Intensive Training to boost Youngsters

[furiousuk]

Generally my youngsters can be grouped by their deficiencies, most of mine at the moment are properly weak (strength < 6) so I thought I'd make a schedule to boost their strength and then got carried away and made 3 others for speed, technical & mental stats. Here they are:

They are pretty intensive (I'm not sure whether I should actually go harder) and they are not balanced yet as I have only just started using them. I intend to use them for 2-4 weeks at a time and then return the player to their normal training routine (which is 1 off heavy on the overall workload). The idea is to maintain other stats and intensively boost stats in the focus category by hopefully 1-2 points each time I use the schedule (this may be ambitious). I'll also try and link this with individual training focus which I tend to use for most players anyway.

So, has anyone got experience of rapidly boosting a stat? Could this work or will the player just get injured? Also, I realise that I'm going to have to carefully manage the players playing commitments so has anyone got any advice on this when using a very heavy schedule?

[Marsupian]

Using a schedule like this for 2-4 weeks and expecting any stat at all to go up by 2 is VERY unrealistic. If it happens you will likely see a drop in other stat's to make it possible. The way a training schedule probably works it that it makes some attributes pull at the players CA harder than others. It won't actually convert PA into CA so unless the player gets better (which happens through playing matches, staying fit, getting tutored, having a good personality, through natural growth and because of the overall training workload). If you have a youngster who improving these schedules will make sure almost all of the new CA will go towards the attributes that are so heavily focused on. If the youngster is not improving the focused attributes will only take CA away from other attributes (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

The only experience I have with rapidly boosting stats is when I had a few of my youngsters tutored by first team players and the first team went on a brilliant run ending with a champions league final win over Real. A few of the tutored youngsters also got to play 1 or two first team matches. Most of the youngsters got a whole host of green arrows while one or two just had some minor improvements. Apart from the occasional youngster responding really well to being tutored or first team matches youngsters tend to progress in a slow and steady pace getting a few attribute upgrades about once every two months.

I personally have never set the training workload that high so I have no experience with injuries through high training workload but every time a training schedule gets uploaded here there are always people complaining about it so I guess it's a big problem if you set it too high. On the other hand it might be due to not rotating the players which hurts their fitness and makes them more prone to injuries. I would be very careful when using these schedules and make sure they are fit when on the schedule and stay fit.

I don't think having such a high workload is worth the risk of having your prospects injured but it might work better than I anticipate. It would at least be interesting to see how things work out.

[furiousuk]

I'm two weeks into the schedule now with 7 players. 1 was injured in the 1st game (not related to conditioning) so that leaves 6. Of these 6 they are all improving but, to be honest, they were anyway, there are, as yet, no red arrows though which is good. Only 1 is seeing outstanding results in the strength training but his stat here has been flying up anyway. There have been, as yet, no detriment to their condition. If they don't play from one weekend to the next then they'll be at 100% but obviously 2 weeks is a very small space of time in terms of development.

I'll carry on to the end of the month and see how things are after a full month of the intensive training, that will give time for the training graph to update and to get the assman report. It would be nice if the assman said they were all training hard this month. To be honest I haven't changed their playing routine so they are all playing as many games as normal (1 has played 3 U21 internationals on top but I'm guessing if he's away with his country he won't be on my training regime anyway).

I don't want to use Genie Scout or FMRTE to have a look at stats in this save so I won't be able to provide in-depth analysis of CA rises or jadedness but if I find anything notable I'll stick some screenies up of the training graphs. I'm also not expecting to find anything too insightful, I was just hopeful that a quick intensive burst might provide a point in a month for the stat with focus.

Just a quick question for anyone in the know: If a decent young player X plays 4 games in a month and plays well then lets say this gives him a baseline of '4' 'training points' which will be distributed via training weighting (i.e. high defending training encourages 'training points' into defending category). Now, would it be reasonable to assume that a normal training workload keeps the 'training points' at 4, whilst a low workload lowers it to a rise of 3 points (but maintains good condition) whilst a high workload raises it to 5 (at the expense of condition and possible injury)? Note that for this example the hypothetical 'training points' might not rise a stat from one number to another (instead it might rise 7.2 to 7.4) and hence no green arrows but still an improvement from more intense training.

[Marsupian]

I have the feeling that training just adds a bit of CA over time if the player is young and training hard and depending on how hard he trains, how much potential he has and the quality of the training (facilities and coaches) this amount will be higher or lower. Then in the matches the player will get big jumps in CA (or small ones when he plays bad or at a low level or whatever). It's how I visualize it and for me it makes sense.

[R. Hearn]

I love the schedule names, lol! Just had to chuckle at them.

[Karnage94]

Correct me if I'm wrong but do the attributes not update once a month? Or am I missing something here?

[phnompenhandy]

Why not just use the individual training focus options such as strength, stamina, quickness?

[Los_Culés]

Young & Stupid hahaha . It should suit to most youngsters as youngsters with high mentals are very rare. Unless they are wonderkinds.

[furiousuk]

Marsupian : Thanks for your insights, always well informed. I don’t think the summary will come as any great surprise to you!

Karnage94: Not sure what you mean by attributes updating. Every time a player gets better (i.e. gains CA or redistributes CA) an attribute may increase so their attributes are constantly updating all the time. I’m not sure how much CA as I haven’t used Genie Scout or FMRTE for a good few years.

Phnompenhandy: I may have left it out of the OP but I’m using the individual training focus too, I was just hoping to see a better increase in that focus area when the corresponding training category is also intensive, a double whammy if you will.

Thanks to the guys who like the training names – a strength of 3 in an otherwise fine young dandy is greatly annoying and they deserve to be ridiculed!

Summary

So, I’ve got some results. My sample was a modest 7 players (3 1st team and 4 U18). One 1st teamer got crock in the first game of the month (not related to training) whereas the others were in perfect health and good condition for each game, the U18s played twice a week and barely suffered for their intensive training, so, firstly, I don’t think there is any short-term problem with intensive training causing injuries or fatigue (rather oddly I guess but all players were in perfect working order before the month began so I expect that made a difference).

Secondly, all 6 players (discounting the broken one) improved in the intended areas. This one even got a green arrow, the blue line represents his strength attribute:

Sounds good so far but, as you can see, this rise would of happened anyway and the rest of his strength category attributes stayed the same. Also, you can see that it is just a 0.25 rise which is exactly the same as other months without the intensive training category (but with individual focus) which basically means that whenever a young, determined player at my club improves its going to be by 0.25 per month (I would assume this number is reflective of coaching standard and facilities standard).

That guy was an U18 who played well in his 5 games during the month so I would expect him to improve and he did but I had hoped that intensive training would have given rise to an improvement above that of normal training (i.e. more than 0.25). Similar story with this 1st team guy:

This dude was trying to improve his passing, the green line, which he has but at no greater a rate than without intensive training. Again, a 0.25 increase. Infact, all 6 players gained 0.25 in their stats which made me think that was all the improvement my facilities and coaches would allow but wait, have a look at the dude above during May-June. Thats right, a whopping 0.5 increase. Whilst on holiday!! This determined young chap needs to get out and enjoy the sunshine rather than playing wall-ball in his back garden!!

So, intensive training hasn’t really done much of anything for their attributes, but, there is one thing that it has definitely had an effect on and its one thing that I wouldn’t of noticed if these guys weren’t regens. They did not like their training schedule. All 6 are at least fairly professional and are highly determined so they didn’t complain, so how did I tell. Look at their little faces, sad pair aren’t they and it’s the same story for the other 4. The bottom guy has been averaging 7.2 during hard 1st team games against top sides whilst the youngster has been demolishing the U18 and reserves and is averaging around 8 so it’s not their performances that are depressing them, it’s their training. They likey it hard but they no likey it very very hard.

The other curious point is the training level progress bar chart and I’d love someone to explain it to me as I’ve never really understood this chart. My understanding is that it is a combination of the hardness of training mixed with the players’ personality that defines where the level is. I’m guessing this as less determined members of the squad on the same training (I use positional mainly rather than individual schedules) have lower bars. Now I’m also assuming that these bars dictate maybe how much extra CA they get from training (I know most of it comes from games). Compare the pair above. The 1st guy gets a boost as expected but why is the training level of the 2nd guy lower with more intense training? This story is echoed for the other 4 guys with the youth team players improving their training and 1st teamers lowering their training. All got unhappy so it isn’t that and all were on similar training intensity before this mini-experiment. If someone could explain it to me I’d be muchly obliged.

Final Summary

So, the points I could glean from this mini-experiment are minimal:

1) Training intensity probably doesn’t cause injuries in the short term, particularly when all the players are fit and healthy beforehand.

2) Super intensive training will increase the attributes of your players but it won’t do it at any higher a rate than normal in the short-term. Individual training focus is clearly important.

3) This sort of training plays with their training level progress bars but I don’t really understand why.

Well done if you got this far. Sorry I couldn’t have been more helpful in the end. I hoped that this training would boost a particular stat above normal rises, I didn’t really expect a whole point or so but I did expect something to happen. Apart from unhappiness, it didn’t.

Just curious, what sort of rises per month are you getting? Is 0.25 any good?

As you can see from the 2nd dude, I can develop youngsters, I just want to be better.