Now that I have your attention, hey, my name is Sean 'vGEroSennin' Gough and I'm a Certified Athletic Trainer. Now your first question may be, "Okay, I saw the video, and that's great you work with athletes and stuff, but why would a professional gaming team need an athletic trainer?" Well Bob that's a horrible question never ask it again. Kidding.
Let me paint you a scenario. You're a large team that has good talent, and there's a big tournament coming up. Maybe it's MLG, maybe it's IPL, Dreamhack, or maybe you have your team out in Korea. While it's great to win team leagues and tournaments online, what gets the most amount of eyes on you are usually how well you do at high-profile offline events, such as, again, the MLGs of the world.
Let's say you fly a couple people from Europe, and 2-4 Koreans out to MLG to compete. Now let's say right before the tournament beings, or maybe after the first game played, they turn to you and say, "My wrist is really killing me, I can't play the rest of the tournament." Well, that's airfare, hotel, food, competition passes, all down the drain. If you had an Athletic Trainer there to evaluate and treat, it's possible to try a few different things to get them back to competition level to play, so the reddit post is, "[Insert name here] fights through injury with the help of an athletic trainer to finish top 4 at MLG!" And not, "[Insert name here] drops out after two games at MLG due to injury."
Your casters work really hard, and sometimes casting for as long as they do, they get muscles spasms in their back, they'll have neck pain, or some other issues that make them uncomfortable and not able to do their job as best they can. A Certified Athletic Trainer can work on them to get them as good as new again, or as best to new as possible so that they can do the job you're paying them to do.
The players that are there work very hard as well, both professional and those trying to make a name coming through your open bracket. It would be advisable to have someone on staff that can treat these aches and pains, as well as handle the more serious things that come up, like a seizure, heart attack, be able to perform CPR, and things of that nature. I'm sure tournaments are required to have some sort of medical staff near by (I don't know this for sure but I assume), but a Certified Athletic Trainer can perform many duties that a tournament may want. What happens if one of your players on a championship Sunday hurts himself and is thinking about dropping out of the tournament? Now, many players would play through it regardless but it would be nice if you could send them to an ATC as we're called and we can work on them a little bit and see if we can get them back to playing again.
"Okay, that's all well and good," one may say, "but I can't see why you would need one all the time. It just seems they'd be needed for tournaments and not much else." Allow me to retort. As an athletic trainer, our main goal is to prevent and treat orthopedic injuries, but we're also trained to deal with pathological conditions such as cancer, appendicitis, Crohn's disease, hemmorhoids, upper respiratory infection, diabetes, whether they have a bacterial infection or a viral one. We're also trained in nutrition and in planning workouts. We're not nutritionists or certified strength and conditioning specialists, but if someone were to come up to me and say, "I'm working out doing x y and z, is there anything else I can be doing to strength this, or to lose weight?" I'd be able to help them.
"Wow, neat-o, but again, that doesn't answer the question. Why do teams need you outside of tournament play." My answer to that is because teams need their players at their absolute best, both mentally, physically, and emotionally, before they go into tournament play.
Let's paint another scenario. Let's take a look at a player who's in a team house who is slowly losing motivation to practice. They've been having this feeling for awhile, their appetite isn't what it use to be, and they've been having trouble sleeping lately. Combine that with some poor showings recently in tournaments, and the fact that their hand has been going numb a bit and their wrist has been starting to give them trouble, they're really don't feel like playing much.
You could shell out a bunch of money to have him go to multiple doctors, then go out and spend even more money for rehab, and all that lost time where he or she won't be able to play their game (which is what they're getting paid to do), and you can see where this can get quite annoying, for both the player and management.
With an Athletic Trainer present they can look and see that the player, who goes to the gym regularly, hasn't been seeing gains in his weights like he has previously. Not abnormal, but he's also struggling much more to complete his program. It's also taking him longer to recovery from his workouts than usual. He may have Overtraining Syndrome.
How bad can Overtraining Syndrome be? It can affect physiological and psychological functions such as: HR, BP, muscular tension, muscle irritability, pain threshold, brain rhythms, breathing pattern, sleep pattern, body temp, concentration and alertness, digestion, endocrine secretion, immune response, fine motor control, reaction time, posture, pupil size, general irritability, mood, tissue repair and growth, secretion of endogenous opiates.
Just look at some of these, brain rhythms, fine motor control and reaction time. Think you might need those to be optimal during a tournament? How about concentration and alertness?
Starting to get it yet? Instead of waiting until after your athlete gets injured, a health care professional - ala Certified Athletic Trainer - can recognize the symptoms and treat the athlete, so instead of missing, let's say... 2-3 months, they're back to practicing lightly by the second or third week. We also deal with rehabilitation, so again, instead of having to drive somewhere and go through rehab, they'd be able to do it with me at the house.
As for the numb hand and painful wrist, I know many people probably read that and said, "Oh, well that's carpal tunnel." And yes, carpal tunnel could be secondary to overtraining that this athlete has, or it could be due to the fact that they due a lot of upper body workouts and they have poor posture and they have Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. Wrist pain could be from a variety of things that are related to both of these or none at all. The fact of the matter is that these things can be prevented or their recovery time can be sped up quickly if you have the correct person watching over them.
Thank you for reading, feedback would be appreciated!
On October 29 2012 08:19 Ero-Sennin wrote: Any team or organization that is willing to reach out to me I'm interested in, let's put it that way.
If this is your honest goal, then YOU need to be reaching out to THEM, putting together a plan and some statistics, beat on some doors, etc. My guess is you'd end up doing mostly volunteer work in the current state of eSports though, but I could be completely mistaken on that.
I don't think anyone's going to argue against the fact that increasing physical activity makes you play better. I know that I always think more clearly and play more sharply after a run, or even just stepping outside and shooting the basketball around. I don't know how much help a Trainer/Physical Therapist would be on someone who is having trouble with numbness in their wrists. Most likely, the teams don't either.
That's where you come in!
If you want it, make it happen. Put together a plan, show the benefits, and market it! I'm sure there's a team out there willing to try it, if you put the effort into showing exactly what benefits you would bring to the table.
A generic hype post isn't enough. Get out there and do it! DO IT! NOW!
I appreciate the feedback, and hopefully when I'm at MLG this upcoming weekend I can do some networking and see where it gets me.
And this piece is meant to clarify a bit, but I do want to clarify your post in that I'm neither a trainer (those who you'll see at gyms trying to create a workout plan for someone [although I do know how to do that] or a physical therapist [although our professions do overlap in some aspects, such as rehabilitation and modalities], I'm a certified athletic trainer, and I think I shed some light on what we do in that piece so that someone who may be interested at least knows what someone such as myself can provide.
To my knowledge we're not used in this market so being able to put together a plan isn't so easy but what I can tell you is that we can help prevent injuries with your gamers. If their bottom right quadrant in their abdomen is painful one might suspect appendicitis. We can notice that right away, or they can think it's nothing until it ruptures and they may die.
Their wrist might be bothering them and I can help prevent it from getting to the point where they might have to take an extended period of time off of gaming before coming back to it slowly. This wastes time, money, could be bad if you fly them out to a tournament and you find out THEN you have a problem.
If they have a stiff neck, a few corrections can get them feeling as good as new and back to playing. If their having back pain, leg pain, anything, we can deal with that. Help keep them healthy both physically and mentally.
Can instruct them on how to eat so that they're not hungry during a long wait at a tournament. So that they're energized and focused, to perform to their very best. That's what an athletic trainer can do for you.
On October 29 2012 13:38 guN-viCe wrote: I think trainers might be overkill, most people just need to do the basic strength training/aerobics/stretching.
So, say you have six people on salary, you have sponsors, and you have 1-2 koreans you fly over to play in professional tournaments such as IPL/Dreamhack/MLG. Let's say one of your players has a wrist injury that could be treated at the event so that he could play, but instead he sits out after 2 games because he hurt his wrist.
Or say he's been stressing out a lot lately and been exercising a lot, hasn't had enough time for recovery, and starts to become overtrained. This can lead to a lot of different things as I said in the post, such as depression or sickness (because it can mess with your immune system). Perhaps he irked something while lifting and he now has a bulging disc, or has an SI dysfunction. If these things get found early, it's not so bad. If they're found it too late, then now you're talking about the guy you pay to play the game now can't do what you're paying him to do. With November jam packed with tournaments, is it really something you want to take a risk on?
Want to sit in on a meeting and explain why your most popular athlete isn't going to play this month? And it's not just the injury side, we can make sure they're both mentally and physically fit so they can perform optimally during competition as well as practicing and online events.
So, just saying general things like, "Oh they just need to lift a little and stretch a little." really isn't that helpful. If you can put together a program for someone based on improving their aerobic conditioning and say, "This will lead to an individual who will be able to handle stresses better and be more alert and focused while they're playing at MLG." Then that's something worth noting.
Edited: And also be able to sit down with a team and explain to them the benefits of eating food from a low glycemic index and how that's important in relationship to gaming. It's very important in how the brain functions and how the body functions. And guess what, at the high levels of gaming, you need to be able to think and react very quickly.
Indeed, having trainers isn't particularly new to starcraft, and given that teams can afford it, athletic trainers are definitely extremely important, especially with today's single/double-day tournaments where you mass games. Good luck, hope you can land a job with a team
My training involves taking a patient's history, taking their family history (such as, does anyone in your immediate family have Crohn's disease, if I'm thinking about it specifically, or early death, high BP, diabetes, things of that nature), recording their signs and symptoms. If I had an athlete whose Crohn's disease was flaring up I'd talk with the doctor that has seen the athlete and see if we need to bring him or her in, or if we need to alter their medication, perhaps change their diet, things of that nature.
They may have fever, constipation, watery diarrhea, fatigue, some of which do not require an immediate visit to the emergency room but are over the head of many people in esports. Do you think they could explain why the person suffering from the disease would want to take Tylenol over Advil or ibuprofen? Because those can exacerbate their symptoms. Want to find out about that too late and make the person even more uncomfortable? Do they have time to talk with the athlete, manage their stress levels, their diet, things like that? Probably not well, no matter how well their intentions may be.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement 100%, I think there's many teams that have players that have tendinopathy,cervical or even lumbar and SI problems. Not all gamers play video games 24/7, like you said there are players that go to the gym or do other activities that may predispose them to injuries
Yeah, I agree for most teams it would be, but if there's any team out there that has some high profile names and can't afford to have them on the shelf for 2-3+ months, then it'd be beneficial, and not just for that one person, but for the whole team, sponsors, etc...
EPT
