If zatias still reads this thread, a strange thing happened, i used the 80 chocobuck option of 'raising one of the birds stats' since i'm still on str/end plans i used the str one, 2 'days' later, my chocobo's str went up to outstanding while it's end is still impressive (end has been going up before str since it was a chick, taking as many as 4 days to catch up when it was younger) so it would appear that the training sessions do have a pretty good impact on the stats of the bird.