Training

Training is where potential turns into performance. It runs every day in the background, so the job isn’t micro-managing sessions — it’s setting the right plan for each athlete and letting it play out.

Set-and-forget

You give each athlete up to three exercises and they run that programme every day until you change it. No day-by-day scheduling; you set the direction and check in when something needs adjusting.

To set it up, open an athlete and go to their Training tab, then choose their exercises there.

Exercises target attributes

Each exercise develops specific attributes. Most exercises push one attribute hard and nudge a related one alongside it, so a well-chosen mix shapes exactly the athlete you want.

Intensity: the core trade-off

Every exercise carries an intensity — low, medium, or high. This is the central tension of training:

• Higher intensity → faster gains, but heavier fatigue.
• Lower intensity → gentler progress, but easier to sustain.

Push an athlete too hard and their condition drops, performances suffer, and you risk burning them out. Coast too gently and they stagnate while rivals improve. Managing that balance across a whole roster is the daily craft of the game.

Who improves fastest

The same training doesn’t land the same on everyone. Young athletes with high learning speed and potential improve the quickest, while older athletes get progressively less from the same work — and eventually can’t outrun age-related decline at all.

Training isn’t the only teacher

Athletes also develop by competing. Racing sharpens two things in particular: an athlete’s technical skill in the event they contest, and their mental attributes — composure, determination, reliability, and intelligence — forged under the pressure of real competition. Bigger stages and better placings teach more.

Competition won’t build physical attributes, though — speed, strength, endurance and the rest come only from training. A great development plan uses both: training to build the physical tools, competition to sharpen technique and temperament.

Next: managing the cost of all that work — see Form, condition & fatigue.