Padel Nutrition and Hydration: What to Eat and Drink

Padel gets sold as the easy racket sport. It is easy to start, and that is exactly why the fuelling catches people out. You book a two-hour court with three friends, play an Americano, and finish having done considerably more work than you planned — on a banana and half a bottle of water.

This is a practical guide to eating and drinking around padel: before, during, after, and in the conditions that change the math.

Padel's energy demands are not tennis's

It is tempting to borrow tennis nutrition advice wholesale. The numbers say don't.

A 2025 study in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living put padel and tennis doubles side by side. Padel rallies averaged 6.50 seconds against tennis's 4.87. Players contested 92 rallies to tennis's 67. And the rest between points was 17.4 seconds in padel versus 29.7 in tennis — barely half the recovery. Padel players covered less ground per minute (34.8m to tennis's 43.9m), yet average heart rate and post-match blood lactate came out comparable.

That is the whole fuelling story in one paragraph. Padel is not about single explosive efforts with long gaps to recover. It is repeated moderate efforts with half the rest, sustained for longer than you think. Add the sport's social reality — two-hour bookings, rotating formats, the inevitable "one more set" — and the problem you are solving is duration and density, not power.

Before you play

The 2–3 hour meal

Carbohydrate-led, moderate protein, low in fat and fibre. Rice with chicken, pasta with a simple sauce, oatmeal, or a sandwich all work. Fat and fibre slow gastric emptying, which is fine on a normal day and unpleasant when you are lunging for a low volley ninety minutes later.

Drink with the meal rather than chugging on the drive over. Pale-yellow urine an hour before you play is a good enough check.

The 30–60 minute top-up

Something small and simple: a banana, a few dates, toast with honey, half an energy bar. You are topping off blood glucose, not loading. Keep it in the 150–300 calorie range.

What to avoid pre-match

Heavy, fatty, or high-fibre meals close to play. Large volumes of anything in the last half hour. And — the one people ignore — anything you have never eaten before a match. Court time is not the place to test a new gel.

During the match

How much to drink per hour

The American College of Sports Medicine frames the goal as preventing more than about 2% body-weight loss from fluid deficit, which is where performance measurably declines. Their guidance for hard exercise runs to 200–300ml every 15 minutes, but that is the upper end for demanding conditions.

For a typical recreational padel session, 400–800ml an hour is a sensible starting point, sipped at changeovers rather than gulped between games. Sweat rates vary enormously between people — roughly half a litre to two litres an hour is a common range, and more in heat.

The only way to actually know yours: weigh yourself before and after a session. Every kilogram lost is roughly a litre of sweat you did not replace.

When water is enough, and when you need electrolytes

Under an hour in mild conditions, water is fine. Beyond that — or in heat, or if you are a heavy sweater — sodium starts to matter. Sweat carries somewhere around 900–1,200mg of sodium per litre on average, but ACSM notes the range across individuals spans from about 200mg to over 2,000mg per litre. That is a tenfold difference between two people on the same court.

The practical tells that you are on the salty end: white residue on your cap or shirt after it dries, and cramps that show up late in long sessions rather than early.

Snacks for sessions over 90 minutes

The standard sports-nutrition guideline for exercise past the hour mark is 30–60g of carbohydrate per hour. In padel terms that is a banana, a small handful of dates, half a bar, or a standard sports drink — taken between games, not mid-point.

Americano and King of the Court — grazing across a long session

This is where padel diverges hardest from a normal match. Rotating formats keep you moving through partners and courts for two or three hours with short, unpredictable breaks — you rarely sit long enough to eat properly, and you never quite know when you are next up.

So plan to graze. Pack something you will actually eat in a ninety-second gap, and take a little at every rotation rather than waiting for a break that never arrives. The classic mistake is fuelling a three-hour Americano like a sixty-minute match.

Hot and humid conditions

Heat raises sweat rate and sodium loss together, and humidity blunts the evaporative cooling that would otherwise help. The signs you are behind are unglamorous and reliable: dark urine, a dull headache, cramping, and a sudden drop-off in movement in the third set.

We cover pacing, clothing, and cooling strategies in depth in Playing Padel in Hot Weather — the short version here is drink to a plan and add sodium, because thirst will not keep up.

Indoor and winter play

Thirst is a lagging indicator at the best of times, and cold air suppresses it further. Indoor winter courts are often warm and dry, so sweat evaporates fast and you never feel soaked — which is exactly why people finish an indoor January session as depleted as a July one, having drunk half as much.

The fix is dull: drink on a schedule, not on thirst — take some at every changeover whether you want it or not. More on the season in Playing Padel in Cold Weather.

After you play

The recovery window — protein and carbohydrate

Carbohydrate to restock glycogen, protein to support repair. For most recreational players a normal balanced meal within a couple of hours does the job, with around 20–30g of protein alongside the carbohydrate.

Timing only becomes urgent when you are playing again soon. If you have a session tomorrow morning or you are mid-tournament, the classic recommendation for rapid glycogen restoration is 1.0–1.2g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per hour across the first four hours. If padel is your one session this week, do not overthink it.

Rehydrating properly after a sweaty session

ACSM's post-exercise guidance is 450–675ml — roughly 16–24 fluid ounces — for every 0.5kg (about a pound) of body weight lost. That is deliberately more than you lost, because some of what you drink leaves as urine.

Include sodium, in the drink or the meal alongside it. Plain water on its own dilutes blood sodium and prompts your kidneys to dump the fluid before you have absorbed it — which is why food plus water rehydrates better than water alone.

A note on alcohol and the post-match beer

Padel's social culture is a genuine part of why the sport works, and nobody needs a lecture about it. Two facts worth having, though.

Alcohol suppresses vasopressin, the hormone that tells your kidneys to hold on to water, so it works against rehydration after a sweaty session. And a PLOS One study found post-exercise muscle protein synthesis was 24% lower when alcohol was consumed alongside protein, and 37% lower alongside carbohydrate, compared with protein alone.

The practical version: rehydrate and eat first, then have the beer if you want it. One drink after a Tuesday night social game is not derailing anything. It matters more when you are playing again in the morning or you are two days into a tournament.

What the pros do

Less exotically than you would hope. Professional players are not eating anything clever — they are eating the same things, at the same times, that they have rehearsed dozens of times. Sweat rates measured rather than guessed. Drinks mixed to their own sodium concentration. Tournament days planned as a grazing schedule because court times move.

The transferable lesson is not a food list. It is that rehearsal beats optimisation — the same principle behind a consistent warmup routine and steady off-court conditioning. Find a pre-match meal and an on-court snack that sit well with you, then use them every time.

Putting it together

Fuelling well will not fix your bandeja. But it keeps the third set looking like the first, it prevents a fair share of the cramps and late-session strains covered in our guide to common padel injuries, and it frees up attention for the part that actually improves your game.

One caveat before you go: this is general guidance for healthy recreational players. If you manage diabetes, kidney conditions, or blood pressure, are pregnant, have specific dietary requirements, or are training and competing seriously, talk to a registered dietitian or your doctor — the individual numbers matter far more than any article's ranges.