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Your Elbow Isn’t Too Old for Padel. Your Bat and Your Hours Might Be Too Much for It.
The most common arm injury in padel is TENNIS ELBOW: pain on the outer elbow when you grip the bat, lift a kettle or shake hands. Most players can keep playing on a reduced load while it settles. Grip pain usually eases over 6 to 12 weeks of the right exercises, and full settling can take 6 to 12 months.
Three things drive it: a solid bat with no strings to absorb the hit, a head-heavy bat shape, and weekly court hours that climb faster than your tendon can adapt.
Wrists, fingers and thumbs take the rest, mostly from wall play, overheads, and a partner standing half a meter from your hands.
Get the elbow wrong in either direction and it costs you. Play through it at full load and a 3-month problem becomes a 12-month one. Stop completely and the tendon gets weaker, so it flares the week you come back.
The middle path is the one that works…and it’s mostly about the bat, the grip and the hours.
Why does padel cause tennis elbow?
- The bat is SOLID. A strung racket’s string bed deforms on contact. A padel bat’s foam-and-carbon face gives far less, so more of the impact travels into your forearm tendons. Most bats weigh around 340 to 375 grams.
- Shape moves the weight. Diamond bats carry the balance high in the head for power, and the lever acting on your elbow grows with it. Round bats sit lower, with a bigger sweet spot.
- Mishits twist the bat. On a small, hard face, an off-center hit rotates the bat in your hand, and your wrist extensors clamp to stop it. Those extensors attach at the outer elbow.
- Net play is wrist play. Blocks and punch volleys, flicked from the wrist by most recreational players, repeated for ninety minutes.
- The glass means late contact. You let the ball come off the back wall and strike it closer to your body than in tennis, with the wrist bent.
- New players ramp up fast. One game a week becomes four within two months. Tendon needs months to adapt to a new load.
The bat that feels most powerful in the shop is often the one your elbow complains about in month three.
How do I know it’s tennis elbow?
Tennis elbow is an overloaded tendon where the wrist extensor muscles attach to the bony point on the outside of the elbow. It is diagnosed by examination. Most people don’t need a scan.
- Press just below the bony point on the outside of the elbow. Tennis elbow is sore right there.
- Grip with the elbow straight. Squeezing the bat, a bottle or a handshake with the arm straight hurts more than with the elbow bent.
- Lift a chair palm down. Painful. Lift the same chair palm up and it’s usually easier.
- Resist the middle finger. Push down on the back of your middle finger while you try to lift it. Pain at the outer elbow is typical.
An ultrasound or MRI is worth it when it isn’t improving after about 3 months of proper loading, or before an injection or surgery is discussed. If the ache sits 4 to 5 cm further down the forearm and ignores tennis elbow treatment, consider radial tunnel syndrome.
What other padel injuries turn up?
- Outer elbow pain on gripping and lifting: tennis elbow. The big one.
- Inner elbow pain after forehand volleys and bandejas: golfer’s elbow.
- Little-finger-side wrist pain on the víbora and other sliced overheads: the wrist turns down and across under load. Think TFCC injury or ECU tendon irritation.
- Finger fractures and dislocations at the net, from your partner’s bat or a ball at close range: broken finger or jammed finger. A ball on the fingertip can also tear the tendon that straightens the tip: mallet finger.
- Falls chasing a ball off the glass: wrist fracture, or a scaphoid fracture that can look normal on the first X-ray.
- A punched wall or fence on the follow-through: boxer’s fracture.
In padel, your own partner can be a bigger threat to your fingers than the ball. (Agree on who takes the middle ball. Your knuckles will thank you.)
Can I keep playing padel with tennis elbow?
Usually, yes. Tennis elbow runs on an OPEN window: time and the right load are on your side, and stopping completely rarely helps. Use this rule.
- During play: pain at 3 out of 10 or less.
- Next morning: back to your usual baseline.
- Over the week: no steady climb.
Pass all three and you can keep playing. Fail one and you cut volume, not the exercises.
A realistic timeline for padel elbow
- Weeks 0 to 2: keep playing if pain stays inside the rule above. Drop smashes and bandejas first. Start the isometric holds below.
- Weeks 2 to 6: start the loading exercises. If next-morning pain climbs, cut a session, not the exercises.
- Weeks 6 to 12: grip pain eases for most players who load consistently. Bring overheads back last.
- Months 3 to 12: tennis elbow takes months to settle fully, even when you do everything right. Most players keep playing through it on a reduced load.
What exercises help padel elbow?
Rest calms it. Load fixes it. These are the basics. The full progression is in tennis elbow exercises.
- Isometric wrist holds (painful phase). Forearm on a table, palm down, hold a weight with the wrist level and don’t move. 5 holds of 30 to 45 seconds, once or twice a day. These often ease pain enough to play.
- Slow, heavy wrist extension. Same position, lift the weight in 3 seconds, lower it in 3 seconds. 3 sets of 15, every other day. Start around 1 kg and build up as it gets easy. Mild ache during is fine.
- Grip with a straight elbow. Squeeze a soft ball or putty with the arm straight, hold 5 seconds, 10 reps. Stop if it sharpens the elbow pain.
- Hammer rotations. Hold a hammer by the handle, elbow at your side, turn the palm up and down slowly. 3 sets of 10.
- Golfer’s elbow version: the same holds and lifts with the palm facing UP. See golfer’s elbow exercises.
Two or three times a week of slow, heavy work does more for tennis elbow than a month of rest.
What changes make the most difference?
- Check grip size. A thin handle makes you squeeze harder. If your fingertips dig into your palm, add an overgrip.
- Swap to a round bat with a softer core while the elbow is sore. Save the diamond for when the tendon is strong again.
- Hold the bat loose between shots. Firm grip at contact only.
- Volley with a firm wrist and move the bat from the shoulder.
- Add court time one session at a time, and hold each step for two weeks before adding the next.
- A counterforce strap below the elbow eases symptoms for some players while the loading work does the repair.
- Wear the wrist strap every point. A bat that leaves your hand lands on someone’s face or fingers.
When do injections or surgery come in?
A steroid injection can quiet tennis elbow pain for a few weeks, but tennis elbow treated with steroid tends to come back more often over the following year than tennis elbow treated with exercise. Use it sparingly, if at all, and keep loading.
Surgery is for the small group still struggling after 6 to 12 months of proper loading and load changes. Recovery from it takes around 4 to 6 months before full play.
How long until I can play padel again after an injury?
Typical ranges for uncomplicated recoveries, conservative end. Your surgeon or hand therapist sets the actual date.
- Tennis or golfer’s elbow: most people never fully stop. If you have stopped, a graded return over 2 to 4 weeks, overheads last.
- Jammed finger (mild sprain): often back within 1 to 3 weeks with buddy tape. The swelling can take 3 to 6 months to go.
- Broken finger: 6 to 12 weeks to heal. Protected play, usually buddy-taped, rarely before 6 weeks.
- Mallet finger: 6 to 8 weeks of continuous splinting, then a further 4 to 6 weeks of splinting at night and for play. The tip must never be allowed to bend during the first phase.
- Boxer’s fracture: around 6 weeks to heal, then a gradual return. Full grip on the bat often 8 to 12 weeks.
- Wrist fracture in a cast: usually 6 weeks in the cast, then back to padel around 3 months. With a plate, around 3 months, overheads later.
- Scaphoid fracture: 8 to 12 weeks or more to heal. Padel waits until healing is confirmed on a scan, often 3 to 4 months.
- TFCC injury without surgery: splint for 4 to 6 weeks, then strengthening. Back to full padel often around 3 months. After a TFCC repair, 4 to 6 months.
The finger and wrist injuries are the ones that run on a clock. A mallet finger that isn’t splinted in the first few weeks, a finger fracture that heals rotated, or a scaphoid fracture left in a sports strap can all leave you with a permanent problem. Those windows close. Tennis elbow mostly doesn’t.
People play padel into their 60s and 70s. That long runway is the reason to sort the elbow in month three instead of after a season of playing through it. For tennis, badminton and squash, see racquet sports injuries.
Get it checked today if
- A finger is visibly bent, rotated or crossing its neighbor when you make a fist after a hit.
- A fingertip droops and you can’t straighten it.
- Thumb-side wrist pain after a fall, even with a normal X-ray.
- Numbness or tingling in any fingers after a fall or a direct hit.
Get it checked if
- Elbow pain at rest or at night.
- Grip weakness: dropping cups, struggling with jar lids.
- Numbness or tingling that comes and goes in the fingers.
- Twelve weeks of changes and exercises with no progress.
Padel’s cousin has its own page: pickleball hand and elbow injuries.
Change the bat, the hours and the grip before you change the sport.
Written by Nigel Chua, hand occupational therapist in practice since 2005. Thousands of hands, wrists and elbows assessed and treated. My credentials are here. This article explains; it doesn’t examine. An elbow that has stopped improving after 12 weeks of the right work deserves a proper assessment.
Part of: Hand, wrist and elbow pain by job, sport and hobby
Every article on this site is written using the Closing Window Method: name the window your condition runs on, find where you are in it, and act while it’s still open.