Pickleball is a good form of exercise. It's a great low-impact activity that gets your heart rate up. Health benefits of pickleball include burning calories, improving your mental health and mood, and improving your agility and balance.
Health Benefits of Playing Pickleball
Mental health and mood
Pickleball can improve your mood and prevent depression by releasing feel-good endorphins. Working on your physical fitness also has a way of enhancing how you feel about yourself.
The social interaction inherent in pickleball can also improve your mental health and mood because you’re able to bond with your teammates.
Burn Calories
While playing pickleball, the average person burns approximately 300-700 calories per hour, depending on the intensity of the game. Playing pickleball burns fewer calories than tennis, but more than racquetball and badminton. Due to its fast pace and frequent movement around the court, pickleball is an excellent cardiovascular exercise.
Improve Balance
According to the National Library of Medicine, you can improve your balance by playing pickleball, which can help prevent falls as you age:
“Pickleball requires quick steps in multiple directions to return an opponent’s ball, so the sport may provide important agility and lateral stability training, which could have a positive impact on balance recovery. Notably, controlling lateral stability is a particular challenge as we age [53]. The rapid changes in posture that occur during play, combined with the cognitive challenges of the game (e.g., selecting the location of a return shot based on an opponent’s location), are ecologically relevant to fall prevention in daily life.”
Better Agility
According to the National Library of Medicine, actively moving your body during any racquet sport like pickleball will have a positive effect on your agility.
The more you play, the better your agility gets. Your body functions better when it’s being actively used rather than remaining sedentary for long periods of time.
Good for Your Joints
Contact sports like basketball, football, and soccer can cause joint injuries and wear out your joints or cause permanent damage over time. Pickleball is considerably easier on your muscles, tendons, and joints than many other sports.
Lower Risk of Heart Disease
As with most racquet sports, the heart-pumping activity of pickleball can help control or improve many of the risk factors for heart disease, hypertension, stroke, and heart attack. Pickleball can help you maintain a healthy weight by reducing your blood pressure, improving cholesterol levels, and regulating your blood sugar levels.
Improved Strength
Besides getting an excellent, agile workout, the movement required in pickleball can tone your muscles and improve your physical strength and endurance.
Popularity with Older Adults
Pickleball’s initial popularity surged with older adults because of its relatively low-impact nature, as well as the fact that it’s such a social sport. Not only is pickleball good for your health, it’s also easy to jump into a game. There’s a friendly, welcoming atmosphere inherent in pickleball, whereas with sports like tennis, new players may struggle to participate.
Pickleball is now the fastest-growing sport in the United States and is growing rapidly among younger demographics too.
Health Benefits of Pickleball vs Walking
Does pickleball provide any health benefits beyond simply walking? Researchers from Brigham Young University found that playing pickleball doubles is more strenuous than walking, with median ratings of perceived exertion being nearly 44 percent higher than those after walking.
The Brigham Young study found that playing doubles pickleball increased heart rates by 14 percent and caloric expenditure by 36 percent compared to walking. Compared to walking, pickleball is more of a workout.
A 30-minute walk, however, tallied 54 percent more steps than a doubles match. There are fewer steps accumulated over the course of a game due to the smaller court, the close proximity of teammates on the same side of the net, and the majority of play taking place at the net.
How many calories does playing pickleball burn?
| Sport | Calories burned per hour |
| Tennis | 575-775 |
| Pickleball | 400-700 |
| Badminton | 475-525 |
| Ping Pong | 275-400 |
According to Western State Colorado University, picklers averaged 108 beats per minute and burned 353.5 calories per match, which is considered moderate intensity.
The researchers reported significant improvements in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and maximal oxygen uptake after six weeks of pickleball participation.
