
Less Pizza, More Yoga: E-Sports Embraces Traditional Training Methods - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/esports-league-of-legends.html
======
tomashertus
I had the opportunity to be around high-competitive esports in years 2005 -
2010 and I'm very glad this topic is coming up now. Back in the day, my
observation was that only the best American and European players (Fatal1ty,
Grubby, NIP team, to name few) understood how important it is to be also fit
mentally and physically when competing in esports and they were the only once
doing “something” for that. Back in the day, the Korean teams were mostly
locked-down in their “Clan houses” and they had a defined time schedule which
mostly consist of practicing the game.

Today, this is completely different story. When I’m talking with people who
are still in esports and read news articles about current teams, they mention
to have personal fitness couches and mental couches and I think it’s necessary
for success as you can see application of these practices being successful in
other sports - Tennis, Golf, etc. It’s even more crucial for team-based games
(LoL, CS, etc.) where team chemistry, health of team members and ability to
time your focus on the particular events are all important aspects for the
overall success. I even heard that there is a professional LoL team which has
a “synergy” coach who is dealing with day-to-day problems of team members and
help them to resolve conflicts between each other.

It is incredibly hard to have consistent results on e-sports tournaments.

Edit: Grammar + Wording

~~~
taurath
The training schedule, despite the focus on overall health is absolutely
/grueling/ though. 10 hours a day to develop muscle memory and decision making
on a newly-meta champion, gun, or map. 6 days a week usually.

~~~
gowld
eSports at this level reminds me of the old circus/carnival freak shows,
except the circus put naturally occuring freaks on display, whereas eSports
participants transform themselves into freaks -- 60 hours a week of playing a
videogame into its extreme corner cases, developing hyperspecific skills to an
extreme level that have zero transferability or relevance outside the game.

~~~
sureste
This sounds very narrow minded.

What you are saying is no different than any other traditional sport. Take ice
hockey goalies. In recent years they've become more athletic to the point that
their bodies do things that non-goalies can't. How is that skill relevant or
transferable outside of the game? Name a position in any sport and there will
be close to zero relevance to the real world.

Even chess, what I consider to be very early precursor of eSports, depends on
a narrow set of skills that you can't easily abstract into real life
situations.

~~~
rchaud
With hockey, or any other professional sport, it doesn't matter if the skills
aren't transferable, as a good hockey player will be in demand for as long as
hockey is around. There's a built in longevity to the game that there isn't in
e-gaming.

If you dedicate years to honing your Starcraft 2 skills, but consumer interest
shifts to Overwatch or Destiny, can you retrain fast enough to compete at a
similarly high level?

In IRL sports, the rules of a specific game don't change. Neither does the
size of the field, the goalposts, the ball itself. So as long as you're able
to improve your physical/mental focus, you can improve your performance.
That's not the case when multiple variables around the game itself are
changing.

~~~
bri3d
When a new game comes out everyone else is also starting at zero. As long as
there's churn and new games are able to gain popularity, this isn't a huge
issue.

Also, the skills are more transferable than they'd first appear - for example,
several players have been competitive in more than one FPS game. Plus,
streaming, analysis, coaching, and commentary are becoming quite lucrative.

~~~
tomashertus
Based on my observations, the skills are solely transferable in same genre of
games. I've seen great FPS players switching to different titles. I have never
seen a great FPS player doing well in RTS and opposite.

~~~
vibrato
There are many professional poker players who started as competitive Starcraft
players, and even more who started at Magic: The Gathering

~~~
BigJono
I don't know about "many"? The only famously successful one I can think of off
the top of my head is Bertrand Grospellier. And I guess Benger got some
publicity when he made the WSOP main event.

Is there a whole host of ex e-sports players making a professional living off
poker? Or are these guys outliers?

------
gringoDan
This reminded me of the reasons that NASCAR drivers exercise. Any activity
that you do for medium-to-long periods of time will inherently have a physical
component. Increasing your physical stamina and strength could be the
difference between a win and a loss.

I thought this quote was telling: "It [physical conditioning] doesn’t make you
drive the car faster...it allows you to drive the car faster for a longer
period of time."

[https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/04/nascar-jimmie-johnson-
ryan-...](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/04/nascar-jimmie-johnson-ryan-newman-
exercise-physical-fitness-correlation-race-wins-jeff-burton)

~~~
jperras
Michael Schumacher (Formula 1 driver) was at the forefront of this. His
training regimen in the late 90s was known to be very rigorous, and not
typical of his competitors. Now, though, they all train their bodies
accordingly.

The stresses put on the body in an F1 car are unreal: you spend between 75 and
90 minutes subjecting your body to brief, repeated periods of 5-8Gs of
longitudinal and lateral acceleration, where the difference between braking
1-5 meters earlier or later when traveling at 350kph can mean the difference
between you hitting the perfect apex or shunting yourself into a gravel trap
(or worse, a wall in the case of most street courses).

Not to mention that some of the courses are just completely brutal. Internal
cockpit temperatures can hit 50C at the race in Signapore, and the drivers
will lose 5-7kg of water weight over the course of a race.

Anyone who says professional race drivers are not physically fit has no idea
what they're talking about.

~~~
saagarjha
> brief, repeated periods of 5-8Gs of longitudinal and lateral acceleration

Where does this acceleration come from? I'm sure the acceleration due to
speeding up/slowing down is much less than this, as is that produced by
turning?

~~~
jperras
The largest forces are under braking. For example at Monza, a famous racetrack
in Italy, the _average_ peak deceleration force per lap is around 5.6Gs. The
braking zone before the Parabolica corner has a peak deceleration force of
6.7Gs. And they do this for over 50 laps.

Hell, the deceleration that an F1 car experiences _simply due to engine
braking_ is already more than what you would feel if you slammed on the brakes
in your sedan going 100kph.

For turns, the forces are less, but they're still incredible. At Suzuka
there's a very famous corner that is known as 130R (it has a 130m radius) and
taken at about 305kph (190mph), and produces sustained 3.5Gs of lateral force.

Sources:

* [https://www.brembo.com/en/company/news/formula-1-monza-2018-...](https://www.brembo.com/en/company/news/formula-1-monza-2018-brembo-brakes) * [https://www.redbull.com/ca-en/f1-toughest-track-ever](https://www.redbull.com/ca-en/f1-toughest-track-ever)

------
_hardwaregeek
I've joked that a lot of the nerdy sports like League, Smash, speedcubing,
etc. need some crazy Russian coaches. Someone who forces them to train like
hell, complete like hell and _win_. This isn't exactly the same, but it's
still cool seeing them adopt mainstream sports training techniques.

But for real, it's funny seeing competitors in these nascent sports not doing
the basic min-max tricks that established sports take for granted. Stuff like
consistent sleep, good diet, conditioning, etc. isn't just for show. It's
about maximizing your mind. Fencers, for instance, have long known about the
effect of meditation and physical endurance on their mental game.

Now we need the gamers to learn to scream like a proper athlete.

~~~
aetimmes
> I've joked that a lot of the nerdy sports like League, Smash, speedcubing,
> etc. need some crazy Russian coaches.

From everything I've read about South Korean Brood War and League of Legends
organizations, this thing already exists in the form of team houses where
players practice for 8/10/12 hour days, and the result is that SK is head and
shoulders above their competition in both games.

Of course, those games were the most popular of their respective eras in a
country that values esports more than any other, and in the case of League of
Legends, had massive financial support from the game developers.

You won't see something similar in Smash, where the developer isn't providing
that same support and the competitive scene is dominated by grassroots
communities in countries that are less gaming-centric than SK.

~~~
atom-morgan
Yes, you're right about StarCraft and as a former competitive speedcuber I can
tell you they practice like hell too.

------
com2kid
I first got into weight lifting while watching a Star Craft 2 match, one of
the teams was shown in a pre-roll going to the gym and lifting weights
together.

I realized that instead of spending 3 hours a night watching SC2 matches, I
could go to the gym for an hour, and then spend 2 hours a night watching SC2
matches, and end up looking good while doing it!

That path lead me to a job with Microsoft Health, to years of learning martial
arts, and to learning all about health and dieting.

Healthy body healthy mind, exercise doesn't take much time, and you'll feel
great doing it. It grows neurons (or at very least slows down their decay),
and helps prevent life long issues that can come with the weakening of muscles
that happens when sitting all day.

~~~
charlesju
Or you can do both! The gym is a great time for passive content consumption.

~~~
nhf
My new "only YouTube while on the treadmill or exercise bike" rule has been a
life changer

------
Animats
The money is getting serious.[1]

 _Epic Games ... plans on doling out $100,000,000 in prize money across 2019._

 _The Fortnite World Cup will pit players against each other for a $1 million
prize pool each week. Then, from June 26-28, the top 100 solo players and top
50 duo teams will duke it out in New York. Every player will leave the finals
with at least $50,000 of the $30 million prize pool, while the solo champion
will net themselves $3 million._

[1] [https://www.pcgamer.com/fortnite-will-give-out-
dollar100-mil...](https://www.pcgamer.com/fortnite-will-give-out-
dollar100-million-in-prize-money-in-2019/)

~~~
alphast0rm
For a single event, The International 2018 for Dota 2 had a prize pool of
$25,532,177 USD [1] and "set the record for largest single tournament prize
pool in esports history for the fifth consecutive year" [2].

[1]
[https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2018#Prize_Po...](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2018#Prize_Pool)

[2] [http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24429755/the-
internat...](http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24429755/the-
international-8-primer-248-million-dollar-esports-tournament)

------
tomc1985
E-sports is this funny thing where everyone on the internet seems to talk
about but I have yet to find one person IRL who actually gives a shit about
it. Like seriously, where is the interest??

~~~
WhompingWindows
Online e-Sports are talked about on the internet because...wait for it... they
are nearly entirely based on the Internet. I've been watching pro Starcraft
matches for 10 years from Korea - it's an online game, the games are streamed
online. Some things like fighting games or console games, yes you do hang in
person at an arcade or a tournament.

You're looking in all the wrong places. Maybe start by comparing yourself to
average esports fans/players. What's your age, who are your friends, what are
their hobbies?

~~~
hart_russell
I used to be very into professional SC2. Stopped watching after realizing
Protoss was always going to be a gimmicky race.

But yeah, I very rarely ever ran into others who watched professional SC2.

~~~
WhompingWindows
It's an interesting phenomenon with Protoss, certain players are highly
strategic like sOs, herO, and Classic. Part of that is the tri-partite tech
structure, you go from cyber core to 3 different techs, and scouting _which_ 1
or 2 it is is HUGE for opponents, thus the hiding/masking. Compare that to
Terran, who will not have a Starport without a Factory, or Zerg, who is by its
nature the least gimmicky race IMO.

You might want to check out some Brood War, it has its gimmicky strats but IMO
it's less strategic than SC2...there is more "counter-play" with a "countered"
unit composition/strat, especially if your early-game micro with workers and
low unit counts is top notch. I'll link a great match from recently, hope you
enjoy :)

[https://youtu.be/oPLSoFyVjes?t=5776](https://youtu.be/oPLSoFyVjes?t=5776)

------
bluedino
Bobby Fischer had a strict diet/exercise regimen. His goal was to be able to
outlast other opponents in long (hours and hours) games, as they would tire
and be the first o make a mistake

------
ben_jones
The elephant in the room is the huge amount of mental health issues
encountered by competitive gamers (kind of like programmers). The lifestyle
and pressures are not conducive to most people's idea of happiness and there
is a huge rate of burnout. It's really sad when these young players start to
see their first glimpse of success but drop out one or two months into their
first professional engagement...

~~~
RankingMember
I have to imagine amphetamine use/abuse is also super common in e-sports,
which among other things, can have a severe impact on mental state. As far as
I'm aware there's no anti-doping body for e-sports at this time.

~~~
bseidensticker
It is indeed. There was a big incident recently when a player mentioned in an
interview that he and all his teammates were using Adderall during the
tournament.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gvy7b3/counter-
st...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gvy7b3/counter-strike-
esports-pro-we-were-all-on-adderall)

------
charliesharding
Yoga specifically makes a lot of sense to me. Recently I've been getting back
into playing CS:GO and it's shocking how much your physical state affects your
gameplay. Tense up and you become much more erratic with your aim and
movement. In games where the margins are so thin and twitchy reactions are
required, anything that can calm you down and set your mind right are vital.

Not so sure about doing squats though..

~~~
Reedx
> Not so sure about doing squats though..

Why's that? Squats are one of the single most effective exercises you can do.

~~~
charliesharding
Right, for getting in good physical shape. It can't hurt - but in terms of
direct impact to your gameplay, I think the meditation/calming exercises of
yoga would be more beneficial

~~~
Wohlf
Squats are about as close to a single exercise working out the whole body as
you can get, and massively helped me with muscular imbalances caused by
sitting too much. Those tight muscles in your quads, back, chest, shoulders
throw everything else out of whack.

------
cjlars
It's no secret that exercise helps with mental focus and mental stamina. Top
chess players, who you could call the original pro gamers, maintain fairly
strict exercise regimes:

[https://www.inc.com/betsy-mikel/1-thing-the-worlds-best-
ches...](https://www.inc.com/betsy-mikel/1-thing-the-worlds-best-chess-player-
swears-by-to-build-mental-stamina.html)

------
gravelc
This got me thinking about whether people take this approach in analagous non-
eSports. A quick google of Ronnie O'Sullivan shows he thinks healthy eating is
more important then exercise to snooker, though he was possibly already the
greatest player of all time before taking up a healthy lifestyle, so it's hard
to judge.

------
madrox
I was thinking about this the other day after the Overwatch League Stage 1
final. That game went to 7, and I watched San Francisco fall apart right at
the very end. At that point, they'd been playing for most of the day. I have
to imagine stamina played a huge part in that match.

------
notTyler
I am very very pleased to see gaming moving in this direction, albeit slowly.
The amount of ads for say, Totinos or Mountain Dew / Red Bull that I see while
watching Twitch or viewing gaming-related content is staggering.

~~~
kungtotte
Kind of like how there's tons of beer and hot wings commercials surrounding
traditional sports? They're selling what the audience wants, not what the
athletes eat.

------
TheLuddite
I always found the grueling training regimes a race to the bottom.

Yes, the first one that introduces it has an edge and crushes everything for
3-4 years but then everyone else starts doing the same training so back to
square one...with the difference that now you cannot head down to the bar
every now and then as everyone and their grandmothers are working out and
going to sleep at 10PM to have a chance winning a game.

I believe that the sportspeople should have gentlemen's agreements on the
amount of training to put themselves through.

~~~
Paul-ish
The NFL player's association negotiates such agreements [1, 2] unilaterally
across all teams. Perhaps e-sports athletes should have a union that
negotiates likewise.

[1] [https://www.nflpa.com/active-players/off-season-
rules](https://www.nflpa.com/active-players/off-season-rules)

[2] [https://www.ajc.com/sports/football/look-nfl-new-practice-
ru...](https://www.ajc.com/sports/football/look-nfl-new-practice-
rules/ZLKiNsjADuSDy8uHzsvYoN/)

------
FanaHOVA
Optic and Redbull partnered on personal training and nutrition way back in the
days [0]. Glad to see it being more and more common, eSports orgs definitely
have a responsibility with this, just like pro sports teams do.

[0] [https://dotesports.com/call-of-duty/news/optic-gaming-
underg...](https://dotesports.com/call-of-duty/news/optic-gaming-undergoes-
extensive-team-training-red-bull-9263)

------
theNJR
Great article. I did one of the first non-endemic brand deals with a major
esports team (Team Liquid) in 2015, with the explicit goal of showing that
gamers are athletes. We setup private chefs for them, helped with training,
etc. It was a really fulfilling partnership that I was sad to see discontinued
after I left.

------
joelthelion
I'm wonder if we the same sort of stuff might arrive in the corporate world.
If exercise improves intellectual performance significantly, couldn't your
employer ask you to exercise during work hours?

~~~
hbosch
Employers often subsidize or provide gym memberships. Of course, they know
that not only do healthy people make better workers (more productive, focused,
competitive maybe?) but _also_ healthy people take less sick days.

------
Merem
That's not exactly new and it has been a thing for over a decade already in
South Korea.

"The top professionals now make six-figure salaries and earn even more with
endorsements and prize money."

Same in this case, six-figure salaries were already being paid a long time
ago. [0]

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100202002307/http://www.mymym....](https://web.archive.org/web/20100202002307/http://www.mymym.com/en/news/9544.html)

------
bredren
I believe ultimately analog and esports will merge. Where big, strong athletes
who also happen to be very good at games are the new celebrities of sports.

You look at the complexity and strategy shifts necessary in a game like DOTA
and the NBA rules are boring in comparison.

But if you look at the physical capability of the NBA and the training it
requires it makes esports players look softer than soft.

What I’m curious about is how AR will bind these, and how it will be well-
spectated.

~~~
viraptor
> makes esports players look softer than soft.

I'm not sure why this is... an opinion at all? They do different things.
Nobody compares an NBA player to (for example) Ronnie O'Sullivan and says he's
softer than soft - even if the difference is similar. Why be judgemental like
that about eSports?

~~~
bredren
I think esports are awesome. The players just aren’t physically strong. And I
think mainstream spectators will not completely let go of wanting to see
people demonstrating what they can do not just physically but in complex
gameplay strategy and tactics.

To your example, I don’t see snooker becoming some major thing, but I do think
some kind of hybrid virtual / physics MOBA could be a major sport for a long
time.

------
emsal
One of the most poignant discussions of meditations I've ever watched was
framed in the context of a video about Smash Ultimate: "Keeping a Good
Mentality" by BananaBoySSB [1].

Playing video games with other people has actually taught me a lot about how I
should approach life.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c1bZxD6QJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c1bZxD6QJE)

------
nkrisc
Anecdotally, I've heard many eSports players and game streamers talk about how
working out and staying healthy has become a hobby for them because when they
play so much of a game as job, they don't want to spend their free time doing
it too. Sitting for that long is also unhealthy so making a hobby of working
out is quite natural for them.

------
ErikAugust
Despite all the "type A" obsessions with it (I was an ultrarunner for
example), physical fitness is such a "little goes a long way" activity.

A tiny sliver of overall time dedicated to a professional e-sports routine -
possibly as low as 2 hours a week - in order to receive most of the benefits.
It would certainly be worth it.

------
adrianratnapala
I thought chess players have been doing physical fitness training since the
'70s.

If so, I suspect that a lot of eSports players have been doing the same for a
long time without making the newspaper.

------
HNLurker2
Bypass
paywall:[https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.nytimes.com/2019...](https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/esports-
league-of-legends.html)

------
papermill
This story is at least 10 years late. E-Sports has been like this for a very
long time.

E-Sport athletes have been training physically for a while now. Not sure why
the nytimes is trying to play it off like it is a recent phenomenon.

------
shard972
but what about pizza.gg? We need to save esports! /s

------
doctorpangloss
People imagine esports as like, a sedentary lifestyle thing. Seems pretty
intuitive.

But if you’re in high school and you get bad grades, for some reason, you work
out a lot, or you’re taller, and for some reason, you play sports. And now,
for some reason, you play eSports.

eSports competitors are jocks, not nerds. It wasn’t ever about using yoga to
improve performance.

The public just doesn’t get the dynamics of performance arts and how or why
people get into them in 2019, and how that has changed since the 80s. But I
think there’s a pretty good book about it and I’ll find it again soon.

~~~
jaypeg25
I have no idea what you're trying to say.

~~~
doctorpangloss
That there isn’t any evidence that yoga or whatever improves your eSports
performance. Evidence in the sense of randomized control trials. It would be
really hard to design that experiment anyway, so pretty much expect that
evidence to never really appear.

So just take the things that this article are saying about training and
esports and fitness or whatever as though they are true, and now delete them.
What is left?

The clickbait that (1) the public perceives being into eSports as also being
into computers, so (2) isn’t it surprising that people into computers are also
into fitness?

Why I’m saying is the public perception is wrong. ESports is not for people
into computers. It’s for people who are into regular sports, which the public
would not find surprising at all that people into regular sports are into
fitness.

From a game design point of view I think it’s really fascinating. Starcraft 2,
like one commenter said, is for “nerds” but that game is dead. eSports games,
the really huge PvP games, they don’t look like SC2 at all anymore. So what’s
really eSports? I’d argue not SC2. It was always about designing things that
appeal to people who would be into regular sports.

My hypothesis WHY people into sports are also into eSports: because they’re
both things that 13-18 year olds get into, oftentimes, when their nerdier
endeavors (like getting good grades in school, which is pretty much impossible
to do while being a competitive eSports athlete) don’t pan out or aren’t as
attractive.

The public isn’t really aware of the similarities between sports and eSports
in terms of what you need, going into them, to be competitive. The public sees
that being into computers involves a lot of sitting, so people who do that
must wind up fat. Even doctors think that! But we don’t observe many eSports
athletes who are lardasses, so how to explain that? This is my explanation:
eSports are actually a jock thing to do!

