Is pickleball good exercise?
Yes, for the players who have been measured. In a 2023 study from the University of Manitoba, 53 recreational players wore heart-rate watches and accelerometers while they played, for one to two hours each. Their heart rate averaged about 111 beats a minute, around 70% of their predicted maximum, and more than 70% of their playing time fell in the moderate to vigorous heart-rate zones. The authors call both singles and doubles moderate- to vigorous-intensity activity.
That is the kind of activity the World Health Organization asks every adult for: 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, or a mix. An evening of pickleball counts towards those minutes.
Read the figures with the players in mind. Their average age was 62, and a 2024 scoping review of 27 pickleball studies in adults found evidence of health and fitness benefits in older players and called for more research on the sport's effect on younger ones. How hard the same game is for a fit 30-year-old has barely been measured.
What a game leaves out
The WHO also asks adults for muscle-strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week. Our view is that a game of pickleball is not built for that, though it does something for legs that start from little: in a 2021 study with no control group, 20 previously inactive adults aged 50 to 75 played three one-hour sessions a week for six weeks and jumped 11% higher, while their grip strength did not change. In a small 2025 study, six recreational players with an average age of about 40 played fifteen 8-minute singles games with rests between them, and afterwards they jumped higher, not lower. The authors suggest the rests were enough, or that singles pickleball may not work the leg muscles hard enough to tire them. Both samples are very small, so read them as hints, not findings.
Our view: the court looks after your heart rate and your step count. Strength is the part a plan adds.
Singles or doubles: does it matter?
For your heart, barely. For how much you move, yes. The same study measured 22 players in singles and 31 in doubles:
| Measure | Singles (22 players) | Doubles (31 players) |
|---|---|---|
| Mean heart rate | 111.6 beats a minute | 111.5 beats a minute |
| Share of predicted maximum heart rate | 70.3% | 71.2% |
| Playing time in moderate to vigorous heart-rate zones | Over 70% | Over 70% |
| Playing time counted as moderate by movement | 80.5% | 50.4% |
| Steps an hour | 3,322 | 2,791 |
Heart rate was almost identical in the two formats. What changed was movement: singles players took about 530 more steps an hour, and the accelerometers counted 80.5% of their time as moderate activity against 50.4% in doubles. These were two different groups, so the comparison is between groups, not within players.
Our view: play the format you enjoy and will keep playing. If you want more running about from the same hour, singles gives it.
What does the plan do for pickleball?
Smash Coach is a fitness app for adults who play pickleball alongside everything else in their week. Its coach is AI, not a person. Setting pickleball up takes two steps:
- On You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD and pick pickleball (add a sport).
- Choose Fixed days and tap the days you play, since each day you pick is one session a week, or Flexible, set how many times a week you usually play, and let the app pick the days around your other sports and classes. Then set your usual session length and tap Save (sport settings).
At the top of pickleball's settings is a line about what the sport does to your body; with Pro or during your trial, that is what your coach is working around.
With Pro or during your trial, your coach then plans strength, conditioning and mobility sessions around your games and everything else in your week. Change pickleball's days or length and save, and your plan is rebuilt around the new shape of your week. It is rewritten when something real changes, never on a timer (when your plan changes). On the free plan, pickleball's own sessions still go on its days, but your coach is paused, so the rest of your plan stays as it is.
It is not a pickleball coach in the court sense. It does not teach the dink, the third-shot drop or play at the kitchen line, and it keeps no scores or ratings. For your strokes, a qualified pickleball coach is the right person. HYROX is the race you can add today, with ATHX, DEKA, GYMRACE and running races coming soon, and there is no tournament event.
What happens to games you did not plan?
When you have played a game that was not in your plan, log it. Tap the plus at the top of Home or Agenda, choose to log a past session, pick pickleball and the day, then set how long you played and how hard it felt on the one to ten effort slider. Under ANYTHING FOR YOUR COACH, add what the numbers cannot say, then tap Log session (log a workout you already did).
It joins your history and counts towards what your coach knows about you, while the week ahead is left alone. If you know about a game before it happens, Add upcoming session puts one session on one day, and a card shows what it does to your week before you commit. A game you now play every week belongs in pickleball's settings as one of its days.
Pickleball articles
- HYROX and pickleball: for players who also race, who the pickleball injury figures are really about and where race training meets the court.
- Tournament weekend: preparing for a day or a weekend of matches in pickleball and the other racket sports, staying warm between matches and the days after.
Every other sport, and how long a match tires you, is on the sports page.
Around a game, in the app
In the gym, workout mode takes you through a session one step at a time, counting your sets and rest, and runs a move done on each side as a left step and then a right step. It works on the free plan. 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 (exercise illustrations).
If something hurts, report an injury or a fatigue flag, from Cleared to Serious, and with Pro or during your trial your plan is rebuilt around what you report. It is not a medical service: it points you to a physio or a doctor.