{"id":25719,"date":"2026-08-21T08:30:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T06:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/padelcity.de\/when-the-plan-suddenly-flies-to-madrid-alone\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T13:34:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T11:34:57","slug":"when-the-plan-suddenly-flies-to-madrid-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/padelcity.de\/en\/when-the-plan-suddenly-flies-to-madrid-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"When the plan suddenly flies to Madrid alone."},"content":{"rendered":"

The plan had been fairly straightforward: Katharina Hering and Lena Pl\u00fcmer would travel to Madrid together. Two of Germany\u2019s best padel players, a few weeks of training at a professional level, and a small film crew following them along the way. Not to turn the best-looking footage into a heroic success story afterwards, but to answer a fairly simple question that seems to come with a surprising number of complicated answers: What does it actually take to get better?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Madrid seemed like a good place to find out. After all, padel there isn\u2019t just played at a different level, but with a kind of ease and familiarity that Germany is still developing. The rallies are faster, the training more intense, the pressure higher. If you\u2019re pretty good in Germany, it only takes a few training sessions in Madrid to discover that \u201cpretty good\u201d is a remarkably flexible unit of measurement.<\/p>\n

Then Lena got injured during a tournament. And what was supposed to be a shared flight suddenly became one ticket and a lot of unanswered questions.<\/p>\n

Katha has since travelled to Madrid on her own. Lena is working her way back to fitness, hoping she might still be able to join her. Whether that will happen, we don\u2019t know. What we do know is that our originally planned documentary found a new storyline faster than we ever could have written one.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s actually quite fitting. Because progress rarely unfolds as neatly as we make it sound afterwards. Anyone familiar with sports documentaries also knows their preferred formula: setback plus hard work equals success, add a little music, some slow motion and, ideally, something silver to hold up at the end. Unfortunately, real-life professional sport is considerably less reliable when it comes to following a script.<\/p>\n

With \u201cVamos KathaLena\u201d<\/strong>, we\u2019re currently producing our first social-first documentary series following Katharina Hering and Lena Pl\u00fcmer. The original idea was fairly straightforward: two of Germany\u2019s best padel players go to Madrid, train at a professional level and find out what happens when German elite performance meets the everyday reality of Spanish padel. We follow them along the way.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not waiting until the story is over to tell you what happened. We want to be there while it\u2019s happening. When Katha first discovers what international pace actually feels like. When a new shot suddenly works \u2013 and the next one doesn\u2019t work at all. When confidence turns into a reality check, frustration perhaps into insight, and \u201cI can do this\u201d becomes, at least temporarily, a slightly more modest \u201cLooks like I still need to learn this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our camera doesn\u2019t only keep rolling when things look good. It stays on when the training starts to take its toll, concentration begins to fade and the twentieth ball still refuses to land where it damn well should. We film the fast rallies and the slow realisations. Somewhere between the two is probably what we call progress.<\/p>\n

And while balls are flying against glass in Madrid, a second story continues a little further north. Lena is working on her comeback. Whether she\u2019ll recover in time \u00a0and turn the unplanned solo back into the doubles team we originally set out to follow, remains to be seen. We could have written a cliffhanger for the series. Reality simply got there first.<\/p>\n

Maybe Katha will come back from Spain a better player. Maybe she\u2019ll come back with a much clearer understanding of just how wide the gap to the international level really is. Most likely, both will be true. Because getting better sometimes has less to do with suddenly being able to do everything, and much more to do with understanding exactly what you still can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what \u201cVamos KathaLena\u201d<\/strong> is about: not the finished success story, but the rather exhausting part that comes before it. About winning and learning, confidence and reality, Germany and Spain \u2013 and two players whose shared journey is currently unfolding very differently from the way they planned it.<\/p>\n

The social-first documentary series is currently being produced with a small crew in Madrid, together with our partners HanseMerkur<\/strong> and natural elements.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plan had been fairly straightforward: Katharina Hering and Lena Pl\u00fcmer would travel to Madrid together. Two of Germany\u2019s best padel players, a few weeks of training at a professional level, and a small film crew following them along the way. Not to turn the best-looking footage into a heroic success story afterwards, but to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":25670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-padel_en"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t