Padel Calories Burned Per Hour & Fitness Benefits

Published August 10, 2026

A recreational hour of padel may burn roughly 280–570 calories for a 60–90 kg player. A fast competitive session can be higher. Your body weight, rally intensity, rest time and playing level matter more than the label on your watch.

Padel equipment, heart-rate watch and water prepared for a match

Quick answer: Treat any padel calorie number as an estimate, not a score to beat. Published padel studies describe a mainly aerobic game with repeated short, intense actions, and measured demands vary considerably by level and match conditions.

How Many Calories Does Padel Burn Per Hour?

There is no single scientifically established “padel calories per hour” value. The 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities does not yet list padel separately, so the table below uses its values for doubles tennis (4.5–6.0 METs) and competitive tennis (8.0 METs) as transparent reference points. Research reviews report that the cardiovascular demands of padel are broadly similar to tennis, although individual matches vary.

Body weight	Easy/social 4.5 METs	Regular match 6.0 METs	Fast/competitive 8.0 METs
60 kg / 132 lb	284 kcal	378 kcal	504 kcal
75 kg / 165 lb	354 kcal	473 kcal	630 kcal
90 kg / 198 lb	425 kcal	567 kcal	756 kcal

These are gross energy estimates calculated with the standard MET equation. They are not measurements from a padel-specific laboratory test and should not be used as exact nutrition targets.

Padel calorie formula

To make a rough estimate for your own weight, use:

Calories per minute = MET × 3.5 × body weight in kg ÷ 200

Multiply the result by the number of minutes played. If you spent a large part of the booking warming up, collecting balls or waiting between sets, choose the lower intensity value.

Why Your Padel Calorie Estimate Changes

Body weight: Moving a larger body generally requires more energy at the same relative intensity.
Playing level: Faster rallies, harder accelerations and more court coverage raise the workload.
Opponent and partner: A balanced match usually keeps points alive longer than a one-sided game.
Effective playing time: A 90-minute court booking is not 90 minutes of continuous movement.
Heat and fatigue: Heart rate can rise even when movement speed does not, which can make wrist-based calorie estimates look unusually high.
Tracker limitations: A watch estimates energy from variables such as heart rate, age, sex and weight. It does not directly measure calories.

Is Padel Good Exercise?

Yes. Padel combines continuous low-to-moderate movement with short accelerations, lunges, rotations and overhead actions. That makes it an intermittent aerobic activity rather than steady-state cardio.

A scoping review of padel research reported mean match heart rates around 130–151 beats per minute, with maximum values around 154–179 beats per minute across amateur and higher-level players. In amateur players, most match time was below the first ventilatory threshold, supporting the description of padel as predominantly aerobic with brief harder efforts.

What padel trains

Aerobic fitness: repeated movement and longer rallies keep heart rate elevated.
Change-of-direction ability: the game repeatedly asks you to brake, turn and accelerate over short distances.
Coordination: positioning, wall rebounds and racket timing combine physical work with fast decisions.
Lower-body endurance: split steps, low defensive positions and lunges accumulate across a match.
Rotational control: volleys, bandejas and smashes require the legs, trunk and shoulder to work together.

How to Track Padel Intensity More Usefully

Calories alone do not tell you whether a session was productive or whether you are ready to play again. For a more useful picture, record:

Match duration and approximate active playing time.
Average and peak heart rate, while remembering that wrist sensors can be noisy during racket sports.
Session effort from 1–10 immediately after playing.
Next-day soreness and sleep, especially when playing several times per week.

If the same 90-minute match starts feeling harder across several sessions, recovery, sleep or accumulated load may matter more than the calorie total. Use our padel recovery guide to plan the next 24 hours.

Track matches and weekly recovery

Padel Recovery helps you log match intensity, sleep and recovery habits instead of relying on one calorie number.

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