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.
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.
Why padel loads the elbow more than it looks
- 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.
What turns up
- Outer elbow pain on gripping and lifting: tennis elbow. The big one
- Inner elbow pain after forehand volleys and bandejas: golfer’s elbow
- An ache in the upper forearm, below the bony point, that ignores tennis elbow treatment: consider radial tunnel syndrome
- 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
- 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
The changes that 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
- Load the tendon off court. Slow, heavy wrist extension exercises two or three times a week do more for tennis elbow than rest
- 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
A realistic timeline for padel elbow
- Weeks 0 to 2: keep playing if pain stays at 3 out of 10 or less during play and settles by the next morning. Drop smashes and bandejas first
- 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
Get it assessed if
- Elbow pain at rest or at night
- Grip weakness: dropping cups, struggling with jar lids
- Numbness or tingling in any fingers
- A finger that crosses its neighbor when you make a fist after a hit
- Thumb-side wrist pain after a fall, even with a normal X-ray
- Twelve weeks of changes and exercises with no progress
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 the splints involved, see the tennis elbow counterforce strap.
Change the bat, the hours and the grip before you change the sport.
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.