What to do in the tennis off season

Off season is where we are today. It is 36 ° outside, and luckily we haven't any tournaments planned for the next few days. Any of our players would be in serious difficulties having to play in such conditions. It is a problem of water intake, of mineral balance, and of sunstroke. Whatever rigorous training you have undertaken, you cannot have prepared yourself for such extreme conditions.

Of course all competition players will have a medical certificate. This is an annually-issued document from the family doctor to authorise the player, medically, to take part in competition sport. The tournament referee is asked to examine this document, and won't let the player take part if the document is absent or invalid. This is a formality that everyone can agree with. But this also puts a certain medical responsability on the tournament referee. If conditions are unfit for play, such as this exceptional heat, he will have a difficult decision to make. Does he risk upsetting his tightly organised schedule for the sake of player safety? Does he look at the weather forecast for the next few days, and he'll see right now 30° + temperatures for the next five days at least, and come to an unpleasant compromise. Yes, there is a risk to players' health, but I must get my matches played.

Or you can decide simply not to play tennis matches in high summer when temperatures risk causing damage to your health.

Official break

Off season is a strange expression, because this suggests there is some official time when players and officials can take a break. If you look at the ATP calendar there is a disagreeable break in December, when I have tennis withdrawal.

It's also difficult preparing players in this period. Due to family obligations, they end up slacking on practice, and eating too much, or eating badly. It takes a good week of being back on site to get them back in shape again.

If you look at other tennis calendars, such as the Futures tour, or the French semi-pro circuit,  you'll find that there is no break. That means that it's up to the players and the coaches to organise an off season, because no-one can play non-stop.

Sadly off season becomes a sort of compromise. We have players who have three of four weeks of intense competition. Let's say it goes badly. Often the player will try and compensate by trying to extend his tournament tour. If it's gone well, it's the same. A player wants to exploit his period of good form. The reasons for this are financial, and the ratings system. Any time you create an off season, you are losing opportunities to earn money and to gain circuit points.

Off season needs planning

As an organiser I try to talk about an off season well before a tournament tour starts.The player must understand that his training programme will be designed to see him peak during the tournament tour, and to see him rest afterwards, regardless of whether it's gone well or not. This allows the coaches not so much a break, as a system that allows them to raise and lower energy levels required for practice, and to adapt the types of practice.

In the build-up to a tournament tour for example, we'll do lots of match routines, such as aggressive returns, or plenty of placed serving, or varied rallying structures. During the tournaments themselves, we'll cut all of this out, unless we notice a real lack somewhere in a player's armoury. We'll concentrate on keeping a player relaxed, loose and fresh. Tournament tennis is terrible for creating tension in the mind and in the body, so a coach needs to release all of this. That doesn't mean there is no practice. The practice is low intensity, and maybe even a bit playful and experimental. After the tournament series, there'll be an element of rest, but in general this'll only be a few days. Already the coaches will have planned the next series, and already they'll have identified new things that need attention.

A tennis player's life is hard. You can't easily escape. For most players an extended pause is deathly, because it takes so long to get yourself back into match tennis mode again. Some players, the ones with clean technique, with strong natural fitness, with cultured tennis brains, can take longer breaks. But how many of us can honestly say we belong in this category?