#285: Padel & Masculinity

"I want to be more masculine." Exploring why and what this actually means.

Aug 19, 2025

I’ve been playing a lot of Padel

I’m loving it.

I’ve not played sport for years.

I’ve ran, hiked, been to the gym, rowing. It’s all been gentle, mindful. It's all been about the process, you know - detaching from the outcome. How they tell us to do it in meditation…

Nothing competitive. I’ve not played games. I’ve not played sport. I’ve not been trying to win. That’s so Wolf of Wall Street. I’ve been after Peace and Love. Eastern philosophy, not Western culture.

But I’ve been playing Padel and I’ve been loving it. Because I’m loving competing, winning and losing.

I win, you lose.

There’s a primal desire in me there that is spoken to whist playing sport. It’s been dormant for a while. A desire to win and compete that feels really good and healthy to let breathe, or sweat. To shout “AGH!” when I hit the net. To fist pump “Vamos!” when I finally hit a much needed winner to save break point.

In the circles I run in and the books I read, this competitive nature has been tempered, or, worse, shamed. The meditations I listen to or poetry I read speak of the flow of water and sounds of the trees. They speak of ‘abundance’ and ‘enough’.

I understand why, I know that man’s greed and desire to win at all costs has harmed our health and our planet. Our competitive nature that drives capitalism has created the extractive economy we have that is harming our planet and making people run around on fumes feeling like there isn’t enough to go around. Our desire to win and fight creates world wars, death and destruction. It’s to blame for our attention economy, our over medicalised, over stimulated anxiety fraught hypochondria and dopamine drained neurosis that makes me wonder; are we all going mad? Why are the rivers running so low? What did I go on my phone for?

My philosophy is one of peace, abundance and love. We all have enough in business, in life, in love. It’s generative and expansive. I believe we’d be so much better off if we all moved more in that direction. If our politics and leadership was broadly less masculine, more feminine and generally more balanced.

So why do I want to feel more masculine and what on earth does that have to do with playing Padel?

Why do I want to smash the ball in exactly the spot I want it to go in and why do I want to see my opponent unable to get it back.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to destroy them (but I must be honest and say a small part of me really does). Mostly, I just want to win. And it’s not a feeling I’ve felt for a while.

If anything, it’s a feeling, that for a while, I thought was “bad” “negative” and “destructive”

Of course it can be. That’s why so many workplace environments are toxic and dangerous for employee mental health because people treat work like sport and try to win, clambering over each other in games of status and posturing. Ruthless management sees human beings as a commodity in the drive to “win” in business. This is played out in business, in politics, in war.

Yet, I feel called to revisit and rediscover my own competitive side. This part of me that wants to win, at all costs. And it feels.. masculine. I’m interested in it.

When I say masculine and feminine. I’m not saying men and women. I’m using these words to describe broad groupings of behaviour and traits (I don’t always find this massively helpful, but I think it’s important to begin to re-evaluate and reimagine masculinity and what’s associated with it, so that’s what I’m doing).

I have a sneaky sense that I’ve pushed lots of my “masculine” traits into the shadows. I’ve been letting my virtuous, gentle and nurturing sides dominate. I’ve leant back and said that I’ll “open myself up to life’s wisdom and let life’s waves take me to where I need to go.” Rather than pick up my hammer and anvil and chip away at life.

The side that picks a goal and says “I want that and I’ll do anything to get it”. I’ve shunned a little bit. This part of me, I’m saying, is masculine. The part that reaches, grasps, pushes.

So, back to Padel and why I believe it’s relevant.

I’m enjoying playing a game.
I’m enjoying doing that with friends,
I’m enjoying competing and the tactics of competition.
I am enjoying being precise, picking a spot and aiming for it.
I’m enjoying taking my anger out on something, not people, not myself - but a little round green ball that I can smash as hard as I want and all it’ll do it bounce back (or more likely hit the net).
I’m enjoying working back from a goal (winning) and figuring out how to do that.
I’m enjoying trying and failing, being in the arena.
I like that as a game it’s not all about power. It’s about precision.

I’m almost surprised. Surprised that this competitive part of me is rising up so strongly. Surprised that I want to be so “traditionally” masculine and dominate.

Yet I’m excited because this is important.

Nobody has a clue what healthy masculinity looks like. Most of the time, still, we hear masculinity and we associate it with toxicity. We think “boys will be boys”, we think of men bantering with each other and not being honest. We think of bullying and judgement.

We think of putting other people down and lifting up women’s skirts, smoking cigars, lifting weights and driving fast cars shooting guns. We think of men who believe it’s their god-given right do whatever they want and never face any consequences.

It bitterly disappoints me that what society currently believes to be “masculine” is actually just teenage boy behaviour that’s never grown up. As a 34 year old man it’s depressing to me and I long for more reputable male leaders with integrity that I can look up to in the world who don’t believe being a strong leader is putting others down, or searching constantly for scapegoats.

And somehow, that’s why playing Padel feels important. Re-discovering my “masculine” side is important because I truly believe we all need to re-learn these parts of ourselves and find something new.

(BTW I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with lifting weights and driving fast cars, or smoking cigars. I’m making the point that there exists a very narrow and shallow view of masculinity and this disappoints and enrages me)

What’s leadership without scapegoating, pillage and plunder?
What’s winning without breaking myself and breaking anyone else?
What’s masculinity today, for me?

I’m ready to find a new side of myself. I’m ready to find out how I win, without breaking. With grace. With integrity. With compassion and kindness. Way more Roger Federer, way less Donald Trump.

It’s something to do with my masculinity. It’s something to do with anger, competition and it’s definitely got some reason for fuelling my new Padel obsession.

Exploring this for me as a man, as a leader, as a human.

Cheers,
James x

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