Five diagrams for the things that are easier shown than told: the lob arc, the court zones, the bandeja, why you move as one, and which overhead to play.
Side view. A good lob clears the net player's reach and drops steeply into the back-wall junction so it dies. A short lob peaks right at smash height over the net player.
Stroke: open face, low-to-high lift from the shoulder, long follow-through up and out; a touch of backspin so it floats and sits. Same prep as a drive (disguise). Favour the forehand; target the opponent's backhand-overhead side.
Your half, net at top, back glass at bottom. Two zones are home; the middle is a corridor you move through, never stand in.
Root 2 in space: dominance lives at the two ends. The discomfort you feel at 3m is the geometry telling you to finish your move, not to invent a shot.
Side view of the hitter. The situation (deep vs short, going back vs forward) decides the shot — and the contact height.
The trap: picturing every overhead as a winner. The bandeja's job is to answer a lob without surrendering the net — it preserves position, it doesn't end the point. No backhand version — move your feet to take it as a forehand, or retreat and lob.
Top-down, your half (net at top, you defend the bottom). Each shaded circle is the court a player can actually reach in time — about 2.5m. The whole argument is just coverage: one player at the net seals only half its width; two seal the whole wall. The same soft cross-court ball is drawn into both — it dies in the open mid-court on the left, and is volleyed on the right.
Read it straight off the circles: with one player up, only half the net is inside anyone's reach — a soft cross-court drive goes through the open half into the mid-court, where the net player is too far in front and the back player too far behind. Two players up put the whole net width inside reach, so the same ball is just a volley. One-up-one-back trades a guaranteed soft hole for the half of your offense you gave away. It's a transitional state, not a home.
A fair objection — "both-up gets lobbed too, so how is the lob a weakness of one-up-one-back?" It isn't — and that's the honest correction. The lob threatens any net presence, and one-up-one-back actually covers the deep lob better (someone's already back). So the lob is not where the split formation loses. The real differences are: (1) what happens after the lob — when both-up is lobbed you retreat together into a connected defence with no seam (and often you don't retreat at all: standing ~3m off the net you answer with a bandeja and hold), whereas in the split the front player was isolated and their net presence is simply wasted; (2) the shot that truly punishes the split is the driven / soft ball into the mid-court diagonal, not the lob — a lob goes over you, that ball goes between you; (3) you only ever have one player attacking, so your offence runs at half. Both-up is not lob-proof — it manages the lob (stand off the net, bandeja, retreat together); one-up-one-back solves the deep lob but pays with half-offence and the mid-court hole. Against opponents who only lob it feels fine; against opponents who drive and place, it bleeds.
Sources: Padel United — court positioning · The Padel School — moving as a pair · Padel&Tennis — doubles positioning · The Padel School — the bandeja
Side view, you facing the net (left). The ball's position relative to your head — not just its depth — picks the shot. Your contact authority drops as the ball moves back over and behind you.
The selector is ball-position, not just depth. A ball you can meet in front stays a bandeja or flat smash. Only once it drifts over or behind your head do the gancho and topspin/kick smash become right — they generate attack from a contact point where a flat smash can't. Past your shoulder, stop forcing it: let it go to the glass.