Carlos Alcaraz’s team have offered an update on the world No 1’s progress as he continues to recover from an abdominal tear that forced him to end his season early. The US Open champion is set to make his comeback at the upcoming Mubadala World Tennis Championship exhibition and is doing well, though he also suffered a setback in his recovery.
Alcaraz is gearing up to return to the match court next week during an exhibition in Abu Dhabi. The 19-year-old ended his season when he injured his abdomen during the Paris Masters, causing him to retire from his quarter-final before pulling out of the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup Finals.
He has now been making progress with his recovery from the injury but it was good and bad news from the Spaniard’s team, as he also found himself in bed with a virus to halt his meticulous plan devised by his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, physical trainer Alberto Lledo, and physiotherapist Juanjo Moreno. “The last tests were done last Thursday and everything is going well,” Lledo told Marca in a new update.
“Until mid-December we will do strength, cardiovascular, injury prevention work with eccentric exercises and then strength and power. After the Abu Dhabi exhibition, the leading role will be tennis and explosiveness.”
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As well as his stint at the Mubadala exhibition from December 16 to 18, Alcaraz will be playing an exhibition at the Kooyong Classic in Australia ahead of the first Grand Slam of 2023, and he has already confirmed his schedule for the months after – playing Rio, Acapulco and the sunshine double of Indian Wells and Miami. Ahead of his return, the teenager is well and truly being put through his paces as his trainer outlined Alcaraz’s programme.
Revealing that the world No 1 sacrificed some of his holiday to start his pre-season early, Lledo continued: “We started with an isometric workout and then it went to an eccentric one with little speed and we increased that speed.” Between the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, the teenager emerged as a whole new player physically after a pre-season that helped him gain muscle and go from boy to man, but his trainer confirmed that would not be the case this time around.
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