The 8-Minute Padel Warm-Up for a Crew of Four
Quick Answer: Two minutes raising your pulse, ninety seconds of dynamic leg mobility, ninety seconds for shoulders and forearms, ninety seconds of backwards strides to the glass, then ninety seconds of soft rallying and three serves each. Eight minutes, all four players together, before the first real point.
Nobody warms up for padel. The court is booked for 19:00, the group before you comes off at 19:01, and by 19:03 somebody has served. Everyone knows this is a bad idea and everyone does it anyway, because a warm-up alone in front of three people who are ready to play feels ridiculous.
The fix is to make it the thing all four of you do, at the same time, as the start of the night rather than a delay to it. Eight minutes, no equipment, no floor work, nothing that looks like a fitness class. Here it is.
Why eight minutes, and why the calf
The single most common injury region in a French survey of 645 padel players was the calf and Achilles complex, at 18.8% of all injuries — just ahead of the elbow.
The mechanism is specific and it is almost always the same. You are standing near-static at the net. The lob goes up over your head. You push off backwards, hard, from flat feet and a cold calf, in the first fifteen minutes of the session. That is the moment. It is not a fitness problem and it happens to people who look fit.
A warm-up will not make you injury-proof, and the honest state of the evidence is covered in common padel injuries. What the research does support is the general shape: a 2023 review in Sports Medicine found that "warm-ups incorporating dynamic stretching and dynamic activity show a reduction in injury incidence", and that they work best when the aerobic part comes first and the dynamic movement after. Physiotherapy clinics treating padel players put "warm up properly" at the top of their prevention lists for the same reason.
Eight minutes is the number because it is short enough that a group will actually do it and long enough to get the sequence in.
The eight minutes
Run it in order. The order is the point: pulse first, then range of movement, then the specific tissue padel loads, then speed, then the ball.
0:00–2:00 — Pulse (both pairs, whole court)
Jog the length of the court and back, twice. Then side-steps along the service line, facing the net, four lengths. Then twenty seconds of skipping on the spot with the feet quick and low.
You are looking for warm, not tired. If you cannot talk, slow down.
2:00–3:30 — Legs, moving
Ten leg swings forwards and back on each leg, holding the fence. Ten sideways across the body on each leg. Six walking lunges each way, adding a slow trunk rotation towards the front leg. Fifteen seconds of ankle rocks per side: front foot planted, knee driving forward over the toes.
This is where the hips, hamstrings and ankles get their range back after eight hours in a chair. It is also the part everyone wants to skip, and the part the lower back quietly depends on.
3:30–5:00 — Shoulders and forearms
Twenty arm circles forwards, twenty back, starting small and growing. Ten shoulder rotations with the elbow bent at ninety degrees, as if you were serving in slow motion. Fifteen wrist circles each way. Ten slow grip squeezes on the racket handle.
Padel loads the forearm harder than people expect, and the forearm gets no warm-up from jogging. Thirty seconds here is the cheapest thing you can do for the injury covered in padel elbow.
5:00–6:30 — Glass footwork (the calf insurance)
The important block. Stand at the net position. Push off backwards to the back glass at about 60% speed, turn, and jog back. Do it six times, and make each one slightly faster than the last, so the sixth is close to a real sprint and the first is nothing like one.
Then six split-steps: small hop, land wide and balanced, and immediately move — forward, back, left, right, in whatever order somebody calls out.
You have now done the exact movement that tears calves, six times, with the tissue progressively warmer each time. That is the whole idea.
6:30–8:00 — Ball, softly, then serves
Two pairs, cross-court, soft and flat, no winners. Thirty seconds of that, then both players from each pair come to the net for gentle volleys at each other for thirty seconds. Then three serves each, first at half pace, then two at match pace.
Do not open with a smash. The first overhead of the night is not a shot, it is a test.
Do it as four, or it will not survive
The reason this works as a crew ritual and fails as a personal resolution is social, not physical.
Four people doing side-steps together at 19:02 looks like a warm-up. One person doing them while three others hit balls looks like an apology. Make it the first thing that happens after the door closes, every week, and after three sessions nobody discusses it — it is simply how the night starts, in the same way that the 90-minute plan for four friends starts with something rather than with an argument about pairings.
One person should call the blocks out loud the first few times. It takes about three weeks for a group to run it without prompting.
What to leave out
Long static stretches before playing. Holding a hamstring stretch for forty seconds is a fine thing to do after padel and a strange thing to do before it. The general guidance in sports medicine is dynamic movement before, static stretching after, and the warm-up above follows that.
Anything on the floor. The court is sand-covered artificial turf. Nobody is doing a plank on it, and any routine that asks them to will be abandoned by week two.
Heroics. The warm-up is not the workout. If you finish it out of breath, it was too hard and you have taken energy out of the first set for no reason.
The November clause
Cold changes the arithmetic. On an outdoor court in winter, or an unheated indoor hall, add two minutes to the pulse block and keep a layer on until you have hit the first balls. Muscles at 8°C do not behave like muscles at 22°C, and the first hard push-off in the cold is the single most likely injury moment in a padel year.
The same applies to the first session after a break. Two weeks off means the warm-up gets longer, not shorter, and the smash can wait a game.
Put it somewhere you will see it
Screenshot the five blocks and pin them in the group chat. That is the entire distribution plan and it works better than anything more sophisticated.
If your crew is the sort that prints things for the night, the printable padel score sheet is the sheet worth carrying — the warm-up you will have memorised by the fourth week, and the score is the thing nobody can reliably remember by the third set. Everything else the sport asks of your body is in the padel life guide, including what will be sore tomorrow and what that means.
FAQ
How long should you warm up before padel?
Eight to ten minutes is enough for a social match, done in order: two minutes raising the pulse, then dynamic leg mobility, then shoulders and forearms, then progressive movement at speed, then hitting. In cold conditions or after a layoff, add two or three minutes to the pulse-raising part rather than to the stretching.
What is the best warm-up for padel?
One that includes the movements padel actually punishes. Light aerobic work first, then dynamic leg swings and lunges, then shoulder and wrist mobility, then backwards push-offs to the glass at increasing speed, then a soft rally and three serves. Reviews of warm-up research consistently favour aerobic work followed by dynamic movement over static stretching alone.
Does warming up prevent calf tears in padel?
It reduces the risk rather than removing it. The calf and Achilles complex is the most reported injury region in padel and the classic mechanism is a hard backwards push-off from cold, flat feet in the first fifteen minutes. Doing that movement progressively, six times, while warm is the most targeted thing a warm-up can offer.
Should you stretch before or after padel?
Dynamic movement before, static stretching after. Leg swings, lunges and arm circles prepare the joints for the ranges padel uses; long held stretches are better suited to the end of the session, when the tissue is warm and you are no longer about to sprint sideways.
Do you need to warm up if you are only playing socially?
Social padel produces the same lob over your head and the same reflex sprint backwards. The intensity of your match is decided by the ball, not by your intentions. Eight minutes is cheap; the median recovery time for a padel injury in one Belgian survey was 30 days.