The seven-minute warm-up that prevents most padel injuries

Watch any club at 7pm. The court books fill up, four players walk on, three of them touch their toes for ten seconds, one swings the racquet over his head twice, and they start. Forty minutes in, somebody pulls a calf, somebody else feels their lower back lock up, and a third player ends the night icing an elbow.

A proper warm-up doesn’t need a gym, a foam roller, or twenty minutes. It needs seven minutes, the right movements in the right order, and the discipline to do them every single time. What follows is the sequence we use with players in the Padel Mobility community — built on joint-by-joint movement prep that does three specific things in order: raises core temperature, restores range at the joints padel asks the most of, and primes the nervous system to fire the right muscles in the right sequence.

It is not stretching. Static stretching before sport is well-documented to reduce explosive output for the next 30 to 60 minutes. The whole sequence here is dynamic.

Why most warm-ups fail

Three reasons.

1. Too generic. Touching your toes warms up your hamstrings. Padel doesn’t live in your hamstrings. It lives in your thoracic spine, your shoulders, your hips, and your wrists. A warm-up that ignores those joints does almost nothing for what comes next.
2. Too short. Two minutes raises heart rate and does little else. Tendons and connective tissue need closer to five to seven minutes of progressive movement to change their behaviour for the session.
3. Too static. Static stretches before play decrease performance output and don’t reduce injury rates. Dynamic mobility — movement through range under control — does both.

The sequence below addresses all three. It hits the five joints padel cares about most, it’s long enough to move the needle, and every movement is dynamic.

The seven-minute sequence

You need about two square metres of space. No equipment. Wear what you’re playing in.

Minute 1 — pulse-raise

Start with thirty seconds of skipping in place (no rope needed), then thirty seconds of low-impact lateral shuffles. Knees soft, feet light. The goal is to get your heart rate up to about 110-120 beats per minute and your skin slightly damp. Cold-start mobility work is almost as bad as no mobility work at all.

Minute 2 — thoracic spine

This is the most under-trained joint in adult padel and the one that quietly causes most of the elbow, shoulder, and lower-back problems.

• Open books, 5 each side. Lie on your right side, knees bent at 90 degrees, arms stretched in front of you palms together. Keeping the knees pinned, slowly rotate your top arm over your body to open up to the left. Let your head follow. Hold the open position for one breath, return, repeat. Switch sides.
• Quadruped thread-the-needle, 5 each side. On hands and knees, take your right hand under your left arm, rotating your torso so the right shoulder approaches the floor. Then reverse — open up to the ceiling, eyes following the right hand. That’s one rep.

If your thoracic spine is tight (almost everyone’s is), you’ll feel this most behind your shoulder blades. That’s the goal.

Minute 3 — hips

Padel is played in a low athletic stance. Your hips need to be ready for it.

• World’s greatest stretch, 5 each side. Step forward into a deep lunge with the right foot. Plant the left hand next to the right foot. Drop the right elbow towards the floor — that’s the deep hip stretch. Now lift the right hand to the ceiling, opening into a rotation. Switch hand and reverse.
• 90/90 hip rotations, 10 reps. Sit on the floor with one leg in front bent at 90 degrees, the other leg out to the side also at 90 degrees. Tilt your torso forward over the front leg, then rotate to switch leg positions — the front leg becomes the side leg and vice versa.

This costs you two minutes total. You will feel a difference in your first sprint to a drop shot.

Minute 4 — shoulders

The smash, the bandeja, and every defensive lob ask your shoulders to take overhead load. Get them ready.

• Wall slides, 10 reps. Stand with your back to a wall, heels six inches off the wall, lower back, upper back, and head against it. Arms in a goalpost position, backs of the hands against the wall. Slide your arms up overhead, then back down, keeping contact with the wall as much as you can. You won’t get to the top. That’s fine — work the range you have.
• Banded shoulder dislocates, 10 reps. If you have a resistance band or a towel, hold it at shoulder width and bring it from front to behind your head and back. If you don’t, big arm circles forward and backwards, ten of each.

Minute 5 — wrists and forearms

Most players skip this and it’s the one that protects your elbow.

• Wrist circles, 10 each direction, each hand. Clasp your hands together, large slow circles in both directions.
• Forearm rotations with a racquet, 10 reps each arm. Hold a racquet by the handle, elbow tucked in. Slowly rotate the racquet from palm-up to palm-down and back. The handle becomes a lever and you feel the work in your forearm.

This part takes 45 seconds. Skip it once and you’ll remember why you did it on the third bandeja.

Minute 6 — primer movements

Now the nervous system gets switched on for racquet sport. These are explosive but small-range.

• Pogo hops, 20 reps. Tiny, fast vertical hops on the balls of your feet. You’re not trying to jump high — you’re trying to stay stiff at the ankle. Three to four cm of clearance is plenty.
• Lateral bounds, 5 each side. Bound sideways from one leg to the other, sticking the landing for one beat before bounding back.
• Reactive squat-to-stand, 5 reps. Squat down, touch the floor, explode up. Tempo over depth.

Your heart rate should be around 130-140 by the end of this minute. You should feel ready to move.

Minute 7 — racquet-specific

Now the racquet comes out, but you’re still not playing yet.

• Slow shadow forehands, 10 reps. Full range, slow tempo. Feel the rotation come from your hips, not just your arm.
• Slow shadow backhands, 10 reps. Same.
• Shadow bandeja, 5 reps each side. Slow, soft, exaggerated rotation through the trunk. This is the shot that most often hurts cold.

Now you can start hitting. Begin with mini-court rallies for two minutes before going full court.

What changes after thirty days

If you do this sequence — exactly as written, every session — for thirty days, three things change:

1. The first ten minutes of play stop feeling tight. Most players have a “warm-up period” inside the match where they’re below their level for the first three or four games. That goes away when the warm-up actually warms them up.
2. The morning-after aches get smaller. Specifically: the inside of the shoulder, the wrist of your racquet hand, and the lower back on the side you rotate towards. The smash-into-bandeja sequence is no longer a shock to cold tissue.
3. Range at the thoracic spine and hips improves measurably. You don’t notice it on day-to-day basis. Then one day you go for a deep cross-court ball you wouldn’t have gotten three months ago.

A small note on motivation

Seven minutes feels like a lot when you’re standing next to the court at 7pm with three friends already hitting. It isn’t. It’s 2.4% of a 5-hour evening, and it changes what the next 60 minutes feel like in your body. Players who skip it usually skip it because they haven’t felt the cost yet. Players who’ve had a six-week injury usually don’t skip it again.

Frequently asked

Can I do this at home before I leave?

You can do minutes 1 through 5 at home, then minutes 6 and 7 at the club. The pulse-raise from home won’t fully carry over to the court ten minutes later — you’ll need a small re-priming with pogos and shadow swings. But it’s much better than nothing.

Is this enough on its own to prevent injuries?

It addresses the warm-up half of the equation. The other half is what you do between sessions — strength work, daily mobility, and managing total weekly volume. The warm-up cuts a substantial share of acute, cold-tissue injuries. It doesn’t fix chronic overload. For the second half, see padel after 40.

What if I’m short on time before a match?

Five minutes is the absolute floor. Cut minute 5 (wrists) and minute 6 (priming) only as a last resort. Never skip the thoracic spine work. The thoracic spine is the joint that, if it isn’t mobile, makes everything else compensate.

Should I still warm up if I’ve already played earlier in the day?

Yes. The first session’s warm-up is gone four hours later. Your tissues have cooled. Your nervous system has reset. A second session needs a fresh warm-up — though minutes 1-3 are usually enough since you’re already a few hours into being awake and moving.

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If you’d rather have this sequence as a guided video with a coach correcting your form, the Padel Mobility community has it as a daily warm-up lesson in the classroom — plus assessments, programs, and a coach answering questions.