Day 4: Practice Routines

Learning Goals:

1) Understand ways in which mental and physical health are intertwined with esports success.

2) Have some sense of what it takes to attain a high rank in individual gameplay.

2) Develop a practice routine which includes:

a) Wellness and academic components

b) Warmups and cooldowns

c) Gameplay and analysis


Deliverables:

1) Post a breakdown of what a possible routine practice schedule might look like for your team, on the Esports Training for New Coaches Discord server in the Day 4 section.

2) Evaluate a 3rd-party analytics or coaching site for the game you happen to be most familiar with. Post your quick review in Discord.

If you have time, I found parts of this very interesting too:

  • Amount of time it takes to move up in ranking

  • When gameplay analysis adds the most value

  • Utilizing scrimmages, and optimally challenging environments

  • Warmups, drills, and breaks

  • A possible practice schedule

Highlights:

12:00 VoD at the beginning of the NEXT session, not the end of the current one.

45:00 A possible schedule for an extremely competitive high school player.

In the infographics below, you'll get a sense of what is happening at the professional level. I certainly hope our students aren't spending as much time gaming as the professionals, nevertheless, I also hope they learn to value fitness, wellness, nutrition, sleep, and purposeful practice in the same way the pro-scene does!

If you want to really deep-dive some of these ideas, then check out these books, and perhaps even share them with your students via a book club component to your practices:

Here are the additional references cited in my video overview:

•Gerber, H., Sweeney, K., Pasquini, E. (2019) Using API Data to Understand Learning League of Legends: A mixed methods study. Educational Media International. 56:2, 93-115, DOI 10.1080/09523987.2019.1614250

•Hilvoorde, I., Pot, N. (2016) Embodiment and fundamental motor skills

•in eSports, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 10:1, 14-27, DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2016.1159246

•Keh, A. (2019). E-Sports Embraces Traditional Training Methods: Less Pizza, More Yoga. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/esports-league-of-legends.html

•Steinkuehler, C. (2019). Esports Research: Critical, Empirical, and Historical Studies of Competitive Videogame Play. Games and Culture, 155541201983685. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412019836855


And here's that injury prevention routine specific to esports, from Dr. Levi Harrison, as well as the 7-minute plyometrics routine from Gretchen Reynolds.

Lastly, here's a great research-based website on everything you need to know about gaming ergonomics:

https://www.1-hp.org/blog/hpforgamers/esports-health-it-starts-with-ergonomics-and-posture/

Remember to hop on our Discord server and post your thoughts in response to the Lesson 4 prompt!