The Pickleball Injury Report: 37% of UK Players Have Been Hurt Playing

Pickleball is sold as a low-impact sport. And by the standards of football, rugby, or even tennis, it largely is. But “low impact” doesn’t mean “no impact” — and a sport with a fast lateral movement, sudden stops, and a paddle held in front of your body for 90 minutes at a time produces a very specific injury profile.

We surveyed 500 UK pickleball players in March 2026. 37% of them — roughly one in three — have suffered a pickleball-related injury. The most common complaint was tennis elbow (14% of players). Ankle and knee injuries were close behind at 11%. And nearly half of injured players carried on playing through it.

Below is the most detailed picture of UK pickleball injuries published to date, and what it means for clubs, coaches, and players.

Key findings

• 37% of UK pickleball players have been injured playing
• 14% report tennis elbow / lateral epicondylitis
• 11% report an ankle or knee injury
• 7% report lower back pain
• 5% report wrist injury
• 4% report a fall-related injury
• Only 31% of injured players sought professional treatment (physio or GP)
• 48% of injured players carried on playing through it

The injury profile, in detail

Below are the full results, ranked by share of total players reporting each injury type. Players could report more than one, so the column sums to more than 37%.

A few things stand out.

1. Tennis elbow is by far the most common pickleball injury

It’s the irony in the name: pickleball is a softer, slower sport than tennis, and yet lateral epicondylitis — known to everyone over forty as “tennis elbow” — is the single most common injury we found.

There are two reasons this is happening more than it should:

• Cheap paddles. Many entry-level paddles (especially the £20–£35 wooden or polymer-core paddles given out in starter sets) are heavy and stiff in ways that translate vibrational shock straight into the player’s elbow. Players who upgraded to a paddle over £100 reported tennis elbow at less than half the rate of players still using their first paddle (8% vs 19%).
• Frequency-creep. Pickleball’s biggest behavioural quirk is that players go from zero sessions a week to three sessions a week within weeks of starting. The musculoskeletal system doesn’t usually keep up. Tennis elbow is, more often than not, a volume problem, not a technique problem.

2. Lower-body injuries are the second cluster

Ankle, knee, lower back, calf, hamstring, achilles — together those soft-tissue and joint complaints account for 27% of player-reported injuries. Pickleball involves a lot of lateral movement on a small court. If you’ve been running in a straight line for thirty years and you suddenly start side-stepping, lunging, and pivoting twice a week, your knees, ankles and lower back are going to hear about it.

3. Falls are a real concern, especially in the 55+ cohort

4% of players overall report a fall-related injury. Inside the 55+ age cohort, that figure jumps to 9% — including a small number of fractures (3 wrist, 2 hip, 1 collarbone in our sample). Pickleball is mostly safe, but it is not no risk for older players, especially those who haven’t done sports involving sudden direction changes for a while.

4. Eye injuries are rare but real

1% of players in our survey reported an eye injury — most often, a misjudged ball at the net. This is the single most preventable injury type and the single most under-prevented one. Only 9% of UK players surveyed wear protective eyewear when playing. We expect (and would advocate for) that figure to rise sharply.

Why it’s happening

We asked the 37% who’d been injured what they thought caused it. Top answers:

Two of those are interesting. 18% of injured players blamed their footwear — most often, they were playing on indoor sports halls in running shoes that don’t grip well laterally. (See our pickleball shoes guide for the difference between a court shoe and a running shoe.) 11% blamed their paddle — a number that almost certainly rises with paddle age.

What players don’t do enough of

The most preventable problem we identified across the entire survey is what we’d call the “diagnose-on-Reddit, ignore-the-physio” effect.

Of the 185 players who reported an injury:

• Only 31% saw a physiotherapist or GP.
• 48% carried on playing through it — a behaviour that turns acute into chronic.
• 27% bought their own brace, support, or kinesiology tape but never sought a professional opinion.
• 9% changed paddles as a deliberate response to the injury.

If we were going to give one piece of generic advice based on this entire survey, it would be: see a physio. Twice. Before and after the injury. A 45-minute consultation will save you a year of dink-from-the-couch.

Specific advice for new players

Three things that consistently differentiate the 63% of players who haven’t been injured from the 37% who have:

1. They didn’t ramp up too fast. The injured cohort played an average of 3.4 sessions a week within their first 6 months. The non-injured cohort played 1.9.
2. They invested in shoes early. 71% of non-injured players wear pickleball-specific or tennis court shoes. Only 49% of injured players do.
3. They upgraded their paddle by their 6-month mark. Lighter, vibration-damped paddles meaningfully reduce elbow load.

What this means for clubs and coaches

If you run a UK pickleball club or leisure operation, these numbers should drive three changes:

• Mandatory 5-minute warm-up at the start of open play. Most clubs don’t do this. They should.
• Stock loaner paddles in better cores. Even budget thermoformed paddles (under £80) reduce vibrational shock dramatically vs the wooden / cheap polymer paddles many leisure centres still hand out.
• Sell or recommend court shoes and protective eyewear at point of session. The current default is “show up in trainers, no eye protection”. This is the easiest preventable injury surface in the sport.

Methodology

PickleballOne UK Player Survey 2026, fielded 2 March – 6 April 2026. n = 500 UK-resident pickleball players who play at least once a month. Players were asked: “Have you ever experienced an injury you’d attribute to pickleball?” with multi-select follow-up on injury type. This is self-reported and not clinically verified. Margin of error ±4.4 percentage points at 95% confidence. Full methodology and anonymised data available on request: press@pickleballone.co.uk.

This data is illustrative of injury prevalence among current players. It is not a prospective cohort study and should not be interpreted as an injury rate per hour played.

Citation

Source: PickleballOne UK Player Injury Survey 2026 (n=500). https://pickleballone.co.uk/blogs/learn/pickleball-injuries-uk-survey-2026

Press contact

press@pickleballone.co.uk