CARLOS ALCARAZ SAYS HE WILL DELIBERATELY SKIP SOME TOURNAMENTS IN THE FUTURE BEFORE AN INJURY FORCES HIM TO STOP. THAT DISTINCTION GOES FAR BEYOND THE ATP CALENDAR: THERE ARE BREAKS YOU CHOOSE, AND BREAKS YOUR BODY CHOOSES FOR YOU.
Carlos Alcaraz returned to competition after a long absence caused by a wrist injury. But when he spoke about his comeback, he said something I find more interesting than the debate about the professional calendar itself: in the future, he does not want to wait for another injury before taking time away. He explained that he may deliberately skip tournaments and create periods without competition because, for him, trying to play everything is not sustainable.
Of course, Alcaraz’s calendar is completely different from that of almost every player reading this. But the principle behind his words applies much more widely. There is a common habit in sport: we often consider rest legitimate only when something forces us to stop. As long as we can continue, we continue. And sometimes we wait until the body, accumulated fatigue, or a collapse in training quality makes a decision we could have made earlier.
RECOVERY BY CHOICE VS RECOVERY BY FORCE
There are breaks you choose and breaks you are forced to take. The first are part of planning. The second arrive when choice has disappeared. The distinction sounds simple, but it changes the way we think about training. If recovery is part of the work, it can be planned before a problem becomes serious. If recovery is viewed only as time when you are not training, it tends to be postponed until continuing is no longer possible.
That does not mean every tired day requires a break, or that a player should stop as soon as training feels uncomfortable. Training includes fatigue, load and periods when the body does not feel perfect. The point is different: we should not need a crisis before recovery becomes legitimate. There is a major difference between learning to tolerate the normal fatigue of training and repeatedly ignoring signs that the load is no longer being absorbed well.
THE PARADOX OF THE PLAYER WHO DOES NOT WANT TO LOSE THREE DAYS
A player feels heavy. Training quality has dropped. Sleep is worse, recovery feels slower, and perhaps a small physical issue keeps returning. But there is a tournament at the weekend, another training week after that and then another event. Taking two or three days away feels like lost time. So the player keeps going, not necessarily because every session is still productive, but because psychologically it often feels easier to add work than to remove it.
Then the discomfort increases, or fatigue reaches a level that makes a much longer stop unavoidable. That creates the paradox: the player who was unwilling to lose three days may end up losing twenty. We cannot claim that a short break would have prevented every injury or problem; that would be irresponsible. But we can recognize the underlying mistake: waiting until the situation becomes serious enough to remove your ability to choose.
NOT EVERYTHING YOU ADD MAKES YOU BETTER
Tennis players are very good at counting what they do: hours on court, physical sessions, tournaments, sets, baskets of serves, repetitions. It is much harder to assign value to what we deliberately decide not to do. A planned recovery day does not produce a visible statistic. Skipping one session does not create the same feeling of productivity as spending another two hours on court. That makes it easy to confuse quantity with progress.
But the value of a training session does not depend only on whether you completed it. It also depends on what you can absorb from it. If you keep accumulating work without enough space to recover from that work, the issue is not simply that you feel tired. Sessions that should be building you can slowly turn into sessions you are only surviving.
The same principle applies mentally. There are periods when a player does not need another tournament, another explanation or another full week. They need space. Not necessarily a long holiday, but a period in which the pressure of the next result stops occupying everything. Sometimes recovery means resting the body. Sometimes it means returning to practice without immediately having another match to prepare for.
RECOVERY IS NOT THE OPPOSITE OF TRAINING
One of the simplest mistakes is to imagine two separate categories: when I train, I am improving; when I recover, I am doing nothing. For an athlete, recovery matters precisely because it allows the work to remain sustainable and absorbable. It is not a reward you receive after you have worked hard enough. It is part of the structure that allows you to keep doing good work.
This is where Alcaraz’s comments become useful. His injury forced him into a much longer break than he wanted, but the experience appears to have changed one decision: in the future, he is willing to create breaks before a physical problem creates them for him. We do not know exactly how he will structure his schedule or what the consequences will be. But the logic is clear: do not always wait until you lose control of the decision.
YELLOW FLAGS MATTER BEFORE THE RED ONES
When a problem becomes obvious, deciding what to do is relatively easy. If a doctor tells you not to play, there is no longer much debate about whether you should rest. The difficult part comes earlier, when the signals are less clear: a sequence of unusually poor-quality sessions, fatigue that does not disappear as it normally does, a minor issue that keeps returning, motivation that is not simply low for one day but stays flat for a period, or a growing sense that you are arriving at practice already depleted.
None of those signs, taken alone, automatically means you should stop. And an article cannot replace the judgment of a doctor, physiotherapist or qualified performance professional when there is a physical concern. But those signals can serve one important purpose: they can make you ask a question before the situation turns red. Am I still absorbing this load well, or am I simply continuing because the schedule says I should continue?
THIS IS NOT AN INVITATION TO BECOME MORE FRAGILE
There is an opposite mistake too. Talking about recovery can easily turn into the idea that every negative sensation should be avoided. That is not how sport works. Training requires fatigue. Athletes have to learn how to tolerate discomfort, difficult days, frustration and demanding workloads. If every tired day becomes a reason to stop, resilience is never built.
The real skill is more sophisticated: distinguishing fatigue that belongs to the work from fatigue that is progressively reducing the quality of the work. Distinguishing one day when you do not feel like training from a longer period in which the system no longer seems to recover. Distinguishing the normal discomfort of effort from pain that needs professional attention. Mental toughness does not mean ignoring every piece of information coming from the body. It also means learning to read that information without dramatizing it and without denying it.
BEFORE YOU ADD MORE, ASK WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO PROTECT
Imagine looking at the next four weeks. The instinctive question is often: how many training sessions can I fit in? How many tournaments can I play? How many hours can I add? Try reversing the question: what level of quality do I still want to be able to produce in week four? If you fill every available space, are you building the player you want to become, or simply maximizing the amount of tennis you can tolerate?
That distinction matters. A packed schedule can look very professional. But professionalism is not doing the maximum amount possible at all times. It is making decisions that allow the most important work to retain quality over time.
THREE QUESTIONS TO TAKE WITH YOU
The next time you feel compelled to continue simply because stopping feels wrong, ask yourself three questions.
Am I continuing because this session is genuinely useful, or simply because it was scheduled?
Which signals am I ignoring only because they are not yet serious enough to force me to stop?
If I did not wait for an injury, a collapse in performance or a doctor to make the decision for me, when would I voluntarily create space to recover?
There is no universal answer. A professional, a developing junior and an adult who plays three times a week have very different demands. That is exactly why the principle matters more than a fixed number of rest days: learn to treat recovery as something that can be planned, not only something that happens when you are no longer able to train.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL SOMETHING BREAKS BEFORE A BREAK HAS VALUE
Perhaps the most useful lesson in Alcaraz’s comments has nothing to do with how many Masters 1000 events he should play. It is about the moment at which we decide to respond to a signal. After a long forced absence, he says he intends to choose voluntary breaks in the future as well. In other words, he wants to keep part of that decision in his own hands.
That distinction matters at every level. You can continue to think of recovery as the consequence of something going wrong. Or you can start treating it as one of the conditions that allow the work to keep going well.
RECOVERY SHOULD NOT BEGIN ONLY WHEN YOUR BODY LEAVES YOU NO CHOICE. SOMETIMES THE MOST PROFESSIONAL DECISION IS NOT TO ADD ANOTHER SESSION. IT IS KNOWING WHEN NOT TO.
Federico Coppini
Mental Performance Coach & Tennis Coach
Founder – Coppini Tennis Academy
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