Common Padel Injuries: What Actually Gets Hurt, and How to Protect It (2026 Guide)

You warmed up. You bought padel shoes with a fishbone sole. You even changed your grip size last year because your elbow was talking to you. And you still got hurt, because you were braced for the injury everyone talks about, not the one that actually found you.

Padel's injury numbers are not small. A 2025 cross-sectional study of 364 amateur players in Chile found a padel-related injury in the previous six months for 196 of them: 53.8%. Across the wider research, prevalence estimates for regular players range from 40% to 95% depending on the population and time window. This is not a niche risk. It is closer to a when than an if, and the honest response is to know exactly where the risk sits, not to vaguely "be careful."

The body map: where padel actually hurts

Ask ten players where padel injuries happen and most will say "the elbow," and for years the research agreed with them. A 2023 systematic review found the elbow was the single most common injury site across five separate studies, with prevalence estimates of 40 to 95%. But research keeps arriving, and the newest large study complicates the tidy answer.

Zoom out and the picture gets clearer, if not simpler. Across the lower limb, ligament injuries dominate. Across the upper limb, tendon injuries dominate, and the elbow leads that group. So the honest summary is not "the elbow is the risk" or "the ankle is the risk." It is that padel loads two very different systems in two very different ways, and both are common enough to plan for.

The five injuries worth knowing

Region	What actually happens	Main cause	First line of defense
Ankle	Lateral ligament sprain	Sudden direction change, stepping on a ball	Court-specific shoes, ankle mobility work
Elbow	Tendon overload ("padel elbow")	Repetitive impact, a frame that is too rigid for you	Load management, a softer core
Shoulder	Rotator cuff strain, impingement	Repeated overhead smashes and bandejas	Rotator cuff strength, shot volume awareness
Knee	Ligament strain, patellar irritation	Twisting under load, sudden stops	Leg strength, controlled deceleration
Lower back	Muscular strain, disc irritation	Rotation on the smash and víbora, poor posture in the ready stance	Core stability, hip mobility

The elbow and ankle get most of the attention because they are the loudest. The shoulder and lower back are quieter and build slowly, which is exactly why they catch up with players who have "never had an injury." If you smash and hit overhead víboras every session, your shoulder is already logging that volume, whether it hurts yet or not.

We already cover the elbow in depth elsewhere: how racket choice affects elbow load and the 3-phase exercise routine that actually calms it. Both go deeper than this panorama can.

The eye: the injury nobody protects

Here is the trap. Players brace for the elbow, tape the ankle, and stretch the shoulder, then walk onto a glass-walled court with an unprotected face, facing a ball that weighs about 50 grams and can leave a racket at up to 130 km/h on a smash. A survey of 583 active padel players found that 10.3% reported ocular trauma, most of it from direct ball impact, with a 10% surgical rate among those injuries and measurable effects on vision and daily function afterward.

Protective eyewear is not exotic. Studies on similar fast-ball sports show it cuts eye injury risk by roughly 90% when worn correctly. The problem is not effectiveness, it is adoption: acceptance of protective goggles among padel players is low, and the International Padel Federation does not currently require eye protection in its rules. Nobody is going to make you wear it. That is exactly why it is worth choosing to.

The wrong-injury trap: three ways players get prevention backwards

Trap 1: treating warm-up as optional. A rushed 90-second stretch before the first point is not a warm-up, it is a formality. A real warm-up raises heart rate, mobilises the joints you are about to load, and takes closer to 10 minutes. Skipping it does not save time, it moves the cost to your ligaments.

Trap 2: fixing gear instead of fixing load. A new racket can genuinely help at the elbow. It cannot fix an ankle that never gets mobility work, a shoulder carrying three sessions a week of unmanaged smash volume, or a knee absorbing every stop on worn-out shoes. Gear is one lever among five, not a replacement for the other four.

Trap 3: ignoring the eye because "it has not happened to me yet." Most players who get hit in the eye were not doing anything reckless. They were standing at the net, in position, when a smash arrived faster than they could react. The injury is not a punishment for a mistake. It is a probability that eyewear meaningfully lowers.

What your kit can, and cannot, do about it

At Ace One Padel, we have designed TŸR around a 3K carbon weave and a Soft EVA core specifically because the frame is one lever in the elbow-load equation, and it is a lever we can honestly pull. If your elbow already talks to you mid-match, TŸR trades a little rigidity for more dwell time and less shock back into your arm. If you play mostly rigid, attacking rackets like our Cøre 12K, that is a legitimate choice for players with healthy, well-conditioned arms, not a mistake in itself.

What we will not do is pretend a racket fixes an ankle, a shoulder, or an eye. We do not sell padel shoes or protective eyewear, and we are not going to invent a claim that our gear prevents those injuries. The honest version is simpler: choose your frame for your elbow, choose real shoes for your ankle, choose eyewear for your eyes, and choose a real warm-up for everything else. None of those five habits substitutes for the other four.

We have written the other four pieces of this in depth: the 10-minute warm-up that actually prepares your joints, the recovery routine for the day after, and the real physical load a padel match puts on your body, with the sprint-brake-and-go numbers behind it.

FAQ

What is the most common padel injury?
It depends on the study. A review aggregating five studies found the elbow was the single most common site, with prevalence between 40% and 95%. A 2025 study of 364 amateur players found ankle-foot injuries narrowly ahead of shoulder and elbow, which tied. Both regions are common enough to prepare for either way.

Do I really need protective eyewear for padel?
The rules do not require it, but the data makes a case: roughly 1 in 10 surveyed players report ball-related eye trauma, and correctly worn eyewear cuts that risk by around 90% in comparable sports.

Can a softer racket prevent padel elbow?
It can meaningfully reduce the shock transmitted to your arm, which is one real factor in elbow overload. It does not replace load management, technique, or rest if those are the actual drivers of your pain.

How long should a padel warm-up actually be?
Coaching and injury-prevention sources converge on roughly 10 minutes: light cardio to raise heart rate, joint mobility work for the ankles, hips, and shoulders, then a few progressively harder ball-feel shots before your first competitive point.

The Ace One Padel Verdict

Padel does not injure you in one place. It injures you in five, and the players who get hurt the least are not the ones who avoided bad luck, they are the ones who covered more than one of those five. A racket that respects your elbow is a real, honest lever. It was never meant to be the only one. Warm up for ten minutes, wear shoes built for the court, watch your weekly overhead volume, and if you are going to guard one thing you have never thought to guard, make it your eyes.