How hard does a match work your heart?
Marcos-Rivero and colleagues put heart-rate monitors on 52 amateur men, about 36 years old on average, across 13 doubles matches. Every player had at least a year of regular padel behind him, and three in four trained three or more times a week. The average match lasted 57 minutes and 152 points. Heart rate averaged about 147 beats a minute and peaked around 174. It climbed from set to set, and a third set, when there was one, was the longest, at about 28 minutes.
Two things that study did not measure. It reported no percentage of each player's maximum heart rate (the peak is simply the highest reached in the match) and no rating of how hard the match felt. So on its own it shows a heart rate held well up for most of an hour, not which intensity band that falls in. They were also all men, and all amateurs.
The figures relative to maximum come from older, smaller studies. A 2022 narrative review by Sánchez-Alcaraz and Courel-Ibáñez gathered them: during matches, mean oxygen uptake was about 40 to 50% of VO2max measured in a laboratory, and mean heart rate 140 to 160 beats a minute, 70 to 80% of maximum. The studies behind those numbers measured advanced, semi-professional and recreational players, and the oxygen figures came from 12 top-level male players aged about 16 and 17. So treat them as a rough guide, not as a measurement of adult club players.
The same review describes the shape of the work. Across professional and non-professional competition, a point lasts about 10 to 15 seconds and four to six strokes, with slightly more rest than play between points.
A match keeps your heart rate up for most of an hour, but the work arrives in points of 10 to 15 seconds with rest between them. That is cardio. It is not the same stimulus as a steady 40-minute run, and that difference comes up again below.
Does a match count towards the weekly guideline?
The World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines ask adults for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a mix of the two. Two details in them matter for padel.
First, bouts of any length now count. The older rule that activity had to come in blocks of at least 10 minutes was removed, so a match made of short points counts by its total. Second, the guideline gives a scale you can use on yourself: moderate activity is usually a 5 or 6 out of 10 of your own capacity, and vigorous a 7 or 8. The vigorous target, 75 to 150 minutes, is half the moderate one, so a vigorous minute counts roughly double.
In our view, a competitive club match of about an hour, played at the heart rates the amateur study measured, is moderate to vigorous for most club players. An hour at moderate effort covers 60 of the 150 minutes; at vigorous effort, 60 of the 75. A slow social game with long chats between points may not reach moderate at all. Your own rating, taken honestly at the end, is a good test.
The guideline has a second half that padel does not cover: muscle-strengthening activity on 2 or more days a week, at moderate or greater intensity and involving all the major muscle groups. Nothing we found shows that playing padel meets that part on its own.
Is padel as good a workout as tennis or badminton?
On average, in the players studied, it is a little lighter. The review that gave the 70 to 80% figure calls padel's values lower than those reported for tennis, squash and badminton.
A direct comparison points the same way and suggests why. Armstrong and colleagues had 12 players, 7 men and 5 women, play 60-minute simulated games of padel, singles tennis and doubles tennis on separate days. Heart rate, perceived exertion and physical load were highest in singles; padel looked more like doubles tennis, and blood lactate stayed low in all three. So the fair comparison for padel, which is played in pairs, is doubles tennis, not singles.
The 2024 Adult Compendium, which lists population averages for how hard activities are, has no entry for padel at all. It rates tennis singles at 8.0 METs and doubles at 6.0 or 4.5, depending on the entry, and badminton at 5.5 played socially and 7.0 played competitively. Moderate runs from 3.0 to 5.9 METs and vigorous from 6.0.
That also answers whether tennis counts as cardio: yes. Singles sits in the vigorous band. In veteran club men of about 45, heart rate in match play averaged around 149 beats a minute even though points filled only 22 to 24% of the time, and the authors concluded that, whatever the ability, it meets the ACSM recommendations for developing and maintaining cardiovascular fitness. Badminton singles measured harder still: 76% of VO2max in recreational men. More on each sport on the tennis and badminton pages.
| Sport and study | Who was measured | What it found |
|---|---|---|
| Padel, amateur matches (Marcos-Rivero, 2025) | 52 amateur men, about 36 years old, in 13 doubles matches | Matches of about 57 minutes and 152 points. Heart rate averaged about 147 beats a minute and peaked around 174. |
| Padel, studies gathered in a review (Sánchez-Alcaraz and Courel-Ibáñez, 2022) | Advanced, semi-professional and recreational players; the oxygen figures from 12 top-level male players aged about 16 and 17 | Mean heart rate 140 to 160 beats a minute, 70 to 80% of maximum. Oxygen uptake about 40 to 50% of VO2max. |
| Tennis, veteran club matches (Fernandez-Fernandez, 2009) | 20 men aged about 45: 10 advanced, 10 recreational | Heart rate in match play about 149 beats a minute. Points filled 22 to 24% of the time; 3.2 to 3.6 km covered in an hour. |
| Badminton, recreational singles (Deka, 2017) | 14 recreational men aged about 36 | 30 minutes of singles at 76% of VO2max and about 168 beats a minute. Classed by the authors as vigorous. |
| Compendium ratings (2024 Adult Compendium) | Population averages, not one group of players | Tennis singles 8.0 METs, doubles 6.0 or 4.5. Badminton social 5.5, competitive 7.0. No padel entry. Moderate is 3.0 to 5.9 METs, vigorous 6.0 and up. |
| The weekly guideline (WHO, 2020) | Adults | 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 of vigorous activity a week, or a mix, in bouts of any length. Plus muscle strengthening on 2 or more days. |
The groups differ in age, sex, level and method, so the same heart rate is not necessarily the same effort from one row to the next. What the rows agree on is that all three sports are real exercise for the people measured. The one direct comparison, Armstrong's, puts padel nearer doubles tennis than singles.
What does padel skip?
Two things, in our view.
Steady aerobic work. Padel is short points with rest between them, so it never asks you to hold one even effort for half an hour. The amateur matches raised heart rate for an hour, but in pieces.
Strength. The WHO counts muscle strengthening separately from aerobic minutes and asks for it on 2 or more days a week. The 2022 review also found no studies yet testing strength and conditioning programmes in padel players, so a padel player's gym plan borrows from general strength evidence.
In our view, a steady session (a run, a ride or a swim at an even pace you could talk through) and some gym work fill both gaps, and your matches already supply plenty of hard minutes. Where the gym fits around your match nights, and what to lift, is on the padel gym workout page. If padel shares your week with a race, HYROX and padel covers that pairing.
Is padel good for VO2 max?
Not yet tested, as far as we can find. We found no controlled trial that measured whether playing padel raises VO2max in recreational adults, and the 2022 review calls for exactly that: controlled trials of padel-based programmes in adults.
What exists is mostly snapshots. A study summarised in the review found that recreational adult women who played padel had better fitness, including cardiovascular capacity, than sedentary women. A snapshot cannot say which came first: fitter people may simply choose padel. And in matches, the top-level teenage players behind the review's oxygen figures worked at about 40 to 50% of their VO2max on average.
The WHO guidelines define aerobic activity as the large muscles moving rhythmically for a sustained period, and say it improves cardiorespiratory fitness. Whether padel's stop-start version moves VO2max has not been tested, so if VO2max is the goal, in our view do not count on padel alone to raise it.
Log padel and rate it
Whatever the studies say, your own matches are the numbers that matter for your week: how long you played and how hard it felt. More about padel and the app on the padel page.
Once padel is in your sports stack on You, tap it to set how it fits your week: Flexible, where the app picks the days, or Fixed days, where each day you pick is one session a week, plus your usual session length. With Pro or during your trial, your coach plans your other training around it. See sport settings.
Played a match that was not in your plan? Tap the plus at the top of Home or Agenda and choose Log past session: pick padel, the day, how long and how hard, and add a note under ANYTHING FOR YOUR COACH if it is worth saying. It goes into your history and what your coach knows; the week ahead is left alone. See log a workout you already did.
When a session is done, Mark done asks one question: how hard it felt, on a slider from one to ten, with an optional note. The help centre calls that rating the single strongest signal your coach has about how the plan is landing, so rate a long three-set match honestly, not generously. See mark a workout done, or undo it.