How Do You Prevent Padel Injuries?

Before I give you tips to prevent injuries as much as possible, it is important to know which injuries often occur. While playing you turn a lot and your whole body is actually in motion. Therefore, the common injuries are also all over the body. Here’s a list of those injuries:

• Wrist complaints
• Knee complaints: knee ligament injuries
• Elbow Complaints: tennis elbow
• Low Back Pain
• Shoulder complaints: impingement, throwing shoulder

These are injuries that are very common in the sport of padel. But how do you make sure you don’t suffer from this? First of all, it is very important that you warm up. A warming up ensures that your body temperature will rise, which activates various body functions. Your coordination will get better, this will also ensure better running technique. These are two benefits of a warm up. The warming up is not just getting warm, but there are many more benefits that are not often talked about.

Wrist complaints

Wrist complaints are often caused by a wrong grip around your racket. It may be that the grip is too small or too large. Every time you go on the padel court with the wrong grip you are actually overloading your wrist. This can cause injuries that keep you from playing padel for a while. There is a lot of information on the internet about which grips and sizes are right for your hands. It’s the size of your hands. There are various grips on the market that are more absorbent, so that you are less likely to suffer from wrist complaints.

Elbow complaints

The most common elbow injury is the ‘tennis arm’, this injury is also caused by too much overload on the elbow. Every time you hit the ball, a shock comes through the racket through the arm. If you are prone to injury or have had this before, I do not recommend playing with a heavy racket. This puts extra strain on your elbow. These are often diamond shaped padel rackets.

Back complaints

While playing padel you twist and bend a lot. This puts a strain on your back, especially the lower back. For example, many people who have to pick up a ball mainly bend their backs and hardly bend their knees. This is an example of something that is easy to adjust that will cause much less strain on the back. So bend your knees more when picking the ball up and keep your back straight. Also keep this in mind when paddling. You can also do some muscle strengthening exercises to prevent injuries. Look up Core/torso stability exercises on the internet and do these in prevention for back injuries.

Knee problems

Knee problems are often caused by a wrong landing after jumping or by overloading the knee by jumping a lot. The knee tendons then become irritated and become inflamed and swollen. What are the symptoms of a jumper’s knee? You have pain under your kneecap while exercising and it becomes thick and irritated in that area. These injuries can already come after a wrong landing. It is therefore important that you do a good warm up. Also do your exercises to strengthen your leg muscles to reduce the chance that you will suffer from this injury!

Shoulder complaints

During padel you do a lot with your shoulder and it is actually moving continuously. Especially during a smash movement, the shoulder is heavily loaded. It often happens that after smashing this injury occurs. You get pain in your shoulder, which can spread to your arm or neck. To prevent this, you can do muscle strengthening exercises for your shoulder and of course a proper warming up.

Conclusion

You can prevent many injuries by doing a good warm up. Getting enough rest and getting enough sleep can also help against injuries. Make sure you are fit and in good shape. Make sure you do preventive exercises to avoid injuries. It is better to prevent than to cure!