Who is Francis Bougy? Get to know Victoria Azarenka’s strength and conditioning coach

With the average tennis player on tour nearly 12 months a year, the job of a strength and conditioning coach is never done.

“My mission is to make sure athletes are injury-free,” said Francis Bougy, one such coach, during a rare day off last October. “So, we do a lot of prevention but also set development targets to make them better as athletes and help them reach their goals.”

Born in Reims, France, Bougy studied general strength and conditioning but settled into tennis after working at the site of what would eventually become the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy. Before then, he played tennis on a slightly smaller scale.

“I grew up with table tennis, actually! I was training 10 to 15 hours a week, plus competitions during the weekend. I did this with normal school on the side, and I was also doing camps with groups from the Northern part of France. This is where I picked up my passion for strength and conditioning.

“During one camp in particular, a strength and conditioning coach was training us. I was 14 at the time, and I remember perfectly well, learning about reaction and explosiveness. I thought it was really fun, and it was definitely helping me to be a better player.”

Mouratoglou attracted a mix of pro players and rising juniors, giving Bougy the opportunity to work not only with then-Top 50 stalwarts like Alizé Cornet and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova but also future stars like Stefanos Tsitsipas and Holger Rune.

In 2020, Mouratoglou referred Bougy to Victoria Azarenka, a former world No. 1 looking to revamp her team. The results were immediate: Azarenka roared into her first Grand Slam final in seven years and finished runner-up to Naomi Osaka at the 2020 US Open.

“For players 30 years and older, you want to help them become the most efficient version of themselves,” said Bougy. “You can’t spend as many hours on the court as with someone 20 or even 25 years old. You want to take the best out from any exercise, any situation. Most of the time, they learn quicker compared to someone in their 20s anyway. They easily pick up new skills because they know the drill, and they understand their bodies so well.

“They know the amount of hours they need to work in order to feel good on the tennis court. If they do less, it can affect their confidence. If they do more, there can be more fatigue and the quality of the work suffers.”

Bougy was calling from Florida as Azarenka prepared to begin her pre-season for 2025, which will be her 19th since turning pro in 2006. The pre-season, he explains, is the rare moment when a player can lay the groundwork for improvement before the grind of the season puts both player and team on a certain physical defense.

If you look to any top athlete in any sport, they have general athleticism, coordination, movement that could translate to any sport. For tennis players, they can also play soccer. Soccer players could play basketball. I don’t say they could be a professional in any sport, but they can be general athletes in any discipline. Francis Bougy

“In January, you fly to Australia and from there, having even one week off is a lot with how busy the schedule can be. Most of the season, you will work mainly on prevention. The goal is to have a player that is fully aware that they can play, and that they feel no pain or soreness. You want them feeling ready for the next match.

“If your player loses early, you have more time to create a bloc of up to five or six days in between two tournaments. Otherwise, you stick to prevention but try to squeeze in a few exercises, which is like salt and pepper on the food. Here and there, you want to put in some exercises so the body remembers what it needs to do.”

The proliferation of fitness technology has helped measure the strength of that proverbial season, Bougy making use of everything from heart rate monitors to motion censors that can track a player’s speed, strength, and power.

“The censors coming give coaches and athletes realtime feedback,” said Bougy. “So, the athlete has a number as soon as they do the repetition, and I believe that gives him or her additional motivation to match achieve a certain speed with a certain weight, or inspires them to improve.”

Bougy’s general education—a Masters degree in Strength and Conditioning earned in Dijon—equipped him with the tools work with any and all professional athletes. This carries into his greater fitness philosophy, one that requires any pro athlete must have, from a young age, a strong base to excel in their eventual sport of choice.

“If you look to any top athlete in any sport, they have general athleticism, coordination, movement that could translate to any sport. For tennis players, they can also play soccer. Soccer players could play basketball. If you play basketball, you can play handball. I don’t say they could be a professional in any sport, but they can be general athletes in any discipline.”

Once that foundation is achieved, Bougy helps his athletes strive for balance to not only prevent injuries but also maximize their on-court potential.

“Tennis players are lifting plenty of weights to become strong and have a lot of power, but they have better quality muscles. It’s so important for them to find the correct ratio of power to weight so they can still be fast and reactive on court.”

In a game that often comes down to margins, Bougy continues to put in quality work to maximize Azarenka’s potential as she enters the next phase of her career.

“She saw in the last year that she can compete with the best girls on tour,” Bougy said of Azarenka, one of the tour’s growing contingent of mothers who finished the 2024 season ranked inside the Top 30. “She wants to keep this level and be able to compete on the biggest stage. That’s the goal.”

With a goal like that, it's easy to see why a strength and conditioning coach’s work is never done.