Build around
the court.

The court is part of the load.

“Off-court” is a location, not a recovery guarantee. The International Tennis Federation describes tennis as repeated bursts from the legs, trunk and upper limb, with running before and after strokes. Its conditioning guide defines volume as the total amount of training and explicitly says that on-court and off-court work belong in that total. A two-hour singles match and a controlled gym session are different stimuli, but both occupy the same weekly budget of attention, tissue tolerance and recovery.

That does not mean every hit has the same cost. Surface, score, rally length, singles or doubles, heat, travel and your own level change the demand. A relaxed doubles hit may leave a different trace from a long singles match with repeated wide-ball chases. The useful habit is to count the court session as information before adding a gym dose, not to label it “nothing” because no barbell was involved. The rules behind CourtFit's schedule start from this same premise.

A decision framework, not a universal calendar.

Instead of copying “lift Monday and Thursday,” classify the next available training window by its relationship to tennis. Four broad states make the trade-off visible:

• More distance from the next court demand: this is where heavier strength work may fit when your technique is settled, equipment is appropriate and the previous load has been absorbed. “Heavier” describes a relative training choice, not a prescribed percentage or a promise of a result.
• A normal gym day with a court session later: keep the goal but be conservative about total lower-body and overhead stress. A shorter session or fewer challenging movements can leave room for the tennis work that matters that day.
• Close to a match or demanding hit: think primer, not test. Keep movement quality and confidence, reduce fatigue-producing volume and leave unfamiliar or high-impact work for another window. A primer is a choice about readiness for the court, not a diagnostic test of readiness.
• After a hard match, tournament day or rising symptoms: recovery, easy movement or no training may be the correct training decision. Rest is not a failure to follow the programme; it is part of managing the total load.

These categories are deliberately flexible. A club player with two short hits, a junior in a tournament and a recreational doubles player do not have the same constraints. The framework helps you ask what the next court demand is, how much lower-body or upper-limb work has already happened, and whether the proposed gym session supports or competes with it.

What the studies actually observed.

In one tournament study, eight male national-level players (23.0 ± 3.8 years; most had professional ranking experience) played one two-hour singles match on each of three consecutive days. Leg maximal voluntary contraction and rate of force development were lower during the tournament, soreness and creatine kinase rose, and some explosive measures remained below baseline after one rest day. The authors describe this as a demanding situation for that small, trained group; it is not a rule that every player needs two full days off after every match.

A separate heat-and-match study measured 12 competitive male players in two conditions. They played matches with 20 minutes of effective playing time in cool and hot environments, and the researchers tested repeated sprints, a 15-metre sprint with a 180-degree direction change, jumps and leg stiffness before, during and after play. Several markers worsened mid-match and after the match, while all measured physical markers returned to pre-match values within 24 hours. The design used a short effective-playing protocol and male competitive players, so it tells us how those tests behaved in that experiment—not what your personal recovery clock must be.

The ITF guide also warns that load, intensity, frequency and recovery interact, and that the right volume is individual. Those principles support a decision process; they do not supply a universal seven-day prescription.

How CourtFit uses your real week.

CourtFit turns the framework into deterministic on-device rules. You enter tennis days, the timing of a match, available gym days, session length, equipment, playing level and the pain screen. The engine places its planned gym sessions around those constraints. A gym day before tennis becomes lighter and loses jumps; a match inside the next 24 hours reduces lower-body demand. The exact output is a product rule, not a claim that the app has measured your physiology.

Within that rule set, the deterministic PlanEngine places the heavy movement-power session (the footworkPower role) on the gym day farthest from the next tennis day. The immediate eve of tennis is a light primer: familiar movement, no plyometrics. Any pain you report removes plyometrics. SafetyGate blocks plan generation at a pain score of 5 or higher or when a red flag is present. CourtFit Coach and its AI only explain the session already generated; they never write or edit the plan and cannot bypass the safety gate.

The safety screen runs before exercise selection. Mildly flagged areas can remove movements that load them and surface alternatives, while a high pain score or red flag stops the plan and directs you to care. Equipment is also a hard input: if you do not have a cable, the plan does not pretend that a cable is available. Level changes the menu and dose inside those boundaries. You can inspect the full exercise library, including the transfer sentence attached to every movement.

The separate CourtFit Coach can explain the session you already have, but it does not write or edit the week and cannot override the safety gate. Plans and workout history stay on the phone. CourtFit does not read wearables to estimate readiness, diagnose fatigue, infer a recovery score or replace a coach or clinician.