Is it bad to play tennis every day?
Not in itself, in our view, and no study says how many days is too many. Kekelekis and colleagues reviewed the research on risk factors for arm and shoulder injuries in tennis, and found no study of workload that met their criteria. What the research does link to trouble is how long you play each day, how tired the arm gets, your technique and your age.
Their 2020 review pooled 20 studies and 961 players, about two thirds of them recreational and 293 of them juniors. The studies were of moderate to low quality, with a median of 12 out of 33 on their quality checklist. Between them they pointed to prolonged play, muscle fatigue, the way the shoulder blade moves, skill level and technique as risk factors for upper-limb injury. Most tennis injuries, the authors write, are associated with overuse and build over time, and do not arise from any one factor alone.
So the useful question is what each day asks of you. The 2024 Adult Compendium, which lists average intensities for activities, puts hitting balls without a game at 5.0 METs, moderate work, and singles at 8.0, past the 6.0 where vigorous begins. An hour of easy rallying and a two-hour singles match both count as playing tennis, but they are not the same day. The tennis hub has the whole table.
A week of short, easy hitting is a different week from the same number of days spent in long matches. Ask three things of each day: how long it was, how hard it was, and how your arm and legs feel the next morning.
What does a daily habit do to your elbow?
The figures on daily hours come from Gruchow and Pelletier, who surveyed 532 players, 278 men and 254 women aged 20 to 50, about tennis elbow. Both new cases and repeat cases became more common with age. More playing time a day went with more tennis elbow, and that link was strongest in the younger players. A 2006 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine sums it up as more new cases in recreational players who played more than two hours a day than in those who played less.
Treat it with care. The survey is from 1979 and describes one group at one point in time, so it shows what goes together, not what causes what. The authors read the pattern as overuse of the arm bringing the condition on sooner. Later studies agree on age: the 2006 review found tennis elbow becoming more common with age consistently across the studies it collected.
So for the arm, the hours in a day are the figure the research points to; no study has compared numbers of days. In our view, if you play most days, keep most of them short and easy, and let matches be the long ones.
If your elbow hurts and the pain is still there between sessions, see a physio or a doctor before you add more tennis. This page does not diagnose or treat elbow pain. How common tennis elbow is among players, and how it meets gym work like carries and pulls, is on HYROX and tennis in one training week.
Can your legs handle back-to-back match days?
Hard ones, less well. In Ojala and Häkkinen's study, eight national-level men aged about 23 played a two-hour match on each of three days, and their maximal leg force was lower before the second and third matches and still down after one to two days of rest. They were young, well-trained players, so read it as the direction, not your number. Legs matter for another reason too: in the 2006 review, most tennis injuries were in the lower limbs. A weekend with several matches has its own page: training around a tournament weekend.
How many days a week should you play?
No study gives a number, and the research is too thin to set one. Pluim and colleagues, reviewing tennis injury research to 2005, found very few cohort studies that looked for a link between any risk factor and injuries, and no randomised trial of any injury prevention measure in tennis. On volume, they found two. One is Gruchow's daily hours. The other, in 528 recreational league players with an average age of about 47, found no difference in total injuries between those who played under four hours a week, four to six hours, or more than six.
The two measured different things, the elbow against every injury and hours a day against hours a week, so they do not contradict each other.
So the answer is a set of principles rather than a count. In our view:
- Mix the days. Most days easy hitting or drills, with match days, the hardest of them, spread through the week.
- Spread the hard days. Days between two matches give your legs the time that back-to-back matches did not give Ojala's players.
- Keep long days rare. More hours a day went with more tennis elbow in Gruchow's survey, so a double session or a long day is the exception.
- Change one thing at a time. Add a day or lengthen your sessions, not both, and see how the next week feels first. Prolonged play and fatigue are both on the Kekelekis list.
- Let your arm set the limit. An elbow or shoulder that is sore or tired the next morning means an easier day or a day off court, whatever the plan said.
Padel players ask the same question; how often to play padel has its own evidence, on the padel gym workout.
What should non-tennis days hold?
Strength work, and in our view that is the best use of a day away from the court. The strongest general evidence for lifting comes from a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 randomised trials and 26,610 people in mixed sports, some of the trials in adolescents: strength training cut sports injuries to under a third, while stretching had no effect. None of those trials was in tennis players.
In our view, a good off-court session trains legs, trunk, a pull and a press, and gives the racket arm a day without hitting.
When that session should sit against your matches, and how close to playing each kind of work can go, is answered on gym before or after tennis. And a rest day is a rest day: nothing at all on it.
A sample week for a near-daily player
One way a week around a Wednesday league match and a Sunday match could look, with the study each choice leans on:
| Day | Session | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Day off court. Nothing at all. | The day after Sunday's match. After three matches on three days, Ojala's players still had less leg force one to two days later. One match asks less, but in our view the legs get this day. |
| Tuesday | Drills, about an hour: footwork and the stroke you are working on. | Technique and muscle fatigue are both on Kekelekis' list of risk factors for arm and shoulder injury, so in our view technique work goes on a fresh day, straight after the rest day. |
| Wednesday | League match, evening. | Count it as hard. Singles is 8.0 METs in the Compendium, vigorous work; doubles is 6.0 or 4.5. |
| Thursday | Easy hitting, under an hour: rallies at a pace you could hold all session. | Hitting without a game is 5.0 METs, moderate work, and a short day keeps the arm's daily hours down, the figure Gruchow linked to tennis elbow. |
| Friday | Off court: strength, about 45 minutes. Legs, trunk, a pull and a press. Timing against your matches: gym before or after tennis. | No racket in hand. Prolonged play and muscle fatigue are both on Kekelekis' list, so the racket arm gets a day away from hitting while you train. |
| Saturday | Short, easy hitting, or rest. The day before a match has its own page: gym the day before a match. | Light and familiar, so Sunday starts on fresh legs. |
| Sunday | Weekend match. | The second hard day, with three days between it and the first rather than none: back-to-back match days left Ojala's players with less leg force before each next match. |
Signs to ease off
- Elbow pain that lingers. Still there the next morning, or worse from one session to the next. Ease off and see a physio or a doctor before you add more tennis; this page cannot tell you what it is or how to treat it.
- Heavy, sore legs. Legs that still ache or feel weak the morning after a match. In Ojala's players, maximal leg force was down before each next match and leg soreness was still up after a rest day, though their sprint and jump tests did not change, so in our view an easy day or a day off court comes before the next hard one.
- Serves slowing late in a long session. In a study from the Kekelekis review, eight advanced male players served more slowly, with lower arm speeds, after a three-hour match, and their arm muscles showed signs of fatigue.
None of these is a diagnosis. Pain in the elbow or shoulder that lasts between sessions, or keeps coming back, is a reason to see a physio or a doctor.
Tap tennis in your SPORTS STACK on You to open its settings. Choose Fixed days and pick the weekdays you play, and each day you pick is one session a week; choose Flexible and the app picks the days. Set your usual session length too. In the help centre's words, these few numbers are most of what your coach knows about your load outside its own sessions, and with Pro or during your trial it plans your training around them. See sport settings.
Hit with a friend on a day that was not in your plan? Tap the plus at the top of Home or Agenda and log it as a past session. It goes into your history and what your coach knows about you, and the week ahead is left alone. See log a workout you already did.
If your elbow starts to hurt, report it: on Home, find LIMITATIONS, tap MANAGE, then REPORT. Choose Injury, pick the area or tap Other and describe it, set how serious it is from Cleared to Serious, and add a note on what sets it off. With Pro or during your trial, your plan is rebuilt around what you report. It is a training tool, not a medical service, and it points you to a physio or a doctor. See report an injury.