Padel is growing faster than almost any other sport in the UK. New courts are opening every week, from purpose-built facilities in Manchester to converted tennis clubs in Bristol. Millions of people are picking up a racket for the first time. And with that surge in players comes a surge in injuries that could have been avoided.
The sport looks gentle enough from the sidelines. The court is enclosed, the ball moves at manageable speeds, and rallies feel social rather than brutal. But padel is physically demanding in ways that catch beginners off guard. The quick lateral movements, the repeated overhead shots, the glass wall sprints, all put stress on joints, tendons, and muscles that many new players have not prepared for.
The good news is that most padel injuries follow recognisable patterns. Physios who work with racket sport players see the same problems again and again. That means prevention is straightforward if you know what to look for and take the right steps before your body starts sending you signals you cannot ignore.
This post covers the injuries that padel players in the UK report most often, explains why each one happens, and gives you a practical plan to stay on court all year.
Why Padel Players Get Injured More Than They Expect
Padel has a reputation for being accessible. You can walk onto a court having never played and start enjoying yourself within twenty minutes. That low barrier to entry is one of the sport's great strengths. It is also the reason so many players end up nursing sore elbows or strained ankles after a few weeks of regular play.
Accessibility does not mean low physical demand. A typical padel session involves hundreds of direction changes, dozens of rotational shots, and sustained bouts of sharp acceleration over a short court. The enclosed space compresses the game. You have less time to react than you do in tennis. You are constantly decelerating hard to retrieve shots off the glass. Your body absorbs that stress whether or not you have warmed up, stretched, or built the relevant strength.
Most new players come from a background in no sport, or from sports that use different movement patterns. A runner who takes up padel has good cardiovascular fitness but may have no lateral movement strength at all. A gym-goer with strong compound lifts may find their tendons are not conditioned for the repetitive impact of racket sport. Both are at risk.
Age matters too. The UK padel boom has attracted a large cohort of players in their thirties, forties, and fifties. These players often have the competitiveness and the will to train hard. Their tendons and ligaments recover more slowly than they did at twenty-two. They need longer warm-ups and smarter training programmes, and many are not doing either.
The Most Common Padel Injuries in the UK
Tennis Elbow (Lateral Epicondylitis)
Despite the name, tennis elbow is one of the most common complaints among padel players in the UK. It affects the tendons on the outside of the elbow, where the forearm muscles attach to the bone. When those tendons are overloaded repeatedly, tiny tears develop. Pain builds on the outer elbow and can spread down the forearm. Gripping a racket becomes uncomfortable. Eventually it becomes impossible to play without wincing.
Padel puts particular stress on the elbow because of the bandeја and vibora shots, both of which involve a snapping wrist and forearm action. Players who have not built the forearm strength to support those movements, or who use incorrect technique, are loading the tendon beyond what it can handle. Poor grip size on the racket makes the problem worse. A grip that is too small forces you to grip harder, which increases tension all the way up the chain.
The condition develops gradually. Many players ignore the early signs: a dull ache after play, stiffness the morning after a session. By the time the pain arrives during play, the tendon is already significantly irritated. Recovery at that stage takes weeks or months, not days.
Prevention starts with technique. If you are new to padel, book a lesson or two with a qualified coach in Edinburgh, Leeds, or wherever you are based. Learning the right forearm mechanics early saves your tendons from years of cumulative damage. Combine that with targeted forearm strengthening exercises: eccentric wrist extensions with a light dumbbell are the most evidence-based option available. Three sets of fifteen repetitions, three times a week, done slowly on the lowering phase, build tendon resilience over time.
Check your grip size. Your middle finger should just touch the base of your thumb when you hold the racket. If there is a large gap, the grip is too big. If your fingers overlap your palm significantly, the grip is too small. Most padel shops can help you check this in under a minute.
Shoulder Injuries: Rotator Cuff Strains and Impingement
The shoulder is a complex joint held together by a group of four muscles called the rotator cuff. In padel, overhead shots place repeated demand on these muscles. The smash, the lob defence, and any shot where the arm goes above shoulder height all load the rotator cuff. Over time, without adequate strength and mobility in the shoulder, strains and impingement develop.
Impingement occurs when the tendons of the rotator cuff are pinched between the bones of the shoulder during arm elevation. It produces a sharp or aching pain, often felt at the front or outer part of the shoulder. It gets worse with repeated overhead activity and better with rest. The problem is that most players rest briefly and then return to the same load that caused the problem, so the cycle repeats.
Poor posture is a contributing factor that is easy to overlook. Many padel players spend their working hours sitting at desks with rounded shoulders. That position tightens the chest muscles and weakens the upper back. When they then play an overhead sport, the shoulder is not sitting in an optimal position for the forces being applied to it. The risk of impingement rises sharply.
Prevention requires two things: mobility work and shoulder strengthening. On the mobility side, spend five minutes before each session on chest openers, shoulder circles, and thoracic spine rotations. These are not glamorous exercises, but they change the position of the shoulder and reduce the chance of impingement significantly. For strengthening, face pulls with a resistance band, external rotation exercises, and prone Y-T-W raises are the exercises most commonly recommended by physiotherapists working with racket sport players.
If you already feel a catch or ache in your shoulder during overhead shots, stop playing through it. Get an assessment from a physio before it turns into a structural problem that requires months off court.
Ankle Sprains
Ankle sprains are the most acute injury in padel. They happen fast and they are memorable. A player changes direction, lands awkwardly after jumping for an overhead, or catches a foot on the court line, and the ankle rolls outward. The lateral ligaments stretch or tear. Swelling appears within minutes. Weight-bearing becomes painful.
The padel court surface and the enclosed space both contribute to ankle injury risk. Players move into positions they would not reach on a larger court, often at full stretch. They push off from unusual angles when playing out of the glass. Footwear that is worn, poorly fitted, or designed for a different surface provides inadequate support for these movements.
A previous ankle sprain is the single biggest risk factor for a future one. If you have sprained an ankle before and did not fully rehabilitate it, the proprioceptive function of that ankle, its ability to detect position and react quickly, is compromised. You are significantly more likely to sprain it again.
Prevention comes down to three things: footwear, proprioception training, and ankle strengthening. Wear shoes designed for padel or for indoor court sports. Running shoes do not provide the lateral support the sport demands. On proprioception, single-leg balance work is your starting point. Stand on one leg for thirty seconds, eyes open. Progress to eyes closed, then to single-leg balance on an unstable surface. Do this daily and the ankle's reaction speed improves measurably within a few weeks.
For strength, resistance band exercises around the ankle in all four planes of movement build the muscular support that protects the ligaments when your foot lands in an unexpected position.
Knee Pain: Patellar Tendinopathy and Medial Knee Strain
Knee problems in padel players usually fall into one of two categories. Patellar tendinopathy affects the tendon running below the kneecap, where the quadriceps force is transmitted to the shin bone. Medial knee strain involves the soft tissue on the inside of the knee, typically stressed during the lateral cutting movements that padel demands constantly.
Patellar tendinopathy produces a pain that is easy to locate: right at the base of the kneecap or along the tendon below it. It is worse after sitting for long periods, worse when you start activity, and sometimes improves slightly once you are warmed up, only to return worse after you finish. Players often describe it as stiffness that becomes an ache that eventually becomes a sharp pain if they continue playing without addressing it.
The cause is load that exceeds the tendon's capacity. Players who ramp up their sessions quickly, going from once a week to four or five times a week within a month, are the most at risk. So are players with weak quadriceps, tight hip flexors, or poor single-leg stability.
Medial knee strain is more common in players who lack hip abductor strength. When the hips are weak, the knee collapses inward during landing and direction changes. The medial structures of the knee absorb force they were not designed to manage. Discomfort builds on the inside of the knee, sometimes accompanied by swelling.
For both conditions, a graduated loading programme for the quadriceps is central to recovery and prevention. Slow, controlled single-leg leg press or Spanish squat work, done with progressive resistance, rebuilds tendon capacity without overloading it. Hip strengthening, particularly gluteal and abductor work, protects the medial knee by keeping the whole leg in better alignment during court movements.
Lower Back Pain
Lower back pain is the complaint that padel players mention least, partly because it feels like a general life issue rather than a sports injury. Many players assume their back hurts because they sit at a desk all day. That is often true. But padel adds significant rotational load to a spine that may already be stiff and under-supported.
The rotational shots in padel, particularly the vibora and the bandeja, involve fast spinal rotation under load. If the core muscles that stabilise the spine during that rotation are weak, the passive structures, the discs and facet joints, take the strain. Over time, this produces the familiar pattern of back pain that is fine on Monday, tight on Wednesday, and genuinely sore by the weekend after a Saturday game.
Players who have a history of lower back problems need to be particularly careful about court preparation. A proper dynamic warm-up that includes hip mobility work and controlled rotation reduces the load on the spine during play. Core stability exercises such as dead bugs, pallof press holds, and side planks build the muscular support the spine needs without the compressive load of heavy gym lifts.
Technique plays a role here too. Players who generate rotation power from their lower back rather than their hips and thoracic spine are putting the lumbar spine under avoidable stress. Again, a session with a qualified coach can fix this quickly and save you months of physiotherapy down the line.
The Warm-Up Problem
Ask ten padel players what their warm-up routine looks like, and eight of them will describe arriving at the court five minutes before the session starts and hitting a few slow forehands before the game begins. This is not a warm-up. It is a courtesy to your opponent while your body remains cold and your tissues remain stiff.
A useful padel warm-up takes ten to twelve minutes and has a clear structure. Start with two or three minutes of light aerobic work: a brisk walk or jog to raise your heart rate and increase blood flow to the muscles. Follow this with dynamic stretching targeted at the movements padel demands: leg swings, hip circles, arm circles, lateral shuffles, and thoracic rotations. Avoid static stretching at this stage. Holding a stretch on a cold muscle does not prepare it for explosive movement and may reduce power output temporarily.
The last phase of the warm-up should be sport-specific. Hit gentle shots and progressively increase intensity. Move through the shot types you will use in the session, starting slowly and building speed and effort over five minutes. By the time the game starts at full pace, your body has rehearsed the movements, your joints are lubricated, and your nervous system is primed.
The cool-down matters almost as much. Five minutes of gentle movement and static stretching after a session helps the body transition out of exercise mode and supports recovery. Players who cool down consistently report less next-day stiffness and fewer chronic injuries over a full season of play. Courts in Cardiff, Birmingham, and Guildford are busy all evening, so it is tempting to rush off as soon as your session ends. Take the time. Your body will thank you for it the following morning.
Training Load: The Biggest Factor Most Players Ignore
The research on sports injuries consistently points to the same finding: rapid increases in training load are responsible for a large proportion of overuse injuries. This is as true in padel as it is in running, cricket, or any other repetitive sport.
The body adapts to training stress over time. Tendons, in particular, adapt slowly. It takes weeks for a tendon to strengthen in response to a new load. If you increase the amount or intensity of your padel before those adaptations have occurred, you are asking tissues to handle forces they are not yet equipped for. Injury follows.
A useful rule is to increase your total weekly playing time by no more than ten per cent from one week to the next. So if you play two hours this week, play no more than two hours and twelve minutes next week. This feels frustratingly slow when you are enjoying the sport and want to play more. But it keeps you on court. Injuries keep you off it for weeks or months, and the net result of trying to progress too quickly is almost always less total playing time over a year, not more.
Rest days are not optional extras. They are when adaptation actually happens. The stress of training creates the signal; rest allows the body to respond to it. Players who play every day without adequate recovery quickly accumulate fatigue in their tendons and joints. The signs are subtle at first: a bit more stiffness in the morning, slower recovery between sessions, a nagging ache that never quite goes away. These are early warning signals. Take them seriously and reduce your load before the problem becomes structural.
The Role of Strength Training
Padel players who do supplementary strength training get injured less than those who only play padel. This finding is consistent across racket sports research and aligns with what sports physiotherapists see in clinic every week. Stronger muscles protect joints and tendons. Better trained movement patterns reduce the risk of the awkward landings and over-rotations that cause acute injuries.
You do not need to spend hours in the gym to get the protective benefit. Two sessions per week of around thirty to forty minutes each will make a meaningful difference. The key areas to target for padel players are the rotator cuff and shoulder stabilisers, the forearm flexors and extensors, the core stabilisers, the quadriceps and hamstrings, the hip abductors and gluteals, and the ankle stabilisers.
Many of these exercises can be done at home with a resistance band and a light set of dumbbells. You do not need a gym membership or specialist equipment. What you do need is consistency. A routine done three days out of four weeks does not build resilience. A routine done twice every week for a full year transforms the durability of your body.
If you are new to strength training, work with a personal trainer or physiotherapist for the first few sessions to make sure your technique is correct. Bad movement patterns in the gym create their own injury risks. Good technique makes every exercise more effective and keeps you safe.
Footwear: An Underrated Injury Prevention Tool
Padel shoes do not make headlines. They do not get the marketing attention that rackets and clothing receive. But the shoes you wear on a padel court have a direct impact on your injury risk, and many UK players are getting this wrong.
Padel courts in the UK use an artificial grass surface with sand infill. The grip requirements are different from a hard tennis court. Running shoes, which many beginners wear, have too much grip on padel surfaces. The foot grabs the surface during direction changes instead of allowing a small controlled slide, and the torsional stress travels up the chain into the knee and hip. Over time, or after one particularly sharp change of direction, something gives.
Padel-specific shoes are designed with a herringbone or modified herringbone outsole that provides the right balance of grip and slide for artificial grass. They also have reinforced lateral support to protect the ankle during side-to-side movement. The difference in how they feel on court is immediate and significant.
Replace your padel shoes when the outsole shows visible wear. A worn outsole no longer provides consistent grip, which means your foot can slip unexpectedly during play. It also no longer provides the support structures the shoe was designed to deliver. Most serious padel players replace their court shoes every six to nine months of regular play.
When to See a Physiotherapist
Many padel players in the UK wait far too long before getting professional advice on an injury. The typical pattern is: pain appears, player rests for a few days, pain reduces, player returns to play, pain returns, cycle repeats for several months. By the time they see a physio, the injury is deeply established and the road back is much longer than it needed to be.
Get a physiotherapy assessment if any of the following apply: pain that persists for more than two weeks despite rest, pain that returns every time you try to play, swelling around a joint that does not resolve within forty-eight hours after a session, or sharp pain during a specific movement that was not there before. These are not signs that you are being overly cautious. They are signs that the body needs support to recover properly.
A good sports physiotherapist will not just treat the painful area. They will look at the whole picture: your movement patterns, your strength imbalances, your training load, and your technique. They will give you a plan for returning to play and for preventing the same problem from recurring. The cost of two or three physiotherapy sessions is a fraction of the cost of six months off court, in money, fitness, and enjoyment.
Finding a physio with racket sport experience is worth the extra effort. A sports physio who plays padel or works regularly with racket sport players will understand the specific demands of the game and tailor their advice accordingly. Many padel clubs in cities like London, Manchester, and Edinburgh now have partnerships with local physiotherapy practices. Ask at the front desk if you are not sure where to start.
Nutrition, Sleep, and Recovery
Injury prevention is not only about what happens on or around the court. The quality of your recovery between sessions determines how well your body repairs itself and prepares for the next bout of stress.
Protein intake matters for tendon and muscle repair. Research suggests that adults who exercise regularly need between 1.6 and 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day to support recovery. Most recreational padel players in the UK fall short of this, particularly those who do not think of themselves as athletes and have not adjusted their diet to reflect their increased physical activity. You do not need protein supplements if you eat enough meat, fish, eggs, dairy, or plant-based alternatives across the day. But it is worth tracking your intake for a week or two to see where you stand.
Sleep is the most powerful recovery tool available, and it costs nothing. During deep sleep, the body releases growth hormone, repairs micro-damage in tendons and muscles, and consolidates the motor patterns learned during play. Adults who sleep fewer than seven hours a night consistently show higher injury rates in sports research. If you are playing padel three or four times a week and sleeping five or six hours, your injury risk is meaningfully elevated above what it needs to be.
Hydration during play is simpler than many players make it. Drink water before, during, and after your session. On court sessions typically last sixty to ninety minutes. For most healthy adults playing at recreational intensity in the UK climate, water is sufficient. On very hot days, an electrolyte drink can be useful. The signal that you need more fluid is straightforward: if you feel thirsty, drink. If your urine is dark yellow after a session, drink more next time.
A Practical Weekly Prevention Plan
Bringing all of this together, here is what an injury-aware padel player's week might look like. You play padel twice, let us say Tuesday evening and Saturday morning. On both days, you arrive ten minutes early and complete a full dynamic warm-up. You cool down for five minutes at the end of each session with gentle movement and static stretches targeting the hip flexors, calves, chest, and shoulders.
On two other days of the week, you do a thirty-minute strength routine focusing on the injury-prone areas described earlier. These sessions do not need to be in a gym. A resistance band and a mat in your living room will cover most of the exercises that matter for padel players. Consistency here is more valuable than intensity. You are building resilience, not competitive fitness.
You monitor your body honestly. If something aches during play, you note it and check whether it is still there the following session. If a soreness persists for more than two weeks, you book a physio appointment rather than playing through it. You increase your total padel time gradually, resisting the temptation to add two extra sessions in a week because you feel good and the courts are available.
You sleep seven to eight hours. You eat enough protein. You wear padel shoes on the court. None of this is complicated. None of it requires specialist knowledge or expensive equipment. What it requires is making conscious choices rather than defaulting to convenience.
The Bigger Picture
Padel's UK growth story is genuinely exciting. The sport gives people a reason to be active, a social outlet, and a competitive outlet all in one. It is bringing people back to sport who had drifted away from it. It is creating communities around courts in cities and market towns across the country.
But growth brings growing pains, in this case quite literally. The number of padel-related injuries presenting to physiotherapy practices across the UK has risen sharply alongside the number of courts. Many of those injuries were preventable. They resulted from players not warming up properly, training loads increasing too fast, technique errors that no one corrected early, and footwear that was wrong for the surface.
The players who stay on court longest are not the most talented or the fittest. They are the ones who treat their bodies as an investment rather than a resource to be spent. They warm up. They strengthen the right areas. They rest when the body asks for rest. They get advice early when something feels wrong.
Padel is a sport you can play well into your fifties, sixties, and beyond if you approach it intelligently. The sport's low barrier to entry is a strength. The ability to play it for decades is an even greater one. That longevity depends on the choices you make now, before the injuries arrive, not after.
Good equipment helps, but first and foremost take care of the body that plays the game. It is the only one you have.
