Training

Your training plan runs every day, whether you sign in or not. Pick one to three ratings and an intensity, and change them whenever you like. Each day the plan trains 25 percent of a full session, split across your ratings, so one focus grows fastest and three spread it out.

Checking in adds a full session on top: open Train and tap Check in, once a day (it opens again at midnight Denver time). A day you check in trains 5 times a day you do not, so a player who checks in every day pulls clearly ahead within a season. Nothing is saved up for later: a day you miss is simply a plan day.

Intensity: light trains 70 percent of normal and adds no load, so fatigue falls every day (a light week is a rest week); normal keeps a starter around 30; hard trains 20 percent more and pushes a starter toward 76. A full game adds about 8, and every day 12 percent of your fatigue wears off. Above 40, every rating plays a little lower in games (up to 2 points at 100) and the injury risk per snap rises (up to 30 percent more). Your fatigue is on this page and on the game preview.

If you do not sign in for 14 days, your plan pauses. You keep every rating, nothing else is lost, and it starts again the day you are back. While it is paused your personal trainer is not paid, since there is nothing for him to work on.

Gains are bigger while you are young and below your ceiling, and get smaller as a rating gets high. Snaps you play in games add game experience, which your plan and your check-ins work into your ratings.

Under your ratings on the Train page, Your progress draws every rating over the last four weeks, one small line each, with its change written under it, and a coach's note for the last seven days. The note says which ratings rose or slipped and how much. It gives a reason only when your training record shows one: the rating was in your focus, or a check-in worked game experience into it. Otherwise it says it does not know. It reads your training record only, and leaves out the day of any game still playing out and every day after, so it never shows a game's effect early.

Saved sessions are gone. Any you had waiting when the plan arrived were worked in once, at their old value of 50 percent of a session each.

While your own game is playing out, the check-in waits until it ends. If you are injured you still train, lightly: half of each gain sticks. A rookie can be paired with a veteran mentor (29 or older, at his position on his team), worth 6 percent more from every session and plan day that season, a retired player coaching your position group on your team adds 3 percent, and a personal trainer on your Money page adds a little. Effort matters far more than money.

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