Science Ran the Numbers — and It's Good News

You leave the court sweaty, slightly out of breath, and grinning. But is pickleball actually a workout? Or is it just a social hour with a paddle in your hand? Researchers decided to find out. Here's what they measured.

Let's start with the number that matters

Scientists had middle-aged and older players wear portable metabolic sensors during real gameplay. Not a formula, not a prediction model — actual measurements, on an actual court.

Result: roughly 355 calories per session.

That's in the same ballpark as brisk walking, light jogging, or easy cycling. Not a marathon, but definitely not a stroll through the grocery store either. A single pickleball session makes a real dent in your weekly energy expenditure — you just don't realize it until you're sore the next morning.

Your heart rate doesn't lie

Calories are notoriously hard to measure in a stop-and-go sport. Heart rate isn't. And that data is both consistent and convincing.

During a typical pickleball session, average heart rate sits at 111 bpm — about 70% of age-predicted max. That lands squarely in the zone cardiologists actually care about for cardiovascular benefit. Players spent more than 70% of court time in those elevated zones.

In singles, that climbs to moderate-to-vigorous intensity about 80% of the time. Doubles? Around 50%. Still well above "leisurely."

For context: older adults accumulated more than 68 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in a single pickleball session. That's a significant chunk of the recommended weekly exercise dose, ticked off in one afternoon.

How does pickleball stack up against other racquet sports?

Honest answer: pickleball isn't the most intense racquet sport on the list. But look at where it actually lands.

Squash sits at the top. Players burn 680–715 calories per hour, with heart rates hovering near 160 bpm throughout. Impressive — but also not something most people can sustain three times a week.

Competitive badminton is similarly brutal. Elite players burn close to 15 calories per minute. That's not a sport, that's a cardio exam.

Tennis depends heavily on level. Recreational tennis and recreational pickleball fall within a similar moderate-to-vigorous intensity range — comparable metabolic demand, comparable calorie burn. The difference is that pickleball gets more people on the court, more often, across more age groups.

Table tennis is fun, but it comes in below pickleball on energy demand.

So pickleball sits firmly in the middle of the pack. Serious enough to matter. Accessible enough to actually keep doing.

Your watch has it wrong

Wearing a fitness tracker on the court? Good news and bad news.

The good: heart rate readings are generally accurate.

The bad: calorie estimates are not. A validation study compared common wearables to metabolic gold-standard measurements during simulated pickleball. The error was often above 10%. The algorithms are built for steady-state movement — running, cycling — not the explosive bursts and rest periods that define pickleball.

Trust your watch for heart rate. Treat the calorie number as a rough estimate, not a receipt.

What this means for you

The science is pretty clear:

• ~355 calories per recreational session. More than most people expect.
• Heart rate in the training zone for the majority of your time on court.
• Comparable to recreational tennis, but lower barrier and easier on the joints.
• Your wearable undercounts it. Heart rate is a better measure of effort than the number on your screen.

If you're looking for exercise that sticks, gets your heart rate up, and doesn't feel like punishment — pickleball does the job.

You just have to show up.

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Sources: Dalleck et al. (2018), Webber et al. (2022), Navalta et al. (2024), Zarei et al. (2025). Via DUPR Blog.