorial TeamPublished 20 April 2025Updated 24 August 202612 min read

Quick answer

Common padel mistakes include staying in the transition zone, moving separately from your partner, taking a long backswing, hitting too hard, avoiding the glass and leaving lobs short. Start with positioning: defend together near the back and attack together at the net. Then shorten the racket path, prepare earlier and choose control before pace.

TL;DR

Most club-level points are handed over through repeated positioning, swing and communication errors rather than won outright.
Defend together near the back and attack together at the net; a split pair leaves a diagonal gap opponents can find easily.
Keep the backswing compact and contact in front of the body instead of a long, late preparation.
Choose depth and height over pace when you are behind the service line.
Let deep or fast balls come off the back glass before you play them, and leave space between yourself and the glass.
Keep volleys short and blocked or pushed rather than swung, and give lobs enough height and depth to push opponents back.
Fix positioning and recovery first, since it makes every other correction easier.

On this page

Quick diagnosis

Find the pattern that keeps repeating in your matches, then read the section it points to. A symptom often has more than one cause, but the first correction below is the one that changes the most points for the least effort.

Match the symptom you keep seeing to its likely cause and the first thing to change.
What keeps happening?	Likely mistake	First correction
Balls keep arriving at your feet	Standing in the transition zone around the service line	Commit: either finish the move to the net or drop back with your partner
One of you is lobbed while the other stays back	Partners at different depths	Both retreat as soon as either of you is lobbed
Groundstrokes are late or struck behind you	Backswing too long, preparation too slow	Turn early, keep the racket in front of your shoulder line
Your hard shot comes back as an easy attack	Adding pace from a defensive position	Play depth and height instead of speed when you are behind the service line
Deep defensive balls feel cramped	Standing too close to the back glass	Move back early, then step in as the ball rebounds towards you
Volleys fly long or drop into the net	Full swing instead of a block or push	Racket up, contact in front, no backswing past your shoulder
Your lobs invite easy overheads	Lob too low or too short	Open the face, swing low to high, aim beyond the opponents' service line
The serving team never reaches the net	Serving as a finishing shot and staying back to admire it	Serve for placement, then move in together behind it
Middle balls drop between you	No call, both players hesitating	Agree who takes the middle and say it out loud before contact
You play a great shot then react late to the next one	Watching the ball instead of recovering	Start moving to your recovery position the moment the ball leaves your racket

Court-position mistakes

Position decides how comfortable every shot feels. Fix these three before you touch your technique, because a well-struck ball from the wrong place still loses the point.

1. Staying in the transition zone for too long

Balls keep landing at your feet and you keep half-volleying from the service line.

The strip around the service line is the hardest place on the court to defend. You are close enough for a driven ball to reach you quickly, but too far forward to let anything come off the back glass, so awkward low balls arrive at your shoelaces. At the same time the space behind you is open, and a lob over your head is played from your opponents' comfort zone rather than under pressure.

It is not that the zone is forbidden. Every approach to the net crosses it. The problem is stopping there. Treat it as a corridor you pass through with a split step, not a station you occupy while you wait to see what happens.

The decision is simpler than it looks. If your shot was low, deep and gave the opponents nothing, keep moving forward with your partner. If your shot sat up, or you were stretched, retreat behind the service line and defend properly.

CorrectionBefore each rally, decide out loud with your partner whether you are attacking or defending, then move all the way to that position instead of parking in between.

2. Playing at a different depth from your partner

One of you is at the net while the other is scraping balls out of the back corner.

A split pair leaves a long diagonal channel from the net player's outside hip to the far back corner. Opponents do not need a clever shot to use it; a routine cross-court ball is enough, and the net player is left turning to watch it go past.

The pair moves as a unit in depth and adjusts laterally to the ball. If your partner is pulled deep into a corner, drop back and cover the middle rather than holding your net position on principle. If your partner earns a weak reply and steps in, follow them forward on the same beat.

You are not trying to stand shoulder to shoulder at all times. You are trying to avoid the two-line shape where one player defends alone and the other is stranded.

CorrectionPlay a set with one rule: if either player retreats behind the service line, both do. Nothing else changes.

3. Watching your shot instead of recovering

You admire a good lob or passing shot, then start moving only when the opponent hits the ball.

This one is easy to spot on video. The player hits, freezes for half a second to see the result, and is still watching when the reply is struck. Half a second is roughly the whole reaction budget in a court this size, which is why the next ball always feels faster than it is.

The cue that works is simple: the shot is finished the moment the ball leaves your strings. Recovery starts there, not when the ball lands. If you lobbed, you should be moving forward or setting your defensive base while the ball is still travelling.

CorrectionCue yourself with "hit, then move" for a whole session and let your partner call it out whenever you stand still after contact.

A split pair leaves a diagonal channel. Partners at the same depth cover the court between them.

Paired shadow drill. Stand on court with your partner and no ball. One of you calls “lob”, “short” or “drive” at random; both of you move to the position that call demands and split step together. Five minutes of this teaches the shape faster than an hour of rallying, because nothing distracts you from where your partner is.

If you are still learning the basic shapes and rules, our beginner tips guide covers them from the start.

Swing and pace mistakes

4. Taking a full, looping backswing

Contact happens level with your body or behind it, and the ball sprays wide or long.

A padel court is small and enclosed, so the ball reaches you sooner and often comes back a second time off the glass. A long preparation is not wrong because it belongs to another sport; it is wrong because there is rarely time to complete it. The racket arrives late, the contact point slides backwards and the face opens.

A compact path fixes most of it. Turn your shoulders early, keep the racket roughly in front of your shoulder line, meet the ball in front of your body and push through towards your target with a controlled finish. Length comes from the follow-through and from the legs, not from how far back you took the racket.

CorrectionRally for five minutes with a hard limit: the racket head never travels behind your back shoulder. Count clean contacts rather than winners.

5. Trying to hit every ball hard

You attack from the back of the court and the ball returns faster than you sent it.

There are three kinds of ball in a rally. An attackable ball sits up in your strike zone while you are balanced and forward. A neutral ball keeps you honest and asks for depth. A defensive ball has you moving backwards or reaching. Pace only pays on the first kind.

Hit a flat, fast ball from your own back court and one of two things usually happens: it clips the net or the fence, or it arrives at the opponents' glass and rebounds into open court for them. Height, depth and placement take time away from the opposing pair without handing them speed to reuse.

CorrectionPlay a controlled rally game where neither pair may try to end the point: the target is twenty consecutive deep balls landing behind the service line.

The mechanics behind a compact stroke are broken down in our guide to padel technique, and each individual stroke is described in padel shots explained.

Glass mistakes

The walls are the part of padel that transfers least well from other racket sports, so this is where hesitation shows up most clearly.

6. Taking every deep ball before it reaches the glass

You back-pedal, reach for a fast deep ball and pop it up short.

In padel a ball that has bounced on your side of the court may rebound off your walls, and you can still play it as long as you return it before it bounces on the floor a second time. That rebound is a gift: it slows the ball down, lifts it into a comfortable height and gives you an extra beat to set your feet.

While you are learning, the service line is a handy reference. A slower ball dropping in front of it can normally be taken in the air or after the bounce. A deep or fast ball is usually easier once it has come off the back glass. It is a decision aid rather than a rule, and the more you play the more you will judge it by speed rather than by where it lands.

CorrectionIn a feeding drill, let every ball that lands behind the service line rebound before you play it, even the ones you think you could reach.

7. Standing too close to the back glass

The ball rebounds and jams you: elbows tucked in, no room to swing, a blocked reply.

Spacing is what makes wall play work. Move back early while the ball is still travelling, leave a gap between yourself and the glass, turn sideways, and then let the ball come off the wall towards you. You strike it as it drops away from the glass and step into the shot, rather than fighting it against the wall.

Small adjustment steps do most of the work. One large stride backwards usually leaves you either too close or too far, and a rebound rewards precise distance more than speed.

CorrectionProgressive drill: predictable feeds beyond the service line, let each one rebound off the back glass, return it with control before the second floor bounce, then mix forehands and backhands once your timing settles.

Short balls can be taken before the glass; deep balls are usually easier after the rebound, with space to swing.

Net and overhead mistakes

8. Dropping the racket and swinging at volleys

Volleys either sail long or dip into the net, and fast balls catch you with the racket down.

Wait with the racket head above net height and in front of you. From there, two different volleys cover most situations. Against a driven ball, a short block is enough: firm wrist, minimal movement, let their pace do the work. Against a slower ball, push through it with a controlled forward motion and place it, usually deep or into the gap.

The error is treating both as a groundstroke. A backswing at the net adds time you do not have and turns a placement into a gamble.

CorrectionHave a partner feed alternating fast and slow balls at the net. Say "block" or "push" out loud before each contact.

9. Leaving the lob low or short

Your lob lands in front of the opponents' service line and comes back as a smash.

The lob is how a defending pair takes the net back, but only when it has both height and depth. A low lob is just a slow ball at attacking height. Open the racket face slightly, swing from low to high, and follow through upwards towards the back of the court.

A useful target: the ball should clear the opponents comfortably and bounce beyond their service line, without carrying so far that it reaches the back glass and rebounds into a comfortable overhead.

CorrectionPlace a marker between the opponents' service line and the back glass and hit twenty lobs, counting only those that land in that band.

10. Smashing every lob

You jump at a deep lob, mishit it or lose your balance, and the point turns around.

Overhead selection is a positioning decision as much as a technical one. A deep lob that pushes you back is normally a bandeja: a controlled overhead played with a slice, aimed deep and low, that keeps your pair at the net and buys time to recover. It is not a winner, and playing it as though it were is where the error usually starts.

Save the smash for a ball you can attack from a balanced position with your body under the contact. If you are leaning back or moving quickly backwards, the percentages are against you.

CorrectionIn practice, only smash lobs that land in front of your service line; play everything deeper as a bandeja and note how often you keep the net.

A short lob invites the smash. A lob landing beyond the service line usually forces a bandeja instead.

Reacting in time at the net is partly a trainable skill; our guide to padel reflexes has drills for it.

Serve and communication mistakes

11. Treating the serve as a finishing shot

Double faults, or a serve so ambitious that neither of you gets forward behind it.

Under FIP rules the serve is underarm and deliberately restrained. You bounce the ball on the ground behind the service line, strike it at or below waist height, keep at least one foot on the ground at the moment of contact, and send it diagonally into the opposite service box. There is no reward structure here for chasing aces.

What the serve does control is the start of the point. A serve that lands deep in the box and stays low limits the returner's options, and it gives you and your partner time to move forward together and take the net, which is the real purpose of serving well.

CorrectionServe twenty balls to the same target near the side glass, and after each one take three steps forward as if the point were live.

12. Staying silent during the point

Middle balls drop between you, and neither player knows who is chasing the lob.

Most pairs lose more points to hesitation than to technique. Short calls solve it: who takes the ball down the middle, who is going back for the lob, and a quick word when the opposing pair changes shape, for example when one of them has been pulled out of position.

There is no official vocabulary, and there is no need for one. What matters is that both of you use the same words and that the call comes before contact rather than after it.

CorrectionAgree three calls with your partner before you walk on court and use only those three for the whole session.

When the breakdown is tension rather than technique, our guide to padel and emotions covers the between-point reset and clearer partner calls.

What to fix first

Trying to repair all twelve at once produces a player thinking about six things and watching the ball with none of them. Pick one observable problem for a session, tell your partner what it is, and judge the session on that alone. This order works because each level makes the next one easier:

1Pair positioning and recovery
2Compact swings and controlled pace
3Glass decisions
4Lob depth
5Volley and overhead selection
6Serve placement and communication

Between points, three questions are enough to keep the diagnosis honest:

Were my partner and I at a similar depth?
Did the ball call for control or attack?
Had I recovered before the opponents made contact?

A 30-minute correction session

Six blocks of five minutes, in an order that moves from movement to decisions to shots. Run it with one partner and a basket of balls.

5 min · paired movement, no ball
Shadow a rally with your partner: forward together, back together, split step on every imaginary contact. It builds the habit without the distraction of hitting.
5 min · compact forehands and backhands
Rally cross-court with the racket never going behind your back shoulder, focusing on contact in front of the body and a clean, controlled finish.
5 min · back-glass feeds
One player feeds deep, the other lets every ball rebound off the glass and returns it before the second bounce, leaving enough space to swing.
5 min · lobs beyond the service line
Lob from the back of the court at a target band behind the opponents' service line, counting only the ones that land deep enough to push them back.
5 min · block and push volleys
Alternate fast and slow feeds at the net, blocking the quick ones and pushing the slower ones deep, with the racket up between every ball.
5 min · serve, move, play the next ball
Serve to a target, advance with your partner, and play out the first two shots so the routine of taking the net becomes automatic.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most common mistake beginners make in padel?: Standing still in the transition zone around the service line. It leaves balls arriving at your feet and open space behind you. Decide whether the pair is defending near the back or attacking at the net, and move fully into that position.
Where should you stand during a padel point?: Either both partners at the net or both partners near the back of the court, adjusting sideways with the ball. The in-between shape, with one player up and one back, opens a diagonal gap that opponents can find with an ordinary cross-court shot.
Why do my padel shots keep going long?: Usually a long backswing with a late contact point, or too much pace from a defensive position. Prepare earlier, keep the racket in front of your shoulder line, meet the ball in front of your body and aim for depth rather than speed.
When should I let the ball hit the back glass?: When the ball is deep or fast. The rebound slows it down and gives you an extra beat. As a beginner guide, balls landing behind the service line are usually easier after the glass; you just have to return them before the second bounce on the floor.
How can I stop leaving my lobs short?: Open the racket face slightly and swing from low to high with an upward follow-through. Aim to clear the opponents and land beyond their service line, but short of the back glass so the ball does not rebound into an easy overhead.
Why do my volleys keep going into the net or out?: Because the racket drops and the swing gets long. Wait with the racket above net height, block firmly against a fast ball and push through a slower one, always making contact in front of your body.
When should I use a bandeja instead of a smash?: Use a bandeja when the lob pushes you backwards. It is a controlled, sliced overhead played deep and low that lets your pair hold the net. Keep the smash for a ball you can attack from a balanced position with your body under the contact.
Should padel partners move together?: Yes, in depth. You advance and retreat as a unit and adjust laterally to the ball. If one of you is lobbed or pulled deep into a corner, the other drops back too instead of holding the net alone.
How do I shorten my backswing?: Turn your shoulders as soon as you read the ball and set a limit: the racket head stays in front of your back shoulder. Practise it in a slow rally where you count clean contacts in front of the body rather than winners.
Which padel mistake should I fix first?: Positioning and recovery. Pair movement changes more points than any stroke correction, and it makes the technical fixes easier because you meet more balls in a comfortable position.