Off season training: How coaches prepare professional tennis players for the new season
• 3 MINUTE READ
As we come to the end of the season – many players and coaches will already be turning their attention to 2026 and making it their best year yet.
together over an extended period, without the demands of playing matches day after day.
These training blocks – if done right – can help players make adjustments to their game, develop physically, analyse performance and dive deeper into other areas associated with being a professional tennis player.
LTA Men’s National Coach James Trotman has worked with several of the British stars over the years – including former world No.4 Jack Draper – and understands the importance of off season training and how to get most out of this unique window in the tennis calendar.
We caught up with him to find out more about how coaches set up off season training blocks, what they look like in practice and the use of technology and data to influence performance.
The off season is a chance where you could tackle some bigger areas of a player’s game.
What does an off season training block look like?
Off season is about maximizing that time and the days are going to be full with gym work, on-court training, physio, nutrition – everything that’s available to them at the National Tennis Centre.
Last year for example, Jack's nutrition is very good but as well as the on-court and strength preparation, we wanted to try and get him taking on more fluid and get used to taking his gels a bit more, which some players can struggle with.
So through a period like that we'd be pushing him on his fluid intake, because it is something you can train the gut with. The more you drink and put in, the more your body can tolerate it.
The start of the block typically would have more of a physical emphasis, with the tennis probably a little bit more secondary.
As you transition through that, it sort of starts to even out more 50-50 and then towards the end you're obviously again looking at more of a tennis focus.
Stats-based training programmes
The off season is a chance where you could tackle some bigger areas of a player’s game.
If you wanted to do some more technical work, let's say on the serve for example, the off season's the prime time for that because it's very difficult to make these changes when you’re competing week after week.
I would use stats a lot to compare areas of Jack’s game to the ATP top 10 and top 20 – even when he wasn’t ranked there.
I'll be looking at what those guys are doing against Jack and that could be numbers around their serve, how much they're attacking, if they're finishing at the net, or something around their return numbers.
Obviously, watching through a year, you're also going to have a pretty good idea in your own mind of what you feel the player needs to do to keep developing, improve weaknesses, build on strengths or maintaining certain areas of their game. It's very difficult to tackle everything.
I would use stats to take a look at Jack and say, OK, let's actually see where he is with his peers. My coaching eye might tell me X, but actually how good is his serve and do we think there's more room for improvement and if so, in what area?
It could be his win percentage, it could be the in percentage, it could be the situation he's finding on ball three, it could be multi-layered. But having these longer training blocks to work on it will help in the long run to make tweaks and fine-tune areas of their game for the upcoming season.
Matching training to the demands of the tour
With wearables now in tennis, you can monitor a whole range of areas in a player’s physical performance.
For example, you can be looking at the amount of time they're spending in the red zone during matches. So, you know that's when the heart rate's really getting up and they're having those incredibly physical points back-to-back potentially in the heat and the humidity, and with the pressure and the adrenaline of what comes with a match.
We'll track a player’s heart rate and use that technology to see how close you can get them to that in training, replicating those match levels.
If we haven't hit them for example, we can top up, so we could then go in the gym and put them on the versa climber or some interval running or something to try and increase that red zone work.
