Is pickleball a weight bearing exercise?
Pickleball is technically a weight-bearing exercise because your bones and muscles support your body against gravity while you play. How much musculoskeletal benefit you get depends largely on how actively you move during the game.
Longer rallies, changes of direction, lunging, rotating, and moving between the baseline and kitchen challenge muscles, bones, tendons, balance, and coordination in varied ways. These demands can make pickleball a valuable part of an active lifestyle as we age.
Pickleball does not replace resistance training, particularly for maintaining strength, muscle mass, bone density, and upper-body loading.
5 min Read
This is a question I get from the slightly older pickleball population quite a bit.
The answer is YES, technically.
But there is a bit of a caveat to this…it kinda depends on how you play.
If your points are over in 3 hits and you barely make it up to the kitchen line….this is more like just standing, which is weight bearing but probably isn’t intense enough to stimulate musculoskeletal changes.
But if your points are 15-20 hits and you are constantly moving around, side to side and to the baseline and back to the kitchen…then yes, yes this is a weight bearing activity that can help create change in your body.
What Is a Weight-Bearing Exercise?
By definition a weight bearing exercise is one where your bones and muscles are supporting your body against gravity. So cycling and swimming though are great exercises are not weight bearing because they support your body in different ways.
Why Pickleball Is a Good Weight-Bearing Exercise
What is great about pickleball is that it can also provide some impact. But unlike running, you're not repetitively loading your body with essentially the same movement thousands of times. In reality it takes 5-10 steps to get to the kitchen and once you are there probably moving a few steps side to side or up and back.
Plus those steps are using more muscles that allow you to lunge and twist and not just move in a straight line. So you are moving force through your joints in various directions and loading your muscles, bones and tendons in novel ways….not just the same thing over and over. Your body and brain like novel things, it gives them different challenges to adapt to.
Think about everything that has to happen just to get to the ball. Your feet and ankles adapt to the ground, your calves help propel you, your knees bend and straighten, your hips rotate, and your trunk has to control all of it. Then you add the swing, your grip on the paddle and even your eyes tracking the ball. Pickleball really is a full-body activity
Pickleball Also Challenges Balance and Stability
These movements also require a great amount of balance. Which is really stability. How stable and set are you when you hit the ball strongly determines how good of a shot you make. So this is super important. To be able to move efficiently and stabilize quickly to you can make a good shot.
And all of this works best when you don't have to think about it. If you're worried about your knee, thinking about how you need to step, or being careful every time you change direction, it's much harder to react to the game. Instead of just playing, you're thinking about your body.
Many people as they age movement coordination gets harder because we stop practicing those movements. This is why pickleball is so great! It has allowed so many more people who stopped playing tennis because it was too hard on them to cover so much court, to continue to move and play! Or take up an activity that allows them to move in ways they never had before!
There is also a low barrier of entry, starting off finding others at the same level and getting better and improving movement and skill together in a way that their bodies can handle. Not just going out for a run and pounding on pavement for the sake of movement (though don’t get me wrong….. I love going for a run, but play is just different! And most don’t associate a run with play)
Is Pickleball Enough for Bone and Muscle Health?
But…does this mean this is the ONLY weight bearing activity you should do? No. Is it part of a healthy lifestyle? Absolutely!
Resistance training is arguably the best form of exercise for maintaining muscle mass, strength and bone density as we age. Research looking at resistance training in older adults has found improvements in both muscle strength and bone mineral density.
Research looking at progressive resistance training
So adding load to your body and moving it is incredibly important. Squats, Deadlifts, Calf Raises, Pushups, and Crawling….These are all phenomenal exercises that are weight bearing.
And one thing pickleball doesn’t give you much of is weight bearing through your upper body. So….
Pushups are a great upper body weight bearing exercise. Most of the movements we do with our arms come from our shoulder joint and the rest of the arm is flailing in space (open chain exercise). Like swinging in Pickleball. Pushups use a fixed hand to a surface (floor, wall, counter) and the force is applied throughout the entire chain from hand to shoulder to trunk (closed chain exercise) Particularly if you are just starting to do pushups, doing them on the wall is a fantastic way to begin to build up strength. Or you can do them on the floor but from your knees instead of your toes.
My favorite though is actually Crawling! Though we will leave this for it’s own blog for another day!
So, Is Pickleball a Good Weight-Bearing Exercise?
So, does pickleball count as weight-bearing exercise? Again, YES.
And one of the things I love most about it is that most people aren't thinking about exercise while they're doing it. They're trying to get to the ball, make the shot and beat their friends.
You're loading your bones, using your muscles, challenging your balance, reacting, rotating and moving in multiple directions.
That's exercise. But more importantly, that's play.
And if running after a yellow wiffle ball that doesn’t bounce keeps you moving, gives you a reason to challenge your body and makes you want to come back tomorrow, I'd say that's a pretty great form of weight bearing activity.
If you are currently thinking about your body instead of the game, that's where I can help.
Check out my Athlete Rehab and Injury Prevention Services Page