When you step on the tennis or pickleball court, you better be prepared to sweat. Both sports will get you moving and have your work cut out for you. Any activity that gets you sprinting front to back and side to side is bound to be a great cardio workout, get you blood flowing, and start burning those calories.
But between tennis and pickleball, which racket sport can you expect to burn more calories playing? The short answer is Tennis. Now that’s not taking anything away from the fastest growing sport in America, but there are certain reasons why you’ll burn slightly more calories on average playing tennis than playing Pickleball, and we are here to explore why.
Why Tennis will burn calories faster
Although there are many reasons one might prefer Pickleball to Tennis, when it comes to a workout Tennis (on average) takes the cake. There are a couple of main reasons for this. The first is that a Tennis court is much bigger than a Pickleball court. Because of this, players have to cover more ground.
Tennis, like Pickleball, is a fast paced sport that requires bursts of speed. In tennis, these bursts last longer and players need to move 5-10 feet farther in a similar time period. THat might not seem like much, but it makes a ton of difference to your body and heart making it work more than you would in a game of Pickleball.
Another reason one might burn calories faster in Tennis is that it takes a bit more strength to hold and swing a tennis racket. On average, tennis rackets are 11 ounces where Pickleball paddles usually weigh about 8 ounces. So on average, every swing of the racket will be more work for a tennis player.
Pickleball vs Tennis Calories Burned – A Comparison
We have covered how Pickleball burns calories, and how Tennis burns calories as compared to other racket sports like Badminton. So now lets compare Tennis and Pickleball’s ability to burn calories.
People who weigh more will burn more calories given the same amount of time and activity. So for our baseline, we’ll take someone who weighs 150 lbs.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, someone weighing 150 lbs will burn about 422 calories per hour playing doubles Tennis. We also validated this with Captain Calculator’s Tennis calorie burn calc, and it came out to about 430 calories burned for someone playing doubles tennis for an hour and 573 calories burned playing singles tennis.
Now let’s compare to Pickleball. According to calorie jam, a 150 lb person playing singles Pickleball for 1-hour will burn about 357 calories. If we approximate how that compares to playing doubles Pickleball for an hour from the Tennis calorie figures, then we can assume that 1-hour of Pickleball doubles will burn about 265 calories.
So here is how the final comparison comes out.
| CALORIES BURNED PER 1-HOUR OF PLAY FOR 150 LB PERSON | Tennis | Pickleball |
| Singles: | 573 | 357 |
| Doubles: | 422 | 265 |
Again, these figures all depend on how intensely & competitively you are playing for either sport. But all things equal, you will burn more calories playing tennis vs playing pickleball.