Coco Gauff is back in Beijing, but she isn’t treating the Asian swing like a title chase. “I just try to treat this more as a practice month for next year,” she says, using the post-US Open stretch to test parts of her game before 2027. Her checklist is specific: play more aggressively, land more first serves, and trust the serve when it’s working.
She isn’t alone. For tennis’ biggest names, the time between events is when they rebuild and repair.
Carlos Alcaraz Recharges at Home in Murcia
When Alcaraz needs a reset, he goes home. After his early Miami exit this spring, he returned to Murcia to begin his transition to clay, training at Club de Campo with his team.
Coach Samuel López wants a more accurate serve, not a bigger one. He says it still needs more precision and better percentages, and the team is adding the slice for defense and to change the rhythm. It’s the same priority behind Jannik Sinner’s serve transformation.
Murcia is also where Alcaraz worked back from the right wrist injury that cost him four months. Early court sessions were cautious, with the pace of his groundstrokes dialed back. By the end of July, he was hitting at full intensity outdoors.
Jannik Sinner Takes the Slow Road in Monte Carlo
Sinner’s between-event work looks very different this fall. He has been out since winning Wimbledon in July with reported tendinopathy in his right knee, which forced him to withdraw from the US Open.
Sinner summed up the mood on Instagram: “For now, back to recovery and working to come back stronger.”
After finishing rehab in Turin, Sinner opened a training block in Monte Carlo. The Turin phase was mostly racket-free, built around treatment at the J Medical facility. In Monte Carlo, he’s been hitting with French junior Hugo Jathiere from the Piatti Tennis Center.
Progress has been slow. Italian outlets report sessions ending earlier than planned, and he has now pulled out of both Beijing and Shanghai. His team would rather give up a few weeks than risk losing months.
Aryna Sabalenka Trains Like a Fighter
Performance coach Jason Stacy has worked with Aryna Sabalenka since 2018, and his methods borrow from combat sports. The program includes crawling drills, barefoot training, and work on deceleration and ankle mobility.
“Your body is only going to allow you to go as fast as it knows you can control,” Stacy says.
Stacy’s background is in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and judo, and the progression follows a fighter’s logic. Crawling drills come first, putting Sabalenka in positions she’s never been in so she learns where her body is in space.
Then he adds load and new positions. The deceleration work has a simple payoff: a player who stops and recovers faster is “ready to go before the other person is.”
Dubai is a frequent stop between events. Before the 2024 WTA Finals, Sabalenka shared a day-in-the-life look at her Dubai workouts. During a preseason block there, she posted a clip of herself accurately serving around coaches with their backs turned, captioned “A very trustworthy team.”
Iga Swiatek Turns Off-Weeks Into Endurance Blocks
Swiatek’s fitness coach, Maciej Ryszczuk, has said their main training happens between surface changes, in blocks of endurance and strength work modeled on preseason.
The methods get creative. In July, Swiatek shared a video of herself training with 10 liters of water on her back in place of a weight vest. Because the water shifts unpredictably, her muscles have to react to every slosh, which is the point. It’s part of the grind after a tough 2026 that included losing her Wimbledon crown.
The Routine Never Really Stops for Coco Gauff
Ironically, the structure is often tighter on the road. Gauff says her routine at home is “more sporadic” than during tournament weeks, even though home is where she usually stacks two practices a day.
At home in Delray Beach, Florida, Gauff’s day starts early to beat the heat. Workouts begin at 8 a.m. with an hour-long warm-up.
The gym work leans on explosive combos like a weighted squat into a box jump, plus injury-prevention staples such as banded monster walks and toe lifts, which she calls “really boring exercises that actually matter a lot.” Her first session wraps around 11 a.m., and she’s usually done by 2 p.m.
With the year-end Finals approaching, what happens between events may matter as much as what happens during them.
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