Padel Workouts - 7 Easy Exercises To Improve Your Game

We all want to be faster on the padel court and be able to reach more balls, we also want more power, agility and racket skills. But did you know there are easy padel workouts that can not only skyrocket your fitness but also increase your skills on court?

Your physical training can be as important, if not more important than just playing matches and having lessons if you want to improve at padel.

Here are 7 easy exercises to improve your padel.

1. Split Step Training - Padel Workouts

The split step is probably the MOST important movement in padel. It should occur between every single shot played between you and your opponents.

What is this?

This is a little bounce on your toes that you do between every shot, to make you a lot more ready for every point. It is scientifically proven that you will be faster to the ball if you do this little bounce.

It allows you to move in any direction as fast as possible as you don’t have momentum leading you any other direction.

A great workout for this is to practise a standing position and then bounce to a wider stance, this will get you used to the feeling.

Once you are used to this feeling, you can then try and implement this into a game.

Look at this video of Juan Lebron playing in the world padel tour, you can see that between every shot he has a small split step to ensure that he is ready for the next ball.

2. Shoulder Exercises - Padel Workouts

This workout is for players that want more power.

Your shoulders are the most crucial part if you want to increase the power on your smash, bandeja, vibora and essentially any overhead.

The best easy home exercises to help your shoulder get stronger are:

Pushups (try 3 sets up 5-10)
Incline Pushups
Plank (try 20 seconds, then 30, then build up)

These are easy and simple exercises that you can do at home that will help a lot of your body strength as well as your shoulders, you can build these up over time. Stick at them for a least a month and you will see results.

With stronger shoulders, it is easier to generate power on your smash and bandeja. This is going to help you pressure the opponents, and will stop fatigue on court.

3. Squats - Padel workouts

Another big one on court is being able to get low and dig out the tough balls.

When someone plays a volley, or bandeja with a lot of slice, it will stay low and you will have to bend your knees to try and dig it out after the glass.

Now this can happen up to 50 times in one game, so you need to be able to have good strength in your hamstrings and thighs if you want to be able to do this.

Squats are the easiest and best way to improve your strength in your legs, and it an also help prevent injuries. As 40% of all padel injuries happen in the lower legs! Read more about padel injuries here.

I would suggest, do 3 sets of 10 squats, this will build up strength and allow you dig out low balls.

You could then try the squats with a weight, this will make it a lot harder and work your legs more.

Tip: Always bend you knees to get to a low ball, not your back.

4. Shuttle Runs - Padel Workouts

Shuttle runs can be so useful to help your agility on court. Training this can help your speed so much!

This is quite an underrated one, people don’t see the improvement from just running back and forwards, but it will help your agility and balance.

I can tell you the moment that you LOSE balance, is the moment you are very likely to lose the point.

Very easy to do at home, just place two cones, or even objects down around 10 metres apart. Then, sprint between them, and touch the cone every time you get there.

Like all the exercise in recommend setting a goal, when you do this, you will push yourself a LOT more.

You can also do this on court, you can do a drill where you play a shot, e.g. a forehand volley, and then run to the cone, touch it, and then volley again.

Below is a great video showing how to do this!

5. Jogging - Padel workouts

This is the hardest out of all of them, especially if you want to see good results.

Running is hard, tiring and de-motivating, but if you really go for it, you will burn the most calories and have the best fitness you could possibly get.

You can experience really long rallies on court, and without good fitness, you will struggle to keep up.

This one is fairly self explanatory, but try running 3 times a week, and go for a goal depending on how good you are, it may only be 1-2K at first, but the results will skyrocket if you keep it up.

If you don't want to run, then do this:

Use the running as a light warm up before you play or exercise. You could do some light jogging to prepare yourself for the exercise and prevent injury.

For more running tips, I found a great article here:

6. Sidesteps - Padel Workouts

This is another great tip for warming up. Before every workout you have to warm up, and great way to do this is with light jogging or sidesteps.

Why are sidesteps important for padel?

Useful for when you get lobbed, sidestep backwards rather than running.
Improve agility and speed.

Practise the sidesteps when you warm up and then try and implement them when you play a match.

Tip: Sidesteps allow you to look at the ball while you are moving backwards, the last thing you want to do is lose sight of the ball.

7. Racket and Ball - Padel Workouts

I couldn’t really think of a good title for this one, so I went for racket and ball, I hope it is fairly self explanatory.

You can use your own bat and ball for this.

Take your racket and practise hitting softly up, this will help improve your control. You can then try hitting the ball up, turning your racket over, and then hit on the other side.

Other drills you can do are:

Practise spinning the ball as you hit up, to help with your understanding of how to create spin.
Practise hitting the ball with the frame of the racket, to really focus in on accuracy and coordination.

Conclusion - Padel workouts

What exercises are good for padel? Overall, the best exercises and padel workouts include, pushups, squats, sidesteps, shuttle runs, and running. These allow you to get fitter and target specific muscles that help your padel.

Hope this helped!

Padel Workouts – 7 Exercises To Improve Your Game – Ewan Ramsden