A Quick Guide to Pre-Season Training.

[SFraser]

I thought this might be a good time for a guide like this.

There is no specific benefit from "Pre-Season Training" but there are issues around the whole Pre-Season time that are quite significant and can be addressed, or atleast reduced, through "unusual training".

The "Pre-Season" or "Off-Season" holiday means several things for your players:

1: Players are not playing games and lose Match Experience.

Match experience plays a significant role in CA gain and CA loss. The absolute precise mechanics escape me but in general it works quite like 0% Match Experience means zero CA gain or maximum CA loss, while 100% Match Experience means maximum CA gain or minimum CA loss, depending on other factors.

Ultimately, if players are not gaining or maintaining their match experience levels, you can expect a drop of CA.

2. Players are not Training at your club.

This does two things. First of all training automatically adds a small quantity of CA gain to a player, not a huge quantity but an existing quantity. This means that players will lose yet another source of CA gain or maintain or resistence against loss, depending on other factors.

Secondly it means players are no longer on your schedules, and so will start to adapt their attributes back to a more "natural" shape.

3. Players are losing Physical Condition.

Physical condition is important for how long a player can play, but also for how often he can play. And if he can't play long or often, he can't gain Match Experience. If he can't gain Match Experience then he can't gain CA.

So what Pre-Season or Off-Season Holidays mean is that players will start to lose CA, will start to revert back to a more "natural" attribute shape, and will take longer to get back up to a Fitness level where they can halt or reverse the decline of CA.

Let me give you an example of what this can mean:

Worked Example

Ryan Giggs is 35 and has been on Intense Physical Training to reduce his natural physical decline, while playing regularly for me in order to make sure he loses as little CA as possible due to his age. Pre-Season/Off-Season completely screws this up.

Ryan Giggs is no longer on Intense Physical Training which means his attributes will start reverting to their natural shape, meaning his Physical Attributes are no longer being trained and so will start to decline, just because he is no longer training them hard.

Ryan Giggs is no longer receveing that tiny CA boost from Training so his CA will drop.

Ryan Giggs is no longer playing matches so his CA will drop even more.

Ryan Giggs is 35 so all CA lost is going to come mainly from his Physical Attributes.

So Ryan Giggs' Physical Attributes plummet rapidly.

Ryan Giggs is losing Condition and cannot play very long, so I cannot get him up to high Match Experience quickly. His Physical Attributes continue to plummet.

Ryan Giggs is losing Stamina from his Physical Attributes so he cannot last as long as he used to in games anyway. I cannot play him as long as I used to be able for his Condition levels, so it is even harder to improve his Match Experience, so his Physical Attributes continue to plummet.

Ryan Giggs is losing Stamina from his Physical Attributes so he cannot last as long as he used to in games anyway. I cannot play him as long as I used to be able for his Condition levels, so it is even harder to improve his Match Experience, so his Physical Attributes continue to plummet.

And so on. Ryan Giggs' career is over. Thanks to a single holiday.

Pre-Season Training in FM

Just like Real Life, Pre-Season Training is all about Match Experience, Condition and Physical Training. It is absolutely vital to get Match Experience and Condition as high as possible as quickly as possible, while at the same time it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL to make sure as little Physical Attributes decline as possible. Once Stamina starts dropping because players don't have enough Stamina to play enough, those players are finished.

Every inch of Physical Training, and Training Workload must be squeezed out of players in order get every tiny bit of CA boost and every possible counter to Physical Attribute Decline. These will drop quickest and earliest in all players over the age of 20 and are brutally tough to improve in players over the age of 20. Ontop of this it is VITAL to get Match Experience, because this hugely boosts CA gain or the resistence to CA loss.

Pre-Season Training does nothing differently to normal training. It's the whole "Pre-Season Holiday" that completely screws up players. And where it screws them up most is the area most important to their longterm careers and the area that is brutally difficult to improve, their Stamina.

The whole point to Pre-Season training is to as quickly as possible reduce CA decline from Stamina and crank up Stamina training. Fail to do this and you might get away with it in youngsters while they are young, but all older players will have their careers significantly reduced by every Pre-Season where their Stamina drops at all.

So don't worry about whether "Pre-Season" does anything special because it doesn't. Worry about the effect that the Pre-Season Holiday has on your players, because it is a career ender.

[heathxxx]

Nice guide.

The key as I would see it, is to pack pre-season with plenty of friendlies, which is what I usually tend to do.

Oh, and don't worry too much about the retirement of Ryan Giggs...

...along with Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary Neville, they've all landed coaching jobs at Granada CF on my save.

[Karnage94]

Once again SFraser, very very good insight to a detail of FM that I never paid any attention to so the phrase "You learn something new every day" springs to mind. Keep it up

[jim morrow]

Good post SFraser. Pre-season training is one of the myth around players who must be killed.

We can call Pre-season for players, the period from return of vacation to the gain of 100% of match excercise. No special training is usefull only training + friendly match.

One attribute important for training is Workrate cause it is linked to the capacity of the player to train more. So this attribute must be train quickly for young players cause if work rate increase so training level and training capacity increase too.....it's a full circle.

[michaelthestrange]

No special training is usefull only training + friendly match.

But SFraser said, "Just like Real Life, Pre-Season Training is all about Match Experience, Condition and Physical Training."

So should strength and aerobic training be increased or not?

I'm sorry that I still don't get it, even though it was an interesting read.

[jim morrow]

So should strength and aerobic training be increased or not?

You can increase a little but it's not vital to have a good training schedule. With higher Strength training, you will reduce the time to gain 100 % match excercise but in the other hand, players will gain back condition slower.

So it can be bad if you make match every 3 days and but good if you have full players in your squad to rotate.....

[Veg]

One attribute important for training is Workrate cause it is linked to the capacity of the player to train more. So this attribute must be train quickly for young players cause if work rate increase so training level and training capacity increase too.....it's a full circle.

Actually this is a myth. The Work Rate attribute has nothing to do with how much capacity he has to train. According to the research guidelines the attribute is telling only one thing, and that is how hard he works a match.

[jim morrow]

And you never ask yourself why Workrate, a mental attribute, is in the Strength training area ???????? Strength, Stamina, Natural Fitness and Workrate are linked to training capacity of the player. Increase those attributes and your player can train higher in intensity and more longer during the season before being tired.....

[Veg]

That is not true, as the work rate is an attribute says how much a player work in match, nothing more. If the attribute has said more than that like how much he can train, this would have had to take that into account setting the attribute, but it ain't