Booth arrives at the Tiered Trainer Center early in the morning. His plan for the day is to practice court positions and footwork. The group from the team battle yesterday are coming later as well. Until then Booth practices waiting for the group to come.
'What I need to do now is increase my reaction time. I was able to make up for my reaction time by learning how to use a pokemon's power earlier than normal, but I'll need to learn to react eventually.
Preparing Pansear's moves for him had let me act as fast as our opponents. I'm sure it's only a temporary advantage though. Other trainers should be able to do the same at a higher level.'
Booth looks at his Pansear and tells him he's ready to start. The exercises the two do are mostly the same ones they've been doing from the beginning. Booth has learned that the best way to learn a skill is with time. Doing a task for a long time and often naturally increases your proficiency with that task.
After about an hour of practicing, Tyler walks in and asks Booth if they can move. "Hey Booth, let's go find a bigger room. We could use a little extra room when the rest of the group comes."
"Alright, let me get my stuff." Booth grabs his water and lunch and the two make their way to a larger room. Booth admires the facility along the way.
The tiered trainer center is a pretty large facility. Any town with such an impressive facility is sure to attract trainers. This area is particularly popular for trainers and pokemon fans. The lake makes the area naturally great for tourists. In addition to the Pokemon Contest Hall, the town hosts many competitions for trainers. All of this attracts visitors and new residents to come to the town.
The Tiered Trainer Center, the primary meeting spot for tiered trainers, was made to serve many trainers at a time. The main building has a gym for trainers and their pokemon. While the practice rooms are mostly built outside the main building. The area for practice rooms looks a lot like a self storage facility. There are about 120 small practice rooms and 20 large practice rooms. They are simple, but with a little air conditioning they're quite comfortable.
As they walk Booth makes some conversation. "So, are you a tiered trainer as a hobby, a job, or both?"
"Ah, I'd like to say both. My father was a successful trainer himself and I learned to love pokemon from him. Even now he works as a coach for trainers and loves his job. After seeing that I figured I'd try being a trainer too."
"You became a Tiered trainer though, isn't there a pretty big difference?"
"Not as big as you might think. Both kinds of trainers will train with pokemon after all. The advantage of tiered trainers is that there is a clear goal. Which is to advance in tier by gaining experience for yourself."
"What is the difference for traditional trainers then? They gain experience too after all."
"That's true. Traditional trainers gain experience in a different sense. A tiered trainer only has to focus on their own skill. While traditional trainers have to familiarize themselves with a lot more pokemon knowledge than we do. Not to mention how they formulate their own strategies from such a wide variety of options.
You can't really judge which kind of trainers are easier or harder as they do different things."
Booth nods in agreement as he and Tyler arrive at a large practice room and put down their stuff. The practice room isn't much different from the small rooms other than size. The walls are still made from a sturdy concrete, there is a vent at the ceiling, but there are a few more pieces of practice equipment than the small rooms.
The two focus on their own training until the rest of the group comes. After thirty minutes or so two more trainers join them. They do a quick warm up before reintroducing themselves and getting started. The first trainer, Gordon is the Seel trainer. While the second trainer, Jared, uses a Taillow.
"I'll go ahead and give a tutorial on footwork and court positions. Footwork is just talking about how you move about the court and decide where to stand. While court position refers to your location on the court relative to your opponent."
The group nods and Booth continues.
"The purpose of footwork is to put yourself in the right place. It's not quite getting in range to attack, but putting yourself in a favorable spot. The 'right place' is constantly changing and it's not something I can really teach you. I can try to show you, and maybe you can find out for yourself.
Other than that I'll tell you to pay attention to your opponent's size, speed, and immediate range. These things are important to finding where you want yourself and your opponent to be. Learning these are also the basics of learning court positions."
Booth explains the footwork exercise. Of course it looks more like a game of tag. The trainers try the game and get an idea of what to do. Booth joins with his Pansear too.
About every 15 minutes the group takes a break and switches partners. Jared and Tyler have good reactions and pick up the exercise quickly. Booth makes sure to get their point of view.
"You guys react pretty well. I'm having a little trouble in this area. Is there anything you look for or focus on when reacting to an opponent?"
Tyler crosses his arms as he thinks of an answer. "I think you are reacting pretty well already?"
"I'm alright at predicting someone's moves after seeing them a few times, but I'm lost on how to react faster." Booth says.
Jared laughs. "It's like you said. You have to look at your opponent's size, speed, and range. Prediction is part of your reaction too. For me, I react the fastest when a prediction I make comes true.
It's like this. You predict your opponent will do option 1. When you see them use option 1 you can counter them quickly. For anything other than option 1 you just choose something safe. This way you are able to react quickly either way.
When you get better you can add an option 2 and 3 and so on. Reaction is just something you have to practice to get better at."
"That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, I'll work on it."
"No problem."
Booth keeps working on the exercise and is able to increase his reaction time considerably. A while later the group sits down and listens to Booth's explanation on court positions with great attentiveness.
"Alright, court positions are my area of expertise. Like I said earlier, court positions are closely related to footwork and movement. So there's some ideas that they share.
When you battle you don't need to force anything. If the opponent is burning through their pokemon's power to keep you away there's no need to stop them, you can let them have the space and fight in another way. In many cases not fighting is harder to deal with than constant aggression."
Booth looks at the group to see if they are understanding what he's saying. He sees that they are still listening and gives some extra advice.
"When I battle I like to review my opponent's actions after each interaction. Just remembering their actions isn't what I'm talking about. You'll want to add the new information you get to act on later in the match. In this way you are trying to constantly gain information from your opponent."
"Seems like you've got this down Booth. It would have taken me quite some time to find this on my own." Tyler says.
"I'm pretty good with the theoretical side of battling, but as you know I still struggle a bit with putting things into action." Booth admits while smiling.
"I get that. It's something like how people learn in different ways." Gordon says.
"Yeah, that's a pretty good way of putting it. I like the idea too."
Trainers learning differently is one of the reasons there are so many battle styles for trainers. Becoming a Tiered trainer is especially appealing because trainers can show off their individual style so much better with the Integrator. Having so much diversity in battle styles is what keeps the sport fresh for both trainers and viewers.
The group finishes their break and moves on to the court position exercise. The next exercise has a limited number of steps you can take, and limited space. The exercise moves a bit slower, and has each trainer be more careful where they step. To win you either have to get both hands on either side of the opponent. Or get away without getting caught. In both cases the players can't run out of steps.
The goal of the exercise is to find what kind of movements or places give you an advantage. Things like leaping forward can cover a lot of space and earn an easy victory, or lose you the game if you mess up. The group works on the exercise picking a few things up along the way.
The group continues the exercise for over an hour until lunch. They stop for lunch and discuss their discoveries at that time.