Sore Forearms and Shoulders After Pickleball: Eight Moves Between Games

By Zolene, Massage Therapist · Updated September 6, 2026

If your forearms feel tight and tender the morning after a few games, it is almost never the wrist that caused it. Pickleball loads the muscles that run from the elbow down to the hand, and it loads them through hundreds of small, repeated, low-effort actions rather than one big one. That is why the soreness builds over weeks instead of arriving all at once, and it is why a short routine done between games tends to work better than a long one done occasionally.

• The elbow and forearm, not the wrist, is a commonly reported problem area in pickleball players
• Most of it comes from overuse and repetition, not from falls or collisions
• Grip tension is the quiet culprit: most players hold the paddle far harder than the shot needs
• Eight moves, three or four minutes, done between games rather than only at the end
• Stretch and massage both forearms, not just the paddle arm, and give the shoulder its share

In This Article

• Why do forearms get sore after pickleball?
• Which pickleball actions load the forearm most?
• Eight moves to do between games
• How often should you actually do this?
• When is it more than ordinary soreness?

Why Do Forearms Get Sore After Pickleball?

Because the forearm does the work and the hand takes the credit. Every time you hold the paddle, the muscles on the top of your forearm contract to stop the wrist collapsing while the shot happens. That is a low effort held for a long time, repeated a few hundred times an evening, which is exactly the loading pattern muscles complain about last and longest.

The numbers back up where it shows up. A 2025 cross-sectional study of pickleball players in South Korea, published in Frontiers in Public Health, found the elbow and forearm were the most frequently reported injury site at around 18 percent, while the wrist and hand accounted for roughly half that at 9.5 percent. It also found that about 78 percent of reported problems came from overuse rather than from a fall or an impact.

That second figure is the useful one. Overuse problems are the kind that a small, boring, repeated habit genuinely changes, because the thing causing them is also small, boring and repeated.

It is worth saying plainly what the emergency department data shows instead, because the two get mixed up. Hospital figures for pickleball are dominated by wrist fractures and head injuries, which come from falling backwards chasing a lob. Those are real, and they are a different problem with a different answer, which is footwork rather than stretching. What follows is about the slow accumulating kind.

What I see in the treatment room is people with repetitive strain from racquet sports, and pickleball is quietly becoming more common. It looks gentle. It is deceptively active, and most people have no idea how hard they are pushing until something complains.

The other thing they nearly all have in common is that there is no recovery in the routine at all. They play, they go home, they play again. The pattern I see most is rotator cuff and shoulder, and forearm from grip strength.

Which Pickleball Actions Load the Forearm Most?

It helps to stop thinking about the sport and start thinking about the repeated actions inside it. Four of them do most of the work.

Notice that none of those are the powerful shots. The serve and the overhead are the ones that feel like effort, and they are not what leaves the forearm sore two days later. The quiet, controlled, repeated actions are.

Grip tension is the one to fix first, and it costs nothing. Most players hold the paddle at roughly twice the pressure the shot needs, and they hold it between points as well as during them. If you take one thing from this article, let it be to consciously loosen your grip while you walk back to the baseline. The routine below helps. Not gripping so hard in the first place helps more.

Eight Moves to Do Between Games

These take three or four minutes together. Do them on both arms. Hold each stretch for 20 to 30 seconds and repeat it twice, and keep every one of them well short of anything that feels sharp. A stretch should feel like a stretch and nothing more interesting than that.

You do not have to hold everything in mid air either. A wall, a fence post, the edge of a table or the back of a bench all make these easier and steadier, and steadier means you can relax into the position instead of bracing against it. Press a palm flat on a wall, rest a forearm on a table edge, or lean a hand on the net post between games. Anything solid at about waist or shoulder height will do.

Forearm and hand

1. Wrist extensor stretch

Hold your arm straight out in front of you, palm facing the floor. Let the hand drop at the wrist. Use your other hand to draw the fingers gently back towards your body. You should feel this along the top of the forearm, which is the side that has been working hardest all evening.

2. Wrist flexor stretch

Hold one arm out in front of you and let the hand drop at the wrist so the fingers point at the floor. Bring your other hand up underneath, cup it around those fingers and draw them back in toward your body. The direction is the whole thing here. Pulling straight down does very little; drawing back toward you is what reaches into the forearm. Almost nobody does this one, and it is half the job.

3. Forearm self-massage

Rest one forearm across your lap, palm towards you. Find the muscle on the top, about a hand's width below the elbow, and press in with the opposite thumb. Work slowly along it in small circles, moving down towards the wrist. This is the spot that will feel tender if you have been gripping hard, and it is the single most useful thirty seconds in this list.

4. Thumb web release

Open one hand, palm up. Press the opposite thumb into the fleshy pad between your thumb and index finger and circle slowly. That muscle closes your grip on every single shot and never gets a moment off. Most people are surprised how tender it is the first time they check.

5. Grip release

Close your hand into a loose fist, then open it and spread the fingers as wide as they will comfortably go. Ten slow repetitions. It looks like nothing. It is the opposite of what your hand has been doing for two hours, which is the entire point.

6. Prayer stretch

Press your palms together in front of your chest, elbows out to the sides. Keeping the palms touching, lower both hands towards your waist until you feel a stretch through both wrists. Stop as soon as the palms want to come apart. This is a good one to finish on because it covers both arms at once.

Shoulder

The forearm gets the attention because it is where the ache shows up first, but the shoulder is doing plenty of quiet work too, holding the paddle up between points and bracing on every volley. Two moves cover it.

7. Cross body shoulder stretch

Bring one arm straight across your chest at shoulder height and keep it horizontal. Hook the other forearm underneath it, just above the elbow, and draw it in toward you. Keep the stretching shoulder down rather than letting it creep up toward your ear, which is the mistake almost everyone makes. You should feel it across the back of the shoulder.

8. Wall chest opener

Put one palm flat on a wall at roughly shoulder height with the arm straight and slightly behind you. Keep the hand where it is and turn your chest slowly away from it until you feel a stretch across the front of the shoulder and chest. Go gently. This one has a habit of feeling like nothing and then suddenly feeling like a lot, so ease in rather than turning hard.

Alternatively you can hold onto a door frame which can be a bit more comfortable and allow you to push the stretch a little further .

This is the pair worth doing if you only ever do two things on this list. The front of the shoulder shortens from holding the paddle up, and the back of it works to slow every swing down.

How Often Should You Actually Do This?

More often than you want to, and for less time than you would expect. The whole point of an overuse pattern is that it is built from small repeated things, so it responds to small repeated things going the other way. Two or three minutes between games beats fifteen minutes once a week, comfortably.

A realistic version looks like this. Do the two stretches while you are waiting for a court. Do the forearm massage and the thumb web at the changeover, or while someone is arguing about the score. Do all six after you finish, before you get in the car, because once you are home it is not happening.

If you play several times a week, the other thing worth doing is loading those muscles deliberately on a non playing day, rather than only stretching them. Slow controlled wrist movements holding something light, a tin of beans is fine, done for two or three sets, is the approach with the most evidence behind it for this part of the arm. Build up gradually and keep it well short of anything sharp.

Regular stretching is what keeps an area moving, and doing it often enough is what keeps the general aches of a repetitive sport from building up on you. Muscle Mint is not doing that part of the work. It gives you a cooling tingle over the area you have just worked, and for a lot of people that is simply the thing that makes them finish the routine instead of skipping it.

But if you are feeling pain while you are doing these stretches, or there is a constant ache in one spot that is sharper than the rest and is not getting any better, go and see your GP or a physio.

When Is It More Than Ordinary Soreness?

Ordinary post game soreness is spread across the muscle, eases as you move, and is gone in a day or two. The pattern worth taking seriously is different: a specific sore point on the outside of the elbow, one that hurts when you grip something ordinary like a kettle or a door handle, and that is still there weeks later. That combination is what the NHS describes under tennis elbow, and it is common enough in pickleball that the name is misleading.

Stop and get it seen if pain is severe, if it followed a fall rather than building up, if there is swelling or you cannot straighten the arm, or if you have been sensible for six weeks and it has not shifted. Stretching harder is not the answer to any of those.

Related Reading

• DOMS calculator: when soreness peaks, and when it fades
• How Long Does DOMS Last?
• 8 Natural Ways to Relieve Muscle Tension After a Long Day