EPTA few weeks ago I made a goal to get GM on Korea by next season.
A few days ago I realised just how close the end of the season is and how little time I have to get my play to be consistently at such a high level.
Lately everyone's posting blogs about getting fit and improving their play and whatnot and its motivating just reading them. So why not write one of my own?
So here's my history with the korean server:
Basically I started investing any noteworthy amount of time into the Korean server in the week before IEM GZ (august?) last year. Since then I've steadily worked up to being able to do longer and longer bouts without losing my mind over the intensity required to not to lose to dumb s***. Last season I worked my way to rank 2-3 masters by the end of the season but wasn't in the highest masters division so it wasn't that great an achievement.
Now over the last few weeks I've been improving:
The other day I managed to take a ladder game off HuK That was a really big confidence-booster (tempered a little by the fact that his pvz is not up to standard atm) and made me keep putting 100% into my ladder play. Even more of a confidence booster was getting matched with in the last 4-5 days:
FXOasd (nuclearfOu) -30th GM
LiquidHero -11th GM
EGHuk - ~100th GM
FXOLeenock ~top 50 GM can't remember more specifically.
ZenexSparta ~top 50 GM bloody cheeser is like 4-1 vs me >.<
Bunch of lesser-known GSL players: FXOTheBest, MaruPrime, Pegasus, GoldenLight, lots of people with fOu tags, TSLCyrano (correct me if not TSL)
Quite a few top 50 GMs that are probably smurf accounts/shared team accounts.
At the moment I'm rarely getting matched with anyone below top 8 masters and while i lost to most of the players above I'm starting to give them much closer games and confidentally beat some of the less popular Code A and GSL teamleague players.
So what am I planning to do to push beyond where I am at the moment?
1) 20 games a day minimum on the Korean Ladder: Some days I can push it closer to 35 or even 40 but these are rare and far in-between. I don't see any reason to sink my MMR playing not my best. Instead when I'm tired or not thinking straight I will go on to step 2) and 3)
2) Excercise: I can't think fast enough, nor move my hands fast enough if I am unfit and have excess energy sitting in my body. So I will be exercising every day:
a) Muscle-building: dumb-bells, pushups and situps and squats: Got some great high-intensity workouts with these to get my heart pumping and keep my muscles in shape. These should be easy to motivate myself to do as I can just hop straight into it in my living room or even my room infront of my webcam to help motivate my lazy girlfriend to workout too
.b) Cardio: Atleast 3 times a week I want to be doing a 5km run to 2 suburbs over and back. Or going to the park to do sprint sets mixed with pushups and situps and laps doing tuck-jumps and drop-downs.
3) Strategy/Build-order practice: I want to start studying my opponents from SEA, something I've never done in the past. I also want to look at the current metagame and copy strategies from the best in the world and invent and work on my own ideas and understanding through systematic practice.
a) save replays at events and email to self, rewatch tournament games and eliminate weakness from my play by finding how to abuse these builds and make my own builds more solid.
b) Watch Stephano's stream more
. Really absorb the builds I see on streams.c) I need to remember that once I'm past 20 ladder games in a day I don't need to force myself to try and reach 40. Instead I can work on things I've identified in a) and b) with my training buddies: the Sequential guys, Yoon and whatever Koreans I can rustle up. On that note I need to ask more of the good Koreans I play for practice. If I could play their builds and control several times in a row it would be hugely beneficial to my play. I remember Ninja practiced like a dozen or more games with Losira's Terran just by asking! So good motivation to do so myself.
I'll be trying to limit coaching to max 3 hours a day so that I have plenty of time to exercise and meet my 20 ladder games . Also I'll try to stream ladder for a few hours each day, but will be sure to have closed-practice every day also as that tends to be when I perform my best with zero distractions.
So those are my goals I guess! I will be updating this every few days, maybe every day with just a short status update!
Current Ladder ranking: 118th in KR , 4th in my division at about ~1018pts http://sc2ranks.com/ranks/fea/master/1/all/points/100
Edit: 'Anything' is my account name on KR
Bring you an update soon!
. This is why with my pretty good connection to korea ~170ping I'm aiming to prove myself in the hardest playing field to justify heading over to some of the big events like MLG.
