Roger Federer needs to be more careful on clay, says trainer

• Tennis News
• Roger Federer

In an interview to Blick, Roger Federer's fitness trainer Pierre Paganini largely spoke about the Swiss player's preparation on clay. Next week in Madrid the Swiss will be back to play a clay match for the first time since 2016 Rome.

After triumphing in the Miami Open, Federer took a one-week break. "On 6-7th of April we came back to practice near Zurich", Paganini said. "Now the most important thing is that Roger plays more tennis and that he has a lot of strength.

But resistance, comfort and explosiveness are important too. However, we do not have time to train all these things as Madrid comes pretty soon. He also needs to have a sufficient number of days off in order to recover and prepare himself to the following training sessions.

You need to fit the time being and Roger, a father of four is an example on it. It's a different preparation than the one you do for the grass or hard season because he has not been playing for a while on clay. We need to be more careful because Roger also has a lot of training sessions behind him overall.

He luckily has a good physiotherapist, Dani Troxler." Are Federer's practice sessions different than the ones with Stan Wawrinka? "I have my own training method and philosophy. I do not change them, but I fit them to their strengths and weaknesses, physical tasks too.

Stan and Roger are two very different athletes, who have both been playing for a long time. It's important to pick the length of the several sessions."