The best teams in any esport are the teams that are the best at practicing and improving. Since you don’t have as much time to practice as pro players, you’ll learn to practice efficiently with a goal-oriented mindset that can maximize your growth as a player.
When we practice together as a team, not only do we improve individually, but as a unit as well.
Imagine your team is a Megazord from Power Rangers: each member of the team controls an individual part of the entire giant robot, but it only works if everyone works together. Team practices are designed to train the united Megazord, but it can only work as well as the pieces allow it to. It’s up to the players, then, to make sure they improve themselves while the team improves as a whole. Let’s go through how an average practice should work, together.
Before every practice, it’s important for everyone to be prepared. For players, that means warming up before practice starts. If possible, you want to try to warm up for 30 minutes before practice starts. When you warm up, you want to make sure your body and mind are both ready to play competitively. You can do these things in a variety of different ways, some of the most effective forms of warm up can include:
Playing around in your game’s “practice area”.
Stretching your arms and fingers.
Playing quick, low-stakes games to get you into the habit of communicating.
Talking with your teammates (if they are available) to get your mouth ready to communicate for the rest of practice.
A player that doesn’t warm up won’t be as effective in-game as a player who does warm up. If your entire team is prepared but you’re not, you can take time away from meaningful learning by making everyone else wait for you. Don’t worry if you need some time to get ready, though. The sooner you’re ready to play and learn, the sooner you can start benefiting from practice.
Encourage your players to warm up together with fun game types or exercises. Establishing a fun and positive atmosphere encourages players to take the initiative to warm up.
At the start of practice, everyone should come together for a starting point check-in. Talk with your teammates and try to identify areas where you and the team can improve during that day’s practice. It’s important for everyone to set a good goal at the start of each practice, since practice time as a team is limited, and having good teamwork is crucial to success.
If your practices are all just playing games without examining specific aspects of your game, it’ll be hard to improve. Targeted growth requires you to be open to criticism and comments from those around you, and it is without a doubt the most effective way of growing as a player.
Players should use a journal, online or analog, to track their progress throughout the course of a year. Some players like to take notes on a game-by-game basis, others like to only journal at the beginning and end of practice periods. As long as you’re thinking critically about your performance throughout practice, do whatever works best for you.
By the end of practice, you should have enough notes to look over your practice and give yourself a self-evaluation. Some teams can get together during the final 10 minutes to discuss the day and their goals, while others will prefer working on silent self-reflection before briefly sharing their thoughts. Again, your team should always do whatever system works best for your team. When you figure out your process, try to keep these important talking points in mind:
What worked or what went well for the team.
How you/we improved today.
Things you/we can do to improve.
Another thing to keep in mind is that different players respond to different types of stimuli. If a player isn’t benefiting from direct team feedback, try different ways of delivering feedback for that student until you find what works. Remember, a team is only as strong as its weakest link, so making sure everyone improves is in the team’s best interest.
These are some of the protocols for your typical practice, though these aren’t the only ones you should follow by any means. Again, it’s important to find and build a system that’s right for everyone. We’ve been discussing goal-setting a fair bit, so let’s take a look at some tips for improving everyone’s goal-setting mindset and ability.
Sometimes, your players will have a rough day and be overly-critical of themselves. If this happens, make sure you involve the rest of the team in finding positives for that player.
Setting goals regularly helps players focus on individual aspects of their performance. Good goal setting leads to good growth.
There are different types of practices teams can do, each with their own benefits.
Setting and maintaining a consistent practice schedule helps a team stay on topic and organized.
Focused Practice - Practice with a specific focus that helps players improve a specific aspect of their play.
Unfocused Practice - Practice without a specific focus, in which players can explore parts of their play that need adjustment and/or improvement.
Walkthroughs - Practice where a team enters a custom game and practices specific sequences or plays without opponents. Used to drill specific setups and combos.
VOD Review - Video-On-Demand Review, where teams watch replays of previous matches and take notes/discuss performance to improve.
Scrimmages - A practice session or informal game, as that played between two units of the same team or between two different teams during practice.