Is there a padel gym programme with evidence behind it?
Not yet. In their 2022 review of padel research, Sánchez-Alcaraz and Courel-Ibáñez put it plainly: there are no studies to date examining the effectiveness of strength and conditioning programmes in padel players. Four years on, Goossens and colleagues, setting out a review of padel injury prevention, noted that padel still has no consensus guidelines or official prevention protocols from the International Padel Federation or national federations, unlike the federations of tennis and football. Any padel gym programme you read, this one included, borrows from general strength research and from what padel is measured to demand.
Padel players are also missing from the injury trials, yet those trials hold the strongest general evidence for strength training in sport. Lauersen and colleagues pooled 25 trials and 26,610 people across many sports, 11 of the trials in adolescents, and found strength training cut sports injuries to under a third, while stretching showed no benefit. Their 2018 follow-up, six trials in 7,738 people aged 12 to 40, found that more strength training volume went with lower risk.
For what to lift, the 2026 ACSM position stand pulls together 137 systematic reviews in healthy adults. Strength gains were greater with heavier loads, 80% of one-rep max or more across 2 to 3 sets; power improved with moderate loads of 30 to 70% lifted fast; and taking sets to momentary fatigue did not consistently change outcomes. The padel review adds two pointers of its own. It describes a game of short sprints, most of them forwards or sideways, and it cites a study that found poor dynamic balance at both high and low playing levels, concluding that lower-limb strengthening and balance exercises seem advisable.
In our view, that comes to ordinary strength training with a padel slant:
- One big lift for the legs. A trap-bar deadlift or squat, heavy enough that 4 to 6 reps leaves only one or two in the tank: the 80%-plus loads the ACSM ties to strength.
- Single-leg and side-to-side work. Split squats, step-ups and lateral lunges, for a sport played in short sideways bursts off one leg.
- Calves and balance. Calf raises with a straight and a bent knee, and single-leg balance, the pairing the padel review points at.
- A trunk that resists rotation. Pallof presses, side planks and carries.
- A pull, a press and your grip. A row or pull-up, a dumbbell or landmine press, and wrist curls or carries for the forearm that holds the racket.
- Something fast. A few jumps or medicine-ball throws at the start of a session, while you are fresh, for the power the ACSM links to moving a load fast.
Gym before or after a padel match: the gap decides
Either order can work, in our view; the gap is what decides. Pooling 43 studies of healthy adults, Schumann and colleagues found that adding aerobic work left gains in maximal strength and muscle size intact. Explosive strength, the push-off that gets you to a lob, was held back, and significantly so only when the two were done within 20 minutes of each other, not when they were at least three hours apart. Those studies used mostly cycling and running, never padel, so treat the three hours as a direction. The wider science of mixing the two is on running and lifting.
Playing first has a cost of its own. Sporer and Wenger had 16 men lift 4, 8 and 24 hours after aerobic exercise: leg press repetitions were down at 4 and 8 hours and back to normal at 24, and the authors judged the impairment to be localized to the muscles the aerobic work had used. Lifting straight after a match was not tested, but in our view it is a reason to keep a post-padel session to the upper body.
Effort counts as much as timing. Morán-Navarro and colleagues gave ten resistance-trained men a squat and bench press load they could lift ten times. Done as 3 sets of 10 to failure, it flattened their jumps and bar speed more than the same 30 reps done as 6 sets of 5, and recovery took up to 24 to 48 hours; both sets-of-five versions recovered significantly faster. In our view, that is the case for stopping short on a padel day: what failure took away was the jump and the speed a match asks for.
Lift early, play late, and the three-hour gap looks after itself. Stop each set while the bar still moves quickly, and leave pull-ups, carries and wrist work for another day, because the racket arm plays tonight. Heavy legs get a day of their own.
Where does the heavy session go in a match week?
As far from your next match as the week allows. Padel is lighter on the heart than tennis, squash or badminton, by the heart rates the 2022 review summarises, but the same review describes recreational players playing 2 to 3 times a week for 60 to 120 minutes a time, all year round. That is real training, and the gym has to fit around it. How hard a match is as exercise is on is padel cardio.
Two findings set the spacing. Heavy sets taken to failure needed 24 to 48 hours to recover from in Morán-Navarro's lifters, so in our view the heaviest session belongs where it has longer than that to clear before a match that matters to you. And a match leaves fatigue that outlasts the night: pooling 77 studies of footballers, Silva and colleagues found hamstring strength, physical performance and muscle soreness still impaired 72 hours after a match. Nobody has measured the same after padel, so take it as a reason for an easy day after your harder match, not as a padel figure.
Put together, in our view: the heaviest session goes as far from your next match as the week allows, once an easy day has followed a hard match; lighter upper-body or trunk work can sit closer; and the day before a match carries nothing heavy. That last day has a page of its own, gym the day before a match, where a short, light, familiar session is named the safe default for adults. A weekend with several matches in it is a different week again: training around a tournament weekend.
What does padel load most?
Two sources shape the table below. A review of eight studies ranked the elbow first, then the knee, the shoulder and the lower back; a survey of 364 Chilean league players put the ankle and foot first, the shoulder and the elbow level behind it, then the knee. They are snapshots in which players recall past injuries, most over the previous six to twelve months, so they show where padel players get hurt, not why, and what they link to injury is an association, not a cause.
| Area | What surveys report | Exercise families that train it | If it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elbow and forearm | The most common injury site across eight studies of 2,022 players (Dahmen 2023); 15.2% of injuries in 364 Chilean league players, 85.7% of them coming on gradually (Belmar-Arriagada 2025). | Grip and forearm work: wrist curls and reverse wrist curls with a light dumbbell, carries, rows and pull-ups. | Have a physio or a doctor check it before you load it. This table is not a treatment plan. |
| Shoulder | Third after the elbow and the knee across the same eight studies (Dahmen 2023); 15.2% of injuries in the Chilean survey (Belmar-Arriagada 2025). | Pulling and pressing: rows, pulldowns, a dumbbell or landmine press, band external rotations. | See a physio or a doctor before heavy pressing or overhead shots. |
| Ankle and foot | The most common region in the Chilean survey, 18.5% of injuries, most of them sudden (Belmar-Arriagada 2025). | Calf raises with a straight and a bent knee, single-leg balance, side-to-side lunges. | See a physio or a doctor before you play or lift on it. |
| Knee | Second only to the elbow across the eight studies (Dahmen 2023); 13.6% of injuries in the Chilean survey (Belmar-Arriagada 2025). | Squats, split squats, step-ups, Romanian deadlifts. | See a physio or a doctor if it hurts during or after play. |
Strength work for an area is training, not treatment. If an area already hurts, or pain lingers after you play, have a physio or a doctor look at it before you load it. Finding out what is wrong, and what to do about it, is their job; this page only covers training.
How many matches a week can your elbow take?
No study gives a safe number. Three surveys asked recreational players how much they played and whether they had been injured, and they point different ways:
- 3.5 to 5 hours a week went with more injury. Among 127 Italian recreational players, Thomas and colleagues found that playing 3.5 to 5 hours a week raised the probability of injury, along with a round racket and the racket's weight.
- Sessions a week were not linked to injury. Among 80 Spanish recreational players, Priego Quesada and colleagues found that how many sessions a week people played was not associated with an injury in the past year. Wearing padel-specific shoes was, the kind of link a snapshot can turn up without showing a cause.
- Matches a week did not differ. Among the 364 Chilean league players in Belmar-Arriagada's survey, the number of matches a week did not differ between players injured in the previous six months and those who were not.
None of the three followed players as they added matches, and all of them relied on memory, so they cannot settle the question.
In our view: add padel one night at a time, and hold each step for a few weeks before the next. When you add a night, keep your gym work steady rather than raising both at once. And if pain lingers after you play, or comes back every time, see a physio or a doctor before you add anything.
Playing tennis instead, or as well? The same question for that sport is answered on can you play tennis every day.
Does the gym stop in season?
For most club players there is no off-season to stop for: the 2022 review describes recreational padel as kept up all year. So the useful question is how little gym work holds your strength while padel has the evenings.
One answer comes from football. Rønnestad and colleagues followed 14 professional footballers who had strength trained twice a week through a 10-week preseason, splitting them into two in-season groups of seven. Over the first 12 weeks of the season, a weekly strength session held their strength and 40 m sprint gains; a session every second week saw both fall. Neither group's jump height changed significantly. Seven professionals a group, in another sport: it shows strength can be held on little, not what a padel player should do.
The ACSM position stand separates keeping from building. It found progression is not necessary to get the benefits of strength training, and that overload is likely needed only by those seeking continued progress. In our view, a month packed with league fixtures is one to repeat your weights, and a quiet month is the one to add to them.
A sample padel week around two match nights
Here is one way to lay out a week with a Tuesday social game and a Thursday league match, each placement tied to the study behind it. The league match is the harder of the two.
| Day | Session | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Rest, or 20 to 30 easy minutes: a walk, easy cycling or mobility | Tuesday's game is tomorrow. A rest day or an easy half hour keeps your legs fresh for it; heavy sets to failure took Morán-Navarro's lifters 24 to 48 hours to recover from. |
| Tuesday | Morning or lunchtime: upper body and trunk, about 30 minutes: a light chest-supported dumbbell row, a dumbbell or landmine press, a Pallof press and a side plank, 2 to 3 sets each, one or two reps short of failure. No pull-ups, carries or wrist work today. Evening: social padel. | Social padel tonight, so this is the day gym and court share. A morning or lunchtime session puts well over three hours between them, past the window in which Schumann's analysis found explosive strength held back. Upper body and trunk spare your legs, and pull-ups, carries and wrist work wait for Saturday because the racket arm plays tonight. |
| Wednesday | Rest, or easy mobility | Tomorrow is the league match. Nothing to failure the day before it (Morán-Navarro). |
| Thursday | League match | The harder match of the week. Count it as training, not as a night off from it. |
| Friday | A 20 to 30 minute walk, an easy ride or mobility, or a day off | The day after the harder match. In footballers, hamstring strength, physical performance and soreness were still impaired 72 hours after a match (Silva). Nobody has measured this after padel, so treat it as caution, not a padel figure. |
| Saturday | Strength, the heaviest of the week, about 45 to 50 minutes: 3 x 3 jumps or medicine-ball throws first, then trap-bar deadlift or squat 3 x 4 to 6, split squat 3 x 6 a side, lateral lunge 2 x 8 a side, calf raises 3 x 10 to 12, wrist curls and reverse wrist curls 2 x 12 to 15, a farmers carry. One or two reps short of failure throughout. | Two days after Thursday's league match and three before Tuesday's game. That is still inside the 72 hours measured after football, so if Thursday left your legs sore, drop the jumps and a set from each lift today. It is well past the 24 to 48 hours sets to failure needed (Morán-Navarro), even if a set goes further than planned. Jumps go first, while you are fresh. |
| Sunday | Rest, or an easy walk | A day off after the heaviest session of the week. Monday stays easy too, so Tuesday's game gets fresh legs. |
New to the gym, or to some of these exercises? Start lighter and build them in across a week or two. Cheung and colleagues, reviewing the soreness that follows unfamiliar work, list less joint range, less shock absorption and less peak torque among its effects on performance, and they recommend bringing in eccentric or novel exercise gradually over 1 or 2 weeks. Stiff legs are a poor way to start a league night.
If padel shares your week with race training, the HYROX and padel crossover covers where the two meet. What Smash Coach plans for padel players, and what it leaves out, is on the padel hub.
Add padel under You and tap it to open its settings. If your league fixes the nights, choose Fixed days and pick them: each day you pick is one session a week. If you book games week by week, Flexible lets the app pick the days, and when a booking lands somewhere else you can move the session: a session you move stays where you put it, and nothing else in your week changes. Set how long you usually play. With Pro or during your trial, your coach plans your gym sessions around your padel. See sport settings and move, copy or delete a session.
That screen also has Coach warm-up and cool-down, which puts a short warm-up before your padel and a cool-down after it. With Pro or during your trial, your coach writes them when it plans that part of your week.
In the gym, tap START WORKOUT and workout mode leads you through the session a step at a time, counting your sets and your rest and keeping the screen awake. One-leg work such as Saturday's split squats comes up as a LEFT step and then a RIGHT step. Workout mode is part of the free plan too. See train with workout mode. Exercises are shown as clean illustrations: the movement on a plain background, with nothing extra, so you see what to do at a glance. The team is exploring video and moving images. See exercise illustrations.
Racket elbow grumbling, or a shoulder, or anything else? Find LIMITATIONS on Home, add it, and move its slider to where it sits between Cleared and Serious. With Pro or during your trial, that rebuilds your plan straight away. Your coach keeps your training conservative around what you report, but it is a training tool and not a medical service: it does not say what is wrong or suggest treatment, and it tells you to see a physio or a doctor. See report an injury.