Organising a Padel Camp for Your Club — Format, Budget and Logistics

Padel is the fastest-growing racket sport in France, and clubs are starting to build proper residential camps — as tennis has done for thirty years. The problem: accommodation has not followed, and most improvised formats hit the same constraints. Here is how to frame a camp that holds up.

How many players per court?

This is the first variable, and it drives everything else. Padel is played four at a time. On a single court, a group of eight works well: four on court, four recovering, conditioning or reviewing video, rotating every twenty minutes. Beyond twelve players per court, effective playing time per person is too low to justify a residential stay.

The rule of thumb most coaches settle on: eight to ten players per available court, provided the court is accessible without time limits.

The hidden constraint: court access

This is what sinks badly prepared camps. A partner club sells you slots — two hours morning, two hours afternoon. On paper that looks sufficient. In practice a camp lives off its unplanned time: the session you extend because the group is clicking, the match after dinner, the 7 a.m. restart before the July heat.

A private court changes the nature of the camp. It allows the "as much as the body takes" format rather than the "as much as the schedule allows" one. Over three to six days, the difference in hours often exceeds 40%.

Sample five-day programme

Day 1 — Assessment

Morning: warm-up, individual technical assessment, pairing. Afternoon: observed free play, first individual focus areas. Evening: presentation of the week's plan.

Days 2–4 — Technical and tactical block

Morning: technical stations (off-the-glass, bandeja, low volley). Afternoon: tactical situations and themed matches. End of day: conditioning or active recovery depending on load. Padel loads the footwork and the shoulder heavily — one day in three should be lighter.

Day 5 — Internal competition

Pool tournament with the established pairs, collective debrief, written individual feedback. That document is what players take home, and it is what separates a camp from a weekend with friends.

Realistic budget

For a group of eight to eleven players over five days, in exclusive accommodation with an on-site court:

• Accommodation and court — €400–550 per player for the full week where the estate is let exclusively and court access is included.
• Catering — €25–45 per player per day depending on whether you self-cater or hire a chef.
• Coaching — varies with whether the club coach is a volunteer or paid, plus travel.
• Transport — the line to optimise through car-sharing, and the reason to favour a destination one or two hours from the club.

A club-based camp with billed slots often shows cheaper accommodation, but reintroduces a court-hire line of €25–40 an hour that, over five days, far exceeds the gap.

Pitfalls to avoid

• An unlit court — in July, playable hours sit before 11 a.m. and after 7 p.m. Without floodlights you lose half the potential.
• A mixed-ability group — beyond two levels of spread, stations become unmanageable. Two camps beat one frustrating camp.
• Overload — the most common error. Six hours of padel a day for five days produces tendon injuries, not progress.
• No fallback surface — a city stade or tennis court lets you vary load and keep going if the padel court is unavailable.

Where to run a residential padel camp?

Properties with a private padel court remain rare in France. La Bergerie des Collines, in the Drôme des Collines, is one: the court is on the estate, floodlit, included in the rental, and joined by a tennis court, a city stade and a petanque pitch — everything needed for the load variation described above. The estate is let exclusively to up to eleven people, which matches the sizing of one group per court.

Practical details on the home with private padel page, rates and cost per player on the rates page.