'Roger Federer trains almost normally,' said Pierre Paganini

Pierre Paganini, one of the world's finest fitness coaches, has been working with Roger Federer for two decades, taking care of the Swiss' body and leading him towards numerous achievements.

Roger hasn't played since the last year's Australian Open, undergoing two knee surgeries in 2020 and hoping to return to the court in a couple of weeks in Doha.

"The big difference in comparison to 2016 is the fact that his muscles were always there ahead of the Australian Open 2017. Now we had a total interruption, and the muscles deteriorated considerably. The right knee had been causing him problems for several years. But he had it under control now, with adapted planning and specific exercises. He and the whole team had been working on it for a long time.

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Roger actually trains almost normally. If you were to watch, you would say: he is not hurt, everything is fine. Still, one must not forget that only when all the stages are over, you begin to work on reactivity in pre-exhaustion. At the moment, it is only clear that Roger is playing Doha; then we'll see. In the strength area, we want to get him back to the pre-injury state. It's not just about the volume of the muscles but also about polyvalence.

We should never forget that tennis isn't a strength sport. There is absolutely nothing to hide here - we are working hard on his speed because we know very well that this will be an essential point. Roger relies on his passion, and so do we! When a player at almost 40 has to do exercises that a 70-year-old can do without any problems and is happy that it gets better every day.. if that's not passion, I don't know what it is.

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The first time he jumped over the hurdle again, he was almost euphoric. Now it's not the crutches anymore; now it's the hurdles. He will never risk his health. It is extremely important to him to be healthy in the second phase of his life. He has this cleverness. He won't overdo anything if it doesn't make sense. He's very strategic and farsighted.