Dubai has fallen hard for padel. Part tennis, part squash, played in doubles on a glass-walled court smaller than a tennis court, it is an easy game to explain and an even easier one to get hooked on. In a few short years it has gone from a resort novelty to a fixture of the city’s evenings, with courts now packed into Dubai Marina, Business Bay and Al Quoz.
Padel also carries a reputation as one of the easiest racket sports to pick up. Ali Saleh, Head of Holistic Therapy at The Flow Space, will tell you that that is precisely the problem. “As padel has become incredibly popular in Dubai, I’ve seen a big jump in injuries, especially among men in their 30s and 40s,” he says. The profile is familiar: professionals who haven’t played competitive sport in years, lured back onto court by a game that feels intuitive within the first rally.
That eagerness is exactly what gets them hurt. Ali says it is rarely bad luck, but a pattern he sees on repeat: men go “straight from their office desks onto the court”, then compound the problem by playing several times a week without allowing the body to recover and without seeing a specialist who can properly rebalance the shoulder and upper limb. He warns that the body flags trouble long before a major injury hits, through morning stiffness, a weaker grip or finding yourself reaching for a painkiller just to get through a match. Ignore those signs for long enough and something eventually has to give.
Most of what Ali treats falls into a short, predictable list. First is padel elbow: essentially tennis elbow by another name, caused by the same short, jarring volleys the sport is built on, repeated hundreds of times a session. The rest are calf strains and shoulder damage, including tears in the shoulder’s stabilising cartilage and injuries to the rotator cuff courtesy of overzealous overarm swings.
The fix, Ali argues, starts before the first serve. Skip the static stretching and give the body five to ten minutes of dynamic movement instead: lunges, arm circles, shoulder shakes and a light jog. It sounds almost too simple for a sport that can shred a rotator cuff, but the logic holds. A cold muscle simply can’t keep up with a sport that demands full speed from the very first point.
Long-term protection, he says, is less about the court and more about the fundamentals most people skip. That means strengthening the rotator cuff, building lower limb stability, hydrating properly with minerals and booking in regular manual therapy to stay ahead of problems rather than chasing them. “You should also check your blood for inflammation markers and deficiencies and address it properly with a medical doctor.” In other words, the best recovery plan is the one that starts before you ever need it.
Not everyone catches it in time, though, and for those already carrying an injury, recovery timelines vary considerably. A mild muscle strain might clear in two to four weeks, while elbow tendinosis can drag on for three to six months. Ali treats these injuries through targeted, holistic manual therapy rather than conventional physiotherapy alone.
Conventional treatment tends to focus only on the exact point of pain, whether that is the elbow itself or a strained calf, while holistic manual therapy also works on the body’s neural points, applying manual pressure to specific ganglia to dial down pain signals, release muscle spasms and calm the nervous system as a whole. “By doing this combination, we unlock incredibly fast, natural healing results right from the very first session.”
There’s a psychological layer, too, that most players never consider. Padel is fast and chaotic by nature. Under that kind of pressure, the body’s default response is to tense up, and tense muscles are slower to react, stiffer to move and far more prone to tearing than relaxed ones. Ali says the best way to address this is through awareness rather than technique. “I teach players how to practice true presence on the court. Being mindful of their body, breath, and surroundings in the exact moment keeps them in a state of safety and prevents unconscious situations to occur.”
Healing, he’s careful to note, rarely runs in a straight line. There will be strong weeks and setback days, and both belong to the same process. “The body will adapt and you will learn patiently yet effectively how to listen to the body, give it the proper needs and befriend it,” Ali says. None of this makes padel any less worth playing. It just means the warm-up deserves as much respect as the smash.
