The padel camp market has grown so quickly that the brochures now look identical: palm trees, blue courts, a group photo with medals. Behind the photographs, the product varies enormously. Some camps are coaching programmes with a hotel attached. Others are hotels with a coach who wanders past now and then. Here is how to tell the difference before you pay.

Coach ratio is the first number to check

The single most important figure in any camp listing is the ratio of players to coaches on court. One coach to four players is the gold standard: everyone is in the drill, nobody waits, and the coach can watch each person's footwork. One to six is acceptable for social camps. One to eight usually means queues behind a ball basket and very little individual feedback.

Ask whether the ratio holds across every session or only in the headline. Some operators quote one to four for the morning technical block and quietly switch to unsupervised match play all afternoon. That is not necessarily bad, but you should know what you are buying.

Hours on court, and what fills them

A good four-day camp delivers between twelve and twenty hours of structured padel. Beyond about five hours a day, quality drops for most amateurs: footwork gets lazy, injuries creep in and the last session becomes a hit-and-giggle. Look for a programme that breaks each day into a technical block, a tactical block and match play, with a long lunch in between.

Ask for a sample schedule. If the operator cannot tell you what you will work on during day two, the coaching is probably improvised.

Level banding: the honest test

Nothing ruins a camp faster than a group with a two-level spread. A strong player gets bored, a weaker player gets anxious and the coach spends the week compromising. Better camps ask for a self-assessment before booking, then confirm it with a short assessment on the first morning and move players between groups if necessary.

When you book, look for:

A clear level range on a recognised one-to-seven scale, not vague words such as "all levels welcome".
A minimum group size so that a quiet week does not leave you with one other player.
A policy for regrouping after the first session.

If a camp claims to welcome complete beginners and competitive tournament players in the same week, ask how many courts and coaches they have. It can work at a big club with six coaches. It rarely works with two.

Video, feedback and the follow-through

The best camps film you. Even a few minutes of phone footage of your bandeja, reviewed with a coach over coffee, is worth more than an extra hour of drills. Ask whether video analysis is included, and whether you get to keep the clips.

Also ask what happens after the camp. A written summary of your three main development points, with drills you can take home, turns a holiday into a training block.

The rest of the package

Accommodation, transfers and meals matter, of course. A ten-minute walk to the courts is better than a twenty-minute minibus ride twice a day. Shade between sessions is essential in southern Spain from June to September. A physio on site, or at least a relationship with a local one, is a sign of an operator that has run enough camps to know what goes wrong.

Finally, read the reviews for one word: "group". Reviewers who mention the group dynamic, good or bad, are telling you about the level banding, and that is the part of the camp you will remember most.

How to choose a padel camp that actually makes you better