How to adjust workout schedule during tennis season?

Hello everyone.  As you might have guessed, I'm a pretty serious adult tennis player (leagues and tournaments).  I've worked very hard during the 'off' season and I am probably in the best shape ever (whoo hoo!).  I'm down to 149 from 180 (when I started playing...was 220 at my highest).  I currently workout 6 days a week, and sometimes even double up lifting workouts on days that I play tennis.

However, soon my season will start, and I'm playing on three different league teams, and will have many more nights taken up by tennis matches.  I already work a pretty tiring job (teacher), so I definitely won't be working out on match nights...I want to go into the matches fresh, especially since I will mostly play singles.  

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to alter my workout schedule during the season?  I realize that I will have to pare down, and I was thinking that the one thing I should try to retain are the weight workouts on days that I don't have matches.  I've already decided that my goal will be maintenance and not to try to keep losing during the season...I think that will leave me too tired (my goal is 131).  

Any other ideas or suggestions?  Thanks!

Bumping...anybody have any advice?  Any experience with any kind of tapering during a 'season', or guidelines on how/if to change calories?

One last bump...bueller?  Bueller?

Oh, sorry ;)

 In-season sports-specific training should be focused on maintenance and injury prevention, mostly. Looking at the absolute minimum for performance maintenance/slow progress when it comes to strength training, 2/wk is enough to see some slight gains, 1/wk will be almost adequate for maintenance.

 Technically, the loss of muscle protein from not strength training only starts after 10-14 days of not training, the immediate loss of strength/power comes form neural detuning. So theoretically you could maintain mass but not strength on one workout every 10 days, but that would not be helpful for sports performance.

 I've looked at this free tennis-specific workout that seems reasonable-  I assume you're like most overhead-throwing athletes who use a lot of shoulder strength in that your in-season workouts should focus on maintaining shoulder integrity and strength endurance, joint integrity/stability and movement function. Check out this little in-season guide for baseball - looking at some of the similarities between them and this pitching workout which is more or less geared towards the same goals of shoulder stability I think that you'd see best results with a training routine for strenght maintenance performed 2/wk in-season, with workouts not done pre-game days.

Heh, heh...no problem, I realize I'm asking some pretty specific questions.

Yes, lots and lots of emphasis on the shoulder in tennis (need it for that big forehand and the serve), and I'm very proud of the fact that I've never had any shoulder injuries *knock on wood*.  

Thank you so much for those links, especially the tennis specific workout.  I'm the type of person that will not want to back down during the season (because of the great results I've gotten) and end up injuring myself.  I actually ended my last season with an ankle injury and I don't want to go there again!  

I was thinking 2X a week may be best as well...I will just need to be very disciplined with myself to time it the best way (unfortunately, our matches are not scheduled in any regular manner).  

Would you also recommend keeping calories at maintenance and not trying to keep that deficit every day as well?

That would make sense - reasoning from analalogy to other sports, I know that Kobe Bryant drops about 20lbs from the start of the season to the end even when trying to maintain, 'cause he can't physically eat enough calories to even maintain mass.

 Okay, so you're not Kobe, but you're still competing in a sport with fairly long matches and high demands on you while doing them - I think you'd better be aiming for at least maintenance level calories if you want to give your body enough material to work with to stay injuy-free ;)

Ok, sounds like a plan, thanks for your input!  I'll post a bit into the season to update!

Hopefully, like Kobe, I can still drop a bit even during the season.  *crossing fingers*  But not 20!