5 wall-play drills to stop panicking off the back glass
If the ball off the back glass turns you into a beginner, you're not alone. These five drills — most you can do without a partner — will turn the back wall from an enemy into a weapon.
The wall is your best training partner
A wall doesn't get tired, doesn't miss, and gives you twice the reps per minute of a rally partner. For grooving your control shots and getting comfortable with the back glass, a wall is the best tool you've got — and most players never use one properly.
Stand five metres back from the wall. Hit continuous controlled forehands into the wall, focusing on one thing only: waiting for the ball to come off. Do 50. Then 50 backhands. That's a workout most club players never get in a week.
The back-glass turn
The reason players panic off the back glass is they turn late and try to hit while backing up. The fix is to turn early, let the ball come to you, and hit through it moving forward.
Drill: feed the ball hard into the back glass, turn as soon as it leaves your paddle, and hit the rebound flat back to the front wall. Do 20. You'll stop being late.
Footwork that looks like padel
Ladder drills are useful only if they look like padel. Skip the fancy patterns. Do split-step, push back two steps, recover forward, split-step again. For three minutes. That's a point.
Underarm serves and returns
The serve is the only shot you fully control. You can hit a hundred serves a day with one tube of balls. If you served 100 padel serves — low, wide, into the T — every day for 30 days, your service game would be unrecognisable.
Get RALLY when it launches.
The fastest way to fix what this article describes is to film yourself and have an AI coach watch.