Training

Your wrestlers get better in two ways: by practising, and by wrestling. Practice is the part you plan. Each week you fill the days with training sessions, and each session costs staff points from the same weekly budget that pays for meets and recruiting.

The five sessions

Focused or broad. Drills, lifting, cardio and plyometrics put all the work into one attribute, which is how you shore up a specific weakness. A full practice spreads its work across the whole sheet. Per staff point it gets more total work done, but less of it goes where you might want it most.

Diminishing returns. Each time an attribute goes up in a season, its next point takes more work than the last. The count resets every season. So a focus pays, but pouring every session into one attribute all year gets less out of the week than moving on once it has had a few.

Aggression and Mat Sense can only be trained in full practice. Grit and Passion can’t be trained at all; they are forged in the fires of competition (see below).

Planning the week

• Each day holds up to two sessions, but at most one of them can be a full practice.
• On a meet day you can add one session, and it can’t be a full practice.
• A day with nothing on it is a rest day. It costs nothing and the room recovers.
• Sessions are planned now and run when the week advances. You can cancel a planned session for a full refund until then.

Rest starters. Any session can be marked to rest your starters. It costs the same, but your starters sit it out: they gain nothing from it and get no more tired. Use it to keep your lineup fresh for a meet while the rest of the room works.

A session never helps a meet in the same week. This week’s practice pays off from next week on.

What makes practice count

The same session does more for some wrestlers and some programs than others:

• Passion. A wrestler who loves the sport gets more from every session, and an indifferent one gets less.
• Fatigue. A tired wrestler learns noticeably less. A badly worn-down room wastes a good share of what you spend on it. Grit helps a wrestler shrug some of it off.
• Your RTC speeds up technique, quickness and mat sense.
• Your facility speeds up strength and endurance work, or slows it in a cramped room.
• Culture fit. A wrestler whose program runs the culture he wants develops faster, especially in the attributes that culture favours. See Culture.

Fatigue

Every wrestler carries a fatigue level from 0 (fresh) to 100 (spent), shown on the roster. Training and wrestling add to it, and every day he recovers some of it. Wrestlers with more endurance recover faster. A tired wrestler takes the mat with less in the tank, so fatigue costs you matches as well as development. Recovery happens every day, so a rest day before a meet is never wasted.

A full bout is tiring, and a long tournament day is very tiring. A heavy training week on top of a tournament weekend will show.

Competing develops wrestlers too

Every bout a wrestler actually wrestles teaches him something. Win or lose, it sharpens his technique, aggression and mat sense. It also builds the two attributes no practice can touch:

• Winning builds Passion. Beating a ranked opponent builds it further.
• Losing builds Grit.
• Bouts at the conference championships and nationals count for more than a regular-season dual.

Forfeits teach nothing. Nothing a wrestler has learned ever wears off.

Growing out of a weight class

Each season some wrestlers change weight class, mostly moving up one. The decision is made at nationals and takes effect at the rollover.

What makes a move likely

• Younger wrestlers are more likely to move than older ones.
• Strength gains during the season make a move up more likely, so a heavy lifting program can push a starter into the next class.
• A move is never allowed to leave a weight with nobody in it.