Does padel exercise the brain more than tennis? Padel Magazine

No study has yet directly compared padel and tennis in terms of brain activity, but science shows that both sports belong to the category of activities that most intensely engage the brain — and the mandatory doubles format of padel could well give it an additional advantage, not yet proven but logical on paper.

When comparing two sports, we almost always think of the same criteria: how many calories, how many kilometers, what heart rate. The brain, however, is often conspicuously absent from these comparisons—wrongly so, because sports neuroscience has been closely examining this question for about fifteen years. And their findings are unequivocal on one point: Not all sports stimulate the brain in the same way. .

So, between tennis and padel, which one exercises the brain more? Here's what the available scientific literature reveals, with its certainties and its grey areas.

1. The key distinction made by researchers: "open" sport or "closed" sport

To understand why some sports stimulate the brain more than others, researchers use a central category: the distinction between the open environment sports and the closed environment sports .

Un closed sport It takes place in a stable and predictable environment, where the movement is repeated identically: swimming, running on a treadmill, weight training. The body knows in advance exactly what it will have to do.
Un open sport Conversely, it takes place in a changing, unpredictable environment, where one must constantly react to external stimuli: tennis, badminton, squash, basketball — and, by logical extension, padel — belong to this category.

This distinction is not just an academic classification: it has measurable consequences for the brain. A study published in 2024 in the journal Scientific ReportsUsing a portable brain imaging technique (near-infrared spectroscopy, which measures cortical activity during actual exertion), researchers compared participants in open sports (badminton, volleyball, soccer) to participants in closed sports (calisthenics). The result: during a classic cognitive test (the Stroop test, which measures the ability to inhibit an automatic response), The badminton group showed significantly stronger activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — an area of the brain directly involved in decision-making and attention control — than the group practicing repetitive exercises.

Tennis and padel, therefore, both fall on the right side of this distinction. On this first criterion, neither sport has a particular advantage over the other: both are "open" sports, therefore both are associated with a richer cognitive challenge than a classic endurance sport.

2. What studies show about racquet sports players

Racket sports in particular have been the subject of several studies comparing the cognitive abilities of regular players to those of non-players, with fairly consistent results from one study to another.

Better management of space and attention

A study using electroencephalography (EEG, which measures the brain's electrical activity in real time) compared table tennis players to non-players on visuospatial perception tasks—that is, the ability to track a moving object in space and anticipate its trajectory, a skill obviously central to any racket sport. The trained players showed a higher amplitude of a brain signal called P3 , associated with the amount of attentional resources mobilized in response to a relevant stimulus. Similar results were observed in badminton players, who responded more quickly and with a stronger brain signal than non-players during action anticipation tasks.

Enhanced executive functions

Researchers group under the term executive functions three major high-level cognitive abilities, particularly used in racket sports:

Inhibition : the ability to resist a reflex or distraction (for example, not rushing for a ball that looks easy but is actually a tactical trap set by the opponent).
Working memory : the ability to keep several pieces of information in mind at the same time during the action (the opponent's position, the score, the current tactic).
Cognitive flexibility : the ability to quickly change strategy depending on what is happening on the ground.

Several studies converge to show that racquet sports players achieve better results on these three abilities than non-athletes, with particularly marked effects on inhibition and cognitive flexibility — two skills directly mobilized in each exchange, whether it is tennis or padel.

An important distinction: sport helps the brain, but not miraculously, depending on the type chosen.

However, not all studies point in the same direction. One study comparing basketball players (an open sport) to swimmers (a closed sport), for example, found no significant difference between the two groups on several cognitive and heart rate variability tests. This result underscores an important rule in science: an encouraging result in one study should never be generalized without qualification. The strongest message, therefore, remains this: sport, in general, is beneficial for the brain—the "open sport" category seems to offer an additional benefit in several studies, but this is not an absolute and universal rule demonstrated in all contexts.

3. The factor that could tip the scales: the mandatory doubles in padel

This is where the comparison between tennis and padel becomes truly interesting — and this is also where scientific caution is necessary, because No study has yet directly compared the brain activity of tennis players and padel players. Since padel is a relatively new sport, research has not yet had time to produce this type of comparative data. Therefore, what follows is based on logical reasoning from existing knowledge, and not on an already established scientific finding.

Padel is played exclusively in double — unlike tennis, where singles remains the dominant format. However, playing doubles adds an extra cognitive layer compared to singles, for several reasons documented by studies on two-player games in racket sports:

You need to keep track of more information at the same time. In singles, a player watches a single opponent and the trajectory of the ball. In doubles, they must follow their partner, both opponents, and anticipate each other's intentions — a significantly more complex exercise in working memory and shared attention.
We need to communicate in real time. Studies on doubles tennis (transferable to padel, which is structurally identical in this respect) show that constant communication with one's partner — verbal (“to me!”) or non-verbal (gestures, looks) — is identified as a key skill for performance in doubles, alongside technical qualities.
We need to manage asymmetrical information sharing. A study on doubles table tennis showed that the most effective players are those who manage to constantly re-establish a balanced sharing of information with their partner (knowing what the other sees, anticipates, plans to do) — a form of two-brain cognitive coordination that simply does not exist in singles.

On paper, this collective and communicative dimension, mandatory at every point in padel, could constitute an additional cognitive challenge compared to singles tennis. But we must be honest about the limitations of this reasoning: doubles tennis shares exactly the same characteristics, and no data currently allows us to claim that padel exercises the brain more than doubles tennis.

4. The link with brain aging

This cognitive dimension is not merely a performance curiosity: it directly relates to the data discussed in our article on padel and aging in sports. The famous Danish study that measured a gain of nearly 10 years in life expectancy among tennis players explicitly identifies constant cognitive stimulation as one of the likely mechanisms explaining this exceptional result, alongside social connection and interval cardiovascular effort. The reasoning applies just as logically to padel, an "open" racket sport played in doubles, even if—as the rest of this article reminds us—specific data is still lacking to confirm it with the same certainty as for tennis.

5. So, what's the verdict?

Based on what science actually allows us to state today:

Tennis and padel both belong to the category of sports that most heavily utilize the brain (open sports), with documented benefits on attention, information processing speed and executive functions.
No direct comparative studies exist between the two sports — any definitive statement (“padel exercises the brain more than tennis”) would therefore be more a matter of hypothesis than of scientifically established fact.
The mandatory doubles format of padel adds a dimension of communication and coordination for two which, in theory, constitutes an additional cognitive challenge compared to singles — but this advantage disappears when comparing padel to tennis, which is also played in doubles.

The most honest answer is therefore the following: padel probably does not "work" the brain "more" than tennis in absolute terms, but its permanent doubles structure makes it, by construction, a sport where the collective cognitive dimension is systematically present at each point — which is not always the case in tennis, very often played in singles.

F.A.Q

Is padel scientifically proven to be better for the brain than tennis? No, no study has directly compared the two sports in this respect. What science shows is that both belong to the category of sports that are among the most stimulating for the brain, along with badminton or squash.

Why would the double be more stimulating for the brain than the single? Because it requires following more information simultaneously (partner, two opponents), communicating in real time, and coordinating decisions with those of a partner — cognitive demands absent from singles play.

Do racket sports really make you smarter? This is not what the studies show: they do not measure general intelligence, but specific cognitive abilities (attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, speed of visual information processing) which improve with the regular practice of sports requiring quick decisions.

Does a classic endurance sport like running offer no brain benefits? Yes, but of a different nature: endurance sports are more associated with the stimulation of areas linked to long-term memory, while racket sports require more attention, quick decision-making and executive functions.

Sources and methodology

Zhang, Y. et al. (2024). Comparative effectiveness of open and closed skill exercises on cognitive function in young adults: a fNIRS studyScientific Reports.
Electroencephalography study on visuospatial cognition in table tennis players of different levels, PeerJ (2024).
Jin, H. et al. ; Wang, T., Tu, S. Studies on action anticipation and P3 signal amplitude in badminton players.
Study on cognitive function and heart rate variability in “open” and “closed” sports (basketball vs swimming), published in a sports medicine journal (2023).
Krenn, B. et al. (2018). Study on the links between types of sports and the development of executive functions.
Pancar, S. (2020). The Effect of Open and Closed-Skill Sports on Cognitive Functions — comparison between table tennis players and closed sport athletes via the Trail Making Test.
Studies on the sharing of contextual information in singles and doubles table tennis, Human Labor (scientific journal, Cairn.info).
Schnohr, P. et al. (2018). Copenhagen City Heart Study, for the link between racket sports, cognitive stimulation and life expectancy (already mentioned in our article on padel and aging in sports).
Syntheses of research on executive functions and sports performance (Verburgh et al., 2016; Vestberg et al.; Di Russo et al., 2010).

This article was written using publicly available scientific sources as of August 2026. In the absence of a direct comparative study between padel and tennis on a cognitive level, some conclusions in this article are based on logical reasoning using existing literature rather than established scientific results — this distinction is made clear whenever it applies.

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovered padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since then, padel has been part of his life. You often see him touring France to cover major French padel events.