Fitness and Fatigue, Facts and Fallacies by Rockpsl76

Many newly ordained TCM managers find fitness and fatigue management to be a very challenging prospect. The aim of this short article is to clear up some of the fallacies which cause managers to make poor training choices, and hopefully relieve the lives of a few digital football players. Fallacy #1 The Fatigue, Fitness and Moral values displayed under each day, are the results of that days training. FACT The numbers shown are actually the condition of the players at the beginning of the day. To see the results of a given days training, you need to look at the numbers under the next day. So the results of Mondays training will be displayed under Tuesday. Unfortunately this means you can`t see the results of Saturday`s training session until the beginning of the next week. Fallacy #2 The training plans supplied with the game are optimal. FACT Many people turn to the Fitness (Heavy) plan to help solve their fitness woes. The fact is, these prefab fitness plans are not optimal. How you need to train in any given week is very dependent upon the current fitness and fatigue of your team, and how many games you are going to play that week. For this reason, no plan could ever be optimal in every situation. The best way to train your team is through reactive training. React to the current condition of your players, and plan accordingly. On the right are two plans. The top plan is the prefab Fitness (Heavy) plan, while the bottom plan is a hastily constructed hand made plan. The bottom plan is clearly better, and even that is probably not optimal for the given situation. I can guarantee you that if you spend a little time thinking out your plan, you can do even better then this. Fallacy #3 Playing a game damages my fitness. FACT Your players only lose fitness during a game if they are fatigued. If you ensure that your fatigue is always around 35% the day of a game, you`ll never lose fitness playing games. This means that by maintaining low fatigue, you get fitness maintenance for free! You`ll still need to do some training to maintain fitness, but you won`t be constantly trying to recover from your last match. Fallacy #4 I can`t train skills while I`m trying to maintain fitness and fatigue. FACT The screen shot to the right shows a week in which I almost exclusively trained skills, and yet I was able to raise my fitness from 86% to 90% and lower fatigue from 46% to 30% all in time for Saturdays game. Jogging is not really necessary for maintaining fitness. If your team is in good condition, doing any two (and only two) fitness units will slowly raise your fitness. Use units like sprints or passing if you want to raise skills while maintaining fitness. Use units like pressing and counter attack if you want to raise tactics while maintaining fitness. Passing is especially nice, since it raises the passing skill, as well as increases your passing tactic, as well as increases fitness. On a typical training day I would have two fitness units and one non-fitness unit in which ever area I felt needed attention. So you should be able to train what ever you feel like, while still maintaining fitness. You are not hand-cuffed. Fallacy #5 The more fitness units I put into the week, the more fitness my team will gain. FACT Too many fitness units will hinder your team training, and drastically increase fatigue. The screen shot to the right shows how you can actually LOSE fitness while doing too many fitness units when your team is fatigued. If you have over 60 fatigue, you are best off to give your guys the day off. Players will actually GAIN fitness when given a day off if they are fatigued. If a player has over 50 fitness you are best off to use at most one fitness unit, in order to heal fatigue a bit. If a player has less then 40 fatigue, you should feel free to use two fitness units and one non-fitness unit. This will slowly raise your fitness and drop your fatigue. The keeping fatigue at a reasonable level is important. Once fatigue rise to high levels it is harder to decrease it, and your training capability will suffer. Fallacy #6 If my fatigue gets out of control in the middle of the season there is no way to maintain fitness. FACT The screen shot to the right shows how fitness and fatigue can still be improved even after getting into a bad situation. In this case my fatigue has risen all the way to 60%, my fitness has dropped to 71%, and we have two games scheduled. Since my fitness will rise dramatically after a game when the team is fatigued, it is good to give the team a break on the day after the game. This is not always the case, so I don`t suggest using the "Don`t Train the Day After a Match" option if your team is in good condition. If you have over 60% fatigue your fitness will rise if you take the day off, but if you have under 50% your fitness will likely drop if you take the day off. Notice the day after my match against Chester my fitness had dropped to 67% and my fatigue had risen to 63%. By only doing one non-fitness unit, I was able to rise my fitness back to 74% and lower fatigue to 54%. Resting tired players is VERY benefitial. Fallacy #7 The best way to increase fitness in the beginning of the game is to load on the fitness units. FACT In the beginning of the game you will start off with very low fitness, no fatigue, and a number of weeks till your next game. This is probably the only time you`ll ever see a team fatigue rating of 0. In this situation is may well be worth working your guys extra hard, but don`t go overboard. If you push to hard your team will fatigue to quickly, and you`ll soon find yourself needing to give players days off. The two pictures to the right are a good example of this. In the top screen shot, the manager has been forced to ease off halfway through the week because fatigue has risen to a dangerous level. In the bottom screen shot, then same increase in fitness was achieved, but a reasonable fatigue level was maintained. I`d take 34% fatigue over 57% fatigue any day. Additional Tips *   35% should be your target fatigue level. If you get over 45% fatigue you probably need to ease off a bit. If you get under 25% fatigue your probably not getting as much out of your players as you could. Of course if you have a long stretch of games coming up you may want to keep your fatigue low in preparation. *   You only need to have about 60% fitness to play a player for a whole match. At 80% a player is at optimal fitness. Any thing over 80% will not really contribute much, but will give you a buffer for any fitness loss that may occur. So while 100% fitness is great, don`t kill yourself trying to achieve it. *   Its a good idea to concentrate on improving skills during the offseason, and maintaining tactics during the season. Any skill training you can achieve during the season is a bonus. *   As long as your fatigue doesn`t go above 50% after a game, you won`t lose fitness. Don`t worry about the fitness and fatigue values during the match, these have little relation to the resulting fitness and fatigue values after a match has been played. *   Don`t be afraid to throw an injured player down onto the reserve team. Its a good place for them to recuperate. Your amature coach will usually do a good job of first lowering the players fatigue to below 10, and then increase his fitness up into the 60s. Since 60 is playable, I`d retrieve the player at that point. Of course you can recuperate the player faster on your own, but if you don`t want to have to create special training units just to recuperate one guy, the reserves are a good option. *   The higher a players rating at a specific skill, the longer it takes train that skill. So it is easier to raise Passing from 0 to +1 then from +1 to +2. Also, it is easier to raise a playing level from 1 to 2 then to raise a skill from +1 to +2.