Training Center

Training Center
Tributes listening to Atala
Location	The Capitol City Circle
Inhabitants	Tributes Avoxes Sponsors Atala Gamemakers Peacekeepers Mentors Escorts Stylists Prep teams
Appearances	The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay

The Training Center, also known as the Tribute Center, is a building located in the middle of the Capitol, just behind the president's mansion on the City Circle. Upon arriving to the city in preparation for the Hunger Games, it is where tributes live and train. The center has an open roof, which includes a garden and provides an excellent view of the Capitol. It is also enclosed by a force field to thwart any attempt at suicide.

Apartments

Exterior of the Training Center as portrayed in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The tributes and their entourages each stay on a floor corresponding with number of their district, which are reached via glass-sided elevators that move at rapid speeds. Training Center apartments feature luxury accommodations, including gourmet meals, high-tech showers, and a huge array of clothing to choose from. The apartments are apparently quite large— Katniss Everdeen described her bedroom in the Training Center as bigger than her family's entire house in District 12— and contain enough rooms to house the tributes' mentor and escort, and possibly their stylists and prep teams as well, as the latter are a regular presence in the apartment before the Games commence.

Avoxes also live in the apartments, and their sole duty is to serve the inhabitants and tend to every person's needs. An Avox can be a citizen of any district, as well as the Capitol, who has committed an offense and has been transferred into Capitol custody. The punishment for their crime is cutting out their tongue so that they are unable to speak. Inhabitants of the apartment may speak to Avoxes to give them orders, but any other communication is strictly forbidden.

Once training for the Games begins, breakfast and dinner are served in the apartments, while lunch is taken in a room off the gymnasium in the basement. On the last day of training and following individual sessions with the Gamemakers, tributes receive their training scores on the televisions in their apartments.

The Hunger Games

The District 12 team eating in the Penthouse.

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are assigned an apartment for the 74th Hunger Games according to their district. It is where they eat their meals, discuss strategies for the upcoming Games, and prepare for interviews broadcast on television across the country. During her stay, Katniss recognizes a female Avox as someone she and Gale Hawthorne had seen while hunting in the woods outside District 12. From a distance and while hidden, they had witnessed her capture as she attempted to run from the authorities. Katniss felt guilty about not attempting to save her, as she had been seen by the girl during her capture. Peeta later learns that her name is Lavinia.

Catching Fire

For the 75th Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta are given the same apartment as the year before. Their new Avox is Darius, an ex-Peacekeeper for District 12 who was turned into an Avox for his attempt to interfere with Gale's flogging by Romulus Thread. Katniss believes that he had been assigned to them on purpose to unnerve her. However, in the film, Darius was not introduced, and Effie Trinket said the Tribute Center was built brand new in honor of the Quarter Quell.

Mockingjay

After Katniss assassinates President Coin, she is taken back to her old Training Center apartment, blindfolded and handcuffed. She remains there, addicted to morphling tablets and attempting to kill herself, until her mentor Haymitch Abernathy comes to get her and tells her that her trial is over, and she is going home.

Gymnasium

Katniss at the snares station.

Beneath the apartments lies an underground gymnasium where the tributes prepare and practice for the challenges they will face in the arena. The space is filled with training stations which teach a variety of skills, including knot tying, identifying edible plants and insects, camouflage, and practicing with many types of weapons. Experts are on hand at each station to instruct and serve as training partners to the tributes, as they are forbidden to fight with each other before the Games begin.

The clothing each tribute wears is determined by their stylist, although each has a cloth square with their district number pinned to their shirt. In the films of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, however, the tributes wear identical training uniforms marked with their district number.

Routine

Tributes in line for an obligatory gauntlet.

Tributes attend training three days in a row, beginning at 10 A.M. (though almost all the tributes arrived early during the 74th Hunger Games, and some of the tributes in the 75th Hunger Games didn't even show up to training at all). At 10:00 sharp, Atala, the head trainer and overseer, explains the rules of the gymnasium and its training stations. In The Hunger Games film, she emphasizes to the tributes not to ignore survival skills because they are just as important as the weapon stations. Katniss likes the unpopular snare section, and learns a snare that can leave a human hanging from one foot. The trainees are reminded that they cannot fight with each other before the Games, but if they want to spar, they can request to practice with a trainer. The Career tributes typically go directly to the stations with the most deadly weapons when training starts in an attempt to intimidate the other tributes. Afterwards, all the tributes eat lunch together in a dining room attached to the gym. Alliances are often formed during this time after the tributes have seen each other's abilities in training and have a chance to talk.

Private sessions

Peeta tells Katniss to shoot straight in her private session with the Gamemakers.

After a period of time, the tributes show the Gamemakers what they are capable of, choosing a particular skill they excel at, and are scored from 1 to 12, 1 being very low and 12 being almost impossible to achieve. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark both received a score of 12 as a result of their actions in the 75th Hunger Games and during their private sessions. However, they didn't necessarily earn this 12, as it was deliberately given to them so that the other tributes would target them.

Seneca Crane after Katniss shoots an arrow through the apple.

Katniss always surprised the Gamemakers in her private sessions. In the 74th Hunger Games, she shot an arrow directly at their table, skewering an apple in the mouth of a roasted pig that had been brought in for them, and then walked out without being dismissed. For the 75th Hunger Games, she created an effigy of Seneca Crane, wrote his name on it with berry juice, and hung it by a noose. Peeta painted a picture of how Rue looked after Katniss covered her in flowers. Their odds of winning are then shown in the morning line odds. Both got perfect scores of 12.

Film portrayal

In The Hunger Games film, the building appeared to not be as tall as described in the book, nowhere near as large, but used for more than housing tributes. Among other aspects, the building included a balcony above the City Circle in which President Snow made his annual speech standing alongside other government officials.

In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the building appeared much taller and more accurate to the description in the novel. Effie explained that this building was brand new, accounting for differences from the first film.

In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, belowground levels of the Tribute Center served as a prison for the captured Hunger Games victors. As a result, this is where the infiltration of the Capitol took place.

Trivia

• The gymnasium set for the Catching Fire film was built in a parking garage in Atlanta, Georgia, and the lobby and elevator sequences were shot at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. Originally, the District 12 apartment was going to be shot on a soundstage, but they ultimately built the set on the hotel's vacant tenth floor instead.