Padel: how many calories do you burn?

Tuesday evening, a 90-minute court booking with three friends: as you leave the club, your watch shows more than 700 kcal and the question pops up straight away, is dinner “free”? The number isn’t absurd, but it depends on three things: your weight, how intense the match was and how long you were actually playing.

To estimate energy expenditure, researchers use the MET (metabolic equivalent). One MET is the energy you burn at rest, about 1 kcal per kilo per hour, so an activity rated at 6 METs takes six times more energy than sitting still. The calculation fits on one line: kcal ≈ MET × weight (kg) × duration (h).

The hard part is choosing the right MET, and that’s where padel gets tricky. The 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities, the international reference, has no code dedicated to padel, and none for pickleball either. It does list close relatives: 4.5 METs for doubles tennis, 6 METs for doubles in the version taken from an older reference questionnaire, 6 METs for casual paddleball and 7 METs for racquetball. We chose 6 METs for a friendly match between regular players. That’s the doubles tennis value, the sport padel most resembles according to the research, and it sits slightly below the only direct oxygen measurement published for padel matches (about 6.9 METs in young high-level players).

Without an official code, the most reliable approach is to look at what happens on court. Several research teams, mostly in Spain, have fitted players with heart rate monitors, GPS units and sometimes portable gas analysers. A 2023 mini review sums up their results: whatever the level, average heart rate sits around 70 to 80 % of maximum, a moderate to vigorous intensity.

The only study that measured oxygen uptake during matches, by Carrasco and colleagues in 2011, followed twelve young high-level Spanish players. Their average uptake, about 24 ml of oxygen per kilo per minute, stayed below half of their maximal capacity. Converted, that’s close to 6.9 METs, or about 480 kcal per hour at 70 kg. Blood lactate stays low in every study, around 2 mmol/L: padel is a mainly aerobic effort made of short bursts and pauses, with roughly as much playing time as recovery time.

Skill level cuts both ways. Beginners often run more than they need to: the systematic review by Mellado-Arbelo and Baiget (2022) found that distance covered and movement speed decrease as the level goes up, because better players position themselves well and let the glass do the work. But beginners also spend a lot of time picking up balls, retaking serves and chatting between points, which pulls the hourly average down.

Experienced players string together longer rallies with less dead time, and in competition the stakes push the heart rate up. The official rules actually limit breaks: 20 seconds between points, 90 seconds at changeovers and 2 minutes between sets. In a game with friends, those breaks tend to stretch without anyone timing them.

It’s the most common question, and the answer depends on which tennis you mean. The studies that compared the two sports head to head conclude that padel looks a lot like doubles tennis. In the Australian study by Armstrong and colleagues, twelve players spent an hour each playing padel, singles tennis and doubles tennis: singles produced the highest heart rate, distance covered and physical load, while padel and doubles stayed close to each other. Padel did, however, have the longest effective playing time, with more volleys, smashes and lobs.

A 2025 Lithuanian study of national-level players points the same way: 124 beats per minute on average in padel against 129 in doubles, and about 300 metres less covered in 40 minutes. That doesn’t make padel a “lite” version of tennis: it’s a different way of moving, with more shots and lateral steps and fewer sprints. To compare with a continuous effort, our guide to calories burned running gives the numbers by pace.

The tables above show gross calories: they include what your body would have burned anyway sitting on the sofa. To know what padel really adds to your day, you need to subtract that resting MET. The formula becomes (MET − 1) × weight × duration: for 90 minutes of friendly padel at 70 kg, that’s about 525 net kcal instead of 630.

The second correction is time. A 90-minute booking includes the warm-up, drink breaks, picking up balls and sometimes the post-match chat. Count the time the match is actually being played, not the length of the slot. Net expenditure is what matters for a calorie deficit: if you “eat back” the gross number from an overestimated session, your planned deficit melts away without you noticing.

Watches estimate energy expenditure from heart rate and wrist movement. In padel, the racket arm moves constantly, accelerations are short and heart rate rises in spurts: all tricky situations for an algorithm. A Stanford University study tested seven watches and fitness bands on 60 people: none estimated energy expenditure within 20 % error, and median error ranged from 27 to 93 % depending on the device.

If your watch shows far more than our tables for your weight, say 900 kcal for an hour of friendly padel at 70 kg, trust the order of magnitude in the table instead. Also check whether it shows active or total calories: our guide to Apple Watch calories explains the difference. Pick a padel workout profile if your watch has one, tennis if not, and keep your weight up to date in the settings, since it carries the most weight in the calculation.

An hour of friendly padel burns about 420 kcal for a 70 kg person, roughly 6 kcal per kilo of body weight. Count 630 kcal for 90 minutes and 840 kcal for 2 hours, less for a relaxed game and a little more for a hard-fought one. Since the 2024 Compendium has no padel code, these numbers rely on doubles tennis and on field studies, which put padel on a par with doubles and below singles tennis. For your daily balance, use net calories and the time you actually played: 525 kcal rather than 630 for 90 minutes at 70 kg. If you have a heart condition, elbow or knee pain, or you’re coming back to sport after a long break, ask a doctor before piling on the matches.