While doing research about the best padel players in the world, one thing that stood out was how young many of the top players were when they first picked up a racket – both female and male players.
For instance, the 2019 world number one Paquito Navarro was a mere 5 years old when he started. I imagine that younger than that he may not have been able to get his hands around the grip enough to lift the racket at all.
So I took a walk down to our local padel court this past Friday and chatted to Pablo, the regional padel pro/teacher, to find out from him what age is best for children to start taking padel lessons.
At what age can children start padel lessons? A parent can consider padel lessons for their child between the ages of 8 and 12 based on their physical and emotional development. Many children start padel tournaments from the age of 14. Some child psychology academics believe that a child can’t cope with losing in sports before the age of 20.
One thing that just about all sporty parents have in common is wanting their children to be sporty as well. In the majority of cases, this will tend to happen as children often follow the example set by their parents. However, pushing too hard too soon will have the opposite effect. Let’s take a closer look at how to manage that delicate balance between encouragement and pushing too hard.
Sports Initiation For Young Children
Sports initiation is the process where one sport, or more ideally several sports, is introduced into a child’s activities by way of play.
Having a child’s first contact with sports being within the realm of play will greatly influence whether that child continues to take up any specific sport.
This is where many parents go wrong in my opinion regarding their young children and sports. If you allow your ambitions and ego to dictate matters you are likely to put too much sporting performance pressure on your young child.
This will make sports feel like a chore for your child and likely result in them quitting sports at the first available opportunity.
I remember when I did youth sports coaching, the children that were the most enthusiastic were the ones whose parents used coming to sports practice as a reward for completing their chores.
Practical Implementation
Spanish sports scientists Moreno, Blazquez, and Bañuelos published a number of pediatric sports studies over a ten year period from 1986 to 1995. These studies have been combined into a single volume called Sports Initiation and School Sports, currently only available in Spanish.
I’ll give you a brief translation of their findings together with my thoughts based on what I not only experienced when I first started playing sports but also saw when I coached children. I also got some inputs from Pablo, our village padel coach.
From Ages 4 to 7
At this young age, the focus will always be to develop basic motor skills, coordination, balance, and spatial orientation. This will be done by means of games. In many instances, these games are standardized by the physical education curriculum.
Between The Ages Of 8 And 9
At this stage of a child’s development, we can start incorporating what is referred to as mini-sports. This is where you change the rules of existing sports making them not only easier to understand but also feel more like games.
Normally the recommendation is to start with athletics so as to improve basic skills such as running, jumping or throwing.
This is also the youngest group that Pablo has on the padel court for classes. This group almost never touches a padel racket. Instead, they play games with multi-colored balls that are roughly the same size as padel balls. He does have padel rackets on the court, but more for orientation purposes.
When I coached children in rock climbing, I set the minimum age for rock climbing at 10. However, I made an exception for children who had an older sibling who already did rock climbing. In those instances, children aged 8 were able to join.
From The Ages Of 10 To 12
After having learned a base of the essential motor skills, we can begin to teach with the specific skills needed to play a sport.
This is also the age range when Pablo starts including exercises on the padel court that involve using a racket.
This is rather interesting. This was the age where I already started to play competitive sport.
From The Ages Of 13 To 15
According to the youth sports psychologists, this is the stage where you can begin to teach the rules of the sport during the practice sessions.
In terms of the theory, we should still keep children clear of competitive play where there is the concept of a winner and a loser. The document goes on to indicate that participation in sport needs to be monitored by specialists to discourage competitive behavior since we are still in very sensitive stages of a child’s development.
At this age children already have the maturity to acquire tactical thinking that is needed to be a competent padel player.
From The Age Of 16 And Older
According to the academic literature, teenagers in this age range can possibly begin to practice competitive sport. But at the same time, the youth sports psychologists state that the teenager will not reach the maturity to cope with losing a game until the age of 20.
That is when the athlete will be physically and psychologically capable to cope with performing at their best.
What My Experience As A Coach Taught Me
While I cannot compete with the degrees that these youth sports psychologists have, my practical experience as a coach over the years has been different.
Personally, I never saw the benefit of protecting a child from experiencing any sort of adversity until they are already an adult. That leaves young adults without the life skills needed to cope with the world as it is.
Sure, I would agree that most children under the age of ten will benefit from having their physical activity limited to the realm of play. However, after the age of ten, I have noticed among the children that I coached grew psychologically from overcoming physical challenges within their sport.
It also means that the child will gravitate toward sports for which they have an aptitude.
What I noticed was that children who overcame sporting difficulties and losses were better able to cope with setbacks at school and realized that they were capable of making improvements.
To my mind, leaving that until someone is an adult, just about through college is setting that young person up for failure.
The Top Padel Players Started Winning Early
Almost without exception, the players who make up the top of the professional padel ranks started their top-level sporting careers at a young age.
A glance through our article on the top female padel players you will see, for example, Gemma Triay qualified for the Mallorca Open tennis tournament at the age of 14.
Likewise, our article on the best male padel players shows that world number one, Paquito Navarro, has been winning padel tournaments since the age of 9.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell stated that it requires 10.000 hours of practice to master any skill. While there has been some dispute over the magic number of 10.000, there is no doubt that the road to mastering a skill requires a lot of work.
Part of that mastery comes from building the mental muscle needed to bounce back from facing losses to make necessary improvements.
If padel professionals had to wait until they were adults before entering tournaments, they would likely be almost retired by the time they reached mastery of their craft.
The Burning Question Of When To Start Formal Lessons We Spoke To A Professional
Many private padel clubs obviously encourage parents to bring their children to classes as young as possible especially if they have a store that sells equipment on site
Ultimately it is you as the parent that needs to choose what is best for your child. Up until the age of 8, the emphasis should be placed on elements of play that include socialization with other children.
Between the ages of 8 and 12 children should be encouraged to try as many different sports as possible. Generally, this is the time when your child can start with padel lessons. That being said, I would insist that at least one sport should be a team sport to promote socialization and teach the life skill of teamwork.
From the age of 12 children should start to be able to play friendly games of padel. Even though playing a match incorporates the elements of winning and losing, it also teaches the concept of making improvements and not taking temporary losses too personally.
Unless your child is showing phenomenal ability, I would not encourage competing at tournament-level before the age of 14, even though there are padel tournaments available for younger children.
Don’t Hang Your Ego On Your Child’s Sport
This is something that I have seen across many sports. Looking specifically at the sport of padel, you have parents that want their child to rise to the top of the World Padel Tour. This is not because it is the desire of the child, but rather as a way to stroke the ego of the parent.
As a parent, I implore you to check your own ego at the door and not to live vicariously through the sporting achievements of your child. If you do not, you create an environment where your child will perceive that parental love is conditional upon sporting performance.
This can be emotionally crippling to children as they grow up. This is basically the same as parents that send their children to ivy-league colleges and leave their children with student debt that will take decades to repay, if ever. And all so that the parents have something that they can brag to their friends about.
So the bottom line is to allow your child to enjoy their sport, whether it turns out to be padel or some other sport.
Take a moment to consider the economics of padel as a sport. The World Padel Tour currently has 560 professional men and 317 professional women on the ranking list. On that list, more than 90% of the players make less than minimum wage as a professional sportsperson. You can see the details in the article that I wrote about what professional padel players actually earn.