Pickleball's on the rise in Canada. So are injuries from playing it

The litigate is fasting and furious at Pickleball Hub, an indoor pickleball readiness in Edmonton.

interior, Rob McDonald, 54, plays with enthusiasm — and with monish.

Five years ago, the Edmonton man suffered what he calls a “freak accident” during a pickleball tournament.

“My body went behind my knee, kind of twisted in and then blew out my knee, ACL, MCL, everything inside the knee kind of decided to let go," he said.

"It was not fun."

For three years, McDonald couldn’t play pickleball and underwent rehab. 

Now he is back on the courts, playing six times a week, three hours at a time, and wants others to be mindful that injuries can happen.

“I think most of the injuries come from the first few months of playing and people just haven’t been active or got their bodies up to the idea of the movement,” he said.

As the sport grows in Canada, medical professionals say they are seeing the effect it is having on people physically.

Physiotherapist Chad Burden of Summit Physiotherapy in St. Albert, a suburb outside of Edmonton, said he did not see pickleball injuries five years ago.

Now, he sees them every week.

“When they start playing, they’re enjoying the sport and so they just get into it and enjoy it. But they’re not thinking necessarily about the potential injuries that they can run into,” Burden said.

“It’s good that people are more active. But on the other hand, with activity comes injuries as well.”

He said that clients are coming in with elbow, wrist, lower back and knee injuries.

“What we’ve seen in the clinic is mostly overuse. It’s sort of that weekend warrior type sort of syndrome where people are just doing too much too soon,” Burden said.

His observations mirror the findings in a Sports Medicine Open study published August 2025 that examined the injury patterns of pickleball players in the United States.

The 12-month study found the most common injuries were in the knee (29 per cent), thigh, leg and foot (26.9 per cent) and shoulder (22.2 per cent).

If left untreated, Burden said a person’s quality of life, such as walking or even picking something up, could be affected.

He recommends those playing pickleball ease into the sport, stay flexible, strength train and work on their balance.

“It’s a higher impact sport and you’re doing lots … of starts and stops and pivots and turns and so forth, so your balance needs to be good too,” he said.

Eye injuries are also growing at an alarming rate over the past four years as pickleball popularity rises, according to a study in JAMA Ophthalmology published in October 2025.

It estimates that, between 2005 and 2004, there were 3,112 pickleball-related eye injuries and that the overwhelming majority of them, 88 per cent, occurred between 2022 and 2024.

That dramatic rise aligns with what optometrist Matt Sobolewski, owner of Helio Optometry in Edmonton, has seen firsthand.

“It’s something we’ve seen a lot more of over the past two or three years as, I think, pickleball has just become a lot more popular,” he said.

The main injuries that Sobolewski sees are blunt force injuries, where an individual’s eye gets hit with a pickleball or a paddle, and corneal abrasions that affect the retina or other structures inside of the eye.

Most injuries can be treated by an optometrist, he said, but he stresses that athletes should be proactive.

“You should be wearing protective eyewear of some sort, whether that’s specific safety- or sport-type glasses or some sort of barrier that’s coming in place between a paddle, a ball or whatever kind of sport you’re engaging in,” Sobolewski said.

Glasses frames very likely protected Rita Salter from injury when she got hit in the face by a pickleball.

“It was a side shot. Somebody hit it on the side of the paddle and [it] came on to my eye and [my glasses] saved me,” she said.

Salter, who is retired and enjoys the team aspect of the game, makes sure to wear eyewear when she plays. She also follows an exercise routine so she doesn’t endure any other injuries.

“I do lift weights, so I do [that] probably between two or three times a week,” she said. “I do have a stretching regiment that I do every day, whether I play pickleball or not.”

Senior reporter

Julia Wong is a senior reporter based in Edmonton.

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