We can already count enough people to prove pickleball participation is outpacing tennis. Now, we can count calories to prove it, too…Calories burned.
If you have an Apple Watch, you may be familiar with the pickleball tracking feature. They have settings to track almost any physical activity you could think of – including pickleball workouts.
To understand the extent of pickleball’s growth, Apple meticulously analyzed data from 250,000 individual, anonymous workouts and invited The Dink to attend their presentation of the results.
The most popular racquet sport
As of July 2023, pickleball participation outpaced tennis, making it the most popular racquet sport among Apple Watch users.
The research found that both sports were popular across ages and more popular for men than women.
On average, players who logged at least 10 pickleball workouts were older than their counterparts in tennis — 51 versus 45, respectively — and had higher female participation rates.
Health benefits tracked
Researchers found that while tennis workouts saw higher heart rate peaks, pickleball workouts were slightly longer than tennis workouts on average — 90 minutes versus 81 minutes, respectively — and saw greater variability in time played.
The average peak heart rate…
