On April 02 2021 14:39 TaardadAiel wrote: People DO need to work smarter, that's why they have coaches/mentors/whatever. Even structuring and organizing it is smarter than just blindly banging your head against the wall. No reason not to try and take an extra step, try to make it better, probably safer. Don't consider that a substitute for hard work but rather an addition to it. And that the Korean coaches didn't do it is perfectly fine, they really were learning on the job.
Go and see any aspiring football kid. See if they just play 90-minute games over and over, without practicing passing, movement with the ball, without the ball, shooting set pieces, going to the gym for basic fitness etc. Coaches might tell them what to eat and when, and even bother telling them why.
All of this is meant to learn to do stuff better without hurting yourself in the process.
i dont disagree that coaches need to optimise training. thats their job. being intelligent about the way you coach and the way players train is what every coach thinks about. what i disagree with is the casual dismissal of methods employed by coaches and players during those days by a handful of nobodies sitting at home. to have the audacity to claim that the coaches didnt take into consideration the fact that 12 hours of practice is a difficult regime and the potential for wrists injuries was problematic is ridiculous. these coaches were paid very respectable salaries to produce results and just like how the players compete with each other, coaches are in the same position. "how could i train my players differently to produce results better than other teams?". what makes these guys on tl think that the coaches didnt think of this every day? and if after all that contemplation led to no major change, then that was the limit of their understanding or technology of their time. ~15 years later some armchair coaches are like "they should have done this or that, and they were stupid to not employ these methods and treated the players like slaves". absolutely embarrassing
As I said, I think you're just taking it too far. I wouldn't assume that nobody on this website has put anything near the effort these guys have in whatever their profession is (pauline shared his own experience though), but that may very well be the case since they are in fact at the very top. Not to mention that, as you pointed out, the philosophy behind being an athlete is very different. So we're just chilling and theorizing on a website, I don't think it's terribly disrespectful or embarrassing to state that there probably is a better way with the benefit of hindsight. Such a discussion might lead to nothing, but it doesn't hurt anybody. A discussion like the one right now leads to useless tension between us. You have made your point and it's valid, really.
its the classic fallacy "if you are not a (top) cook you shouldn't be allowed to criticise food!"
its fine for to make points like his, but now hes going overboard to the point that he is insinuating that its ok for progamers to destroy their health as long as they get their "results" and people are entertained, and there are zero alternative approaches to counter this, negating anyone else who says otherwise with above fallacy
I'm not as concerned with him or you or whoever even being right as I am concerned with a heated argument that leads only to calling names and a temp ban for Jealous. I'm content with being proven wrong. I'm content even with heated discussions, really, but this is personal when I don't think it should be.
On April 02 2021 14:51 WombaT wrote: I don’t understand how it’s egotistical to question if it’s optimal to grind out games all day without access to non-BW internet or a TV. It was a nascent profession where pro gaming was a new thing, never mind the lag period to have coaches with the requisite skillset and experience of being involved in the game at a high level.
Go find me any kind of study that recommends such an approach, it’s not rocket science.
Kespa teams themselves toned it down from the early days and adopted a more sophisticated approach over time.
There’s also a world of difference between obtaining a level of proficiency and maintaining it.
A world class musician, or a relatively decent scrub like me put in tons of hours honing our respective crafts. Once you have the chops it’s maintaining them, or improving specific areas or stretching out and learning new things. To even get to my level takes a ton of hours grinding the mechanics especially, doesn’t take me much to keep them reasonably sharp though.
To create a Jaedong you’re going to need a serious grind yeah, once he’s Jaedong though the maintainence of his mechanics probably isn’t going to need 12 hour a day grinds or whatever.
I think it’s largely moot as even in a slightly more relaxed environment Jaedong seems the kind of guy with an insane work ethic and pride in that, so he’d probably put in excess hours in his own time anyway.
he explicitly says in the linked video that he performed well in 2013 because of his previous grinds, and he fell off in 2014 because he stopped grinding. like i said, theyre in competition with other people. his skill may not have changed between 2013-14 and like you said, he may have maintained his level with a more relaxed workload. however when everyone is trying to surpass you then the minute you rest on your laurels youre out of the game. this was an idea that the koreans knew all too well because its the culture theyre brought up in since they first enter school. 2009 tbls were ahead of their curve. in 2011 tbls was still ahead of their curve, but 2011 tbls was undeniably better than 2009 tbls. you dont get ahead of the curve and then STAY ahead of the curve by slacking off.
On April 02 2021 14:39 TaardadAiel wrote: People DO need to work smarter, that's why they have coaches/mentors/whatever. Even structuring and organizing it is smarter than just blindly banging your head against the wall. No reason not to try and take an extra step, try to make it better, probably safer. Don't consider that a substitute for hard work but rather an addition to it. And that the Korean coaches didn't do it is perfectly fine, they really were learning on the job.
Go and see any aspiring football kid. See if they just play 90-minute games over and over, without practicing passing, movement with the ball, without the ball, shooting set pieces, going to the gym for basic fitness etc. Coaches might tell them what to eat and when, and even bother telling them why.
All of this is meant to learn to do stuff better without hurting yourself in the process.
i dont disagree that coaches need to optimise training. thats their job. being intelligent about the way you coach and the way players train is what every coach thinks about. what i disagree with is the casual dismissal of methods employed by coaches and players during those days by a handful of nobodies sitting at home. to have the audacity to claim that the coaches didnt take into consideration the fact that 12 hours of practice is a difficult regime and the potential for wrists injuries was problematic is ridiculous. these coaches were paid very respectable salaries to produce results and just like how the players compete with each other, coaches are in the same position. "how could i train my players differently to produce results better than other teams?". what makes these guys on tl think that the coaches didnt think of this every day? and if after all that contemplation led to no major change, then that was the limit of their understanding or technology of their time. ~15 years later some armchair coaches are like "they should have done this or that, and they were stupid to not employ these methods and treated the players like slaves". absolutely embarrassing
As I said, I think you're just taking it too far. I wouldn't assume that nobody on this website has put anything near the effort these guys have in whatever their profession is (pauline shared his own experience though), but that may very well be the case since they are in fact at the very top. Not to mention that, as you pointed out, the philosophy behind being an athlete is very different. So we're just chilling and theorizing on a website, I don't think it's terribly disrespectful or embarrassing to state that there probably is a better way with the benefit of hindsight. Such a discussion might lead to nothing, but it doesn't hurt anybody. A discussion like the one right now leads to useless tension between us. You have made your point and it's valid, really.
its the classic fallacy "if you are not a (top) cook you shouldn't be allowed to criticise food!"
its fine for to make points like his, but now hes going overboard to the point that he is insinuating that its ok for progamers to destroy their health as long as they get their "results" and people are entertained, and there are zero alternative approaches to counter this, negating anyone else who says otherwise with above fallacy
you must be illiterate or something because youre constantly missing the point. its not for us to judge whether its ok that their healths deteriorated or not. they themselves were fine with it. if theyre not complaining that the training was too tough and they thought their deteriorated health was an acceptable price to pay, why are you up in arms about their teamhouse conditions? the more you argue they were wrong to train like that the more you discredit their effort.
I didn’t need to be called a nobody, I already knew that!
I suppose a parallel would be ‘crunch’ periods game developers (and many in other fields) have to undergo.
From what I’ve read on the topic if you’re personally enthused, don’t have other commitments like kiddos and a project is well-managed, then you can be very productive for a period. If it’s obligated less so, and even in the former there’s a drop off in your output if it’s prolonged.
Basically anything I’ve read on productivity in work per hour, or education tends to say that shorter is better, be it in a shorter work day, or a learning environment that has short bursts of material, breaks and then that cycles.
Pro BW is a bit different, it’s a dream of these guys and it’s incredibly mechanically demanding, plus unlike musicians players have to react to situations and be prepared for all sorts of scenarios so they can instinctively do the right thing. Plus it’s a dream for these people too, so direct comparisons to other fields aren’t always going to see the correct answer.
That said in combination from other areas, I don’t think one can say the scenario Jaedong described, or what Nony, Ret and Idra have said about their time sounds at all optimal when factoring in burnout/injuries, efficiency of time and also in terms of pastoral care to young men who’ve dropped their schooling to enter that system.
From what I’ve read when top pros like oov circulated back in as coaches things were a bit less crude and grindy and while hard work was still paramount time was more productively managed and more of a work-life balance came into the mix.
Wasn't there a point in time where coaches recognized that this lifestyle is way too sedentary to be healthy and promoted outdoor activities like football and the like? I have a vague memory about JD in particularl, but I might be wrong.
keep in mind that these discussions about 12+ hours days doesnt mean it was 12+ hours for 365 days. theres still time allocated for theorycrafting/analysis, in house scrims etc. skt was known to play soccer occasionally with i think mbc? best was well known for going to the gym in his free time regularly. were talking about the average grinding day being 12+ hours, with players putting in even more hours by using their free time if they wanted (bisu, jd). these werent some human rights abusing sweatshops
Hell, when I was a young resident I'd spend time after the end of my shift to see how my patients are doing and how the other guys would approach their conditions, then go home, take a bath and look up all kinds of problems I encountered during the shift in available literature while having dinner. Then I'd call the night shift and ask how the patients were doing before going to sleep. I'd go and do procedures I'm less familiar with on my own free time on weekends when I'm off duty and the like. And I'm just a regular doc in eastern Europe and I didn't work at a big academic institution. I'm less inclined to do that now, though. So, yeah, internal drive makes a big difference.
On April 02 2021 15:43 evilfatsh1t wrote: keep in mind that these discussions about 12+ hours days doesnt mean it was 12+ hours for 365 days. theres still time allocated for theorycrafting/analysis, in house scrims etc. skt was known to play soccer occasionally with i think mbc? best was well known for going to the gym in his free time regularly. were talking about the average grinding day being 12+ hours, with players putting in even more hours by using their free time if they wanted (bisu, jd). these werent some human rights abusing sweatshops
Yeah definitely, not sure if gym sessions were at the outset or something that were added over time to compensate for the sedentary life.
Seemed to get results i heard that NaDa works out and has a pretty good body. I think I saw a picture on here but i cant find it.
On April 02 2021 15:43 evilfatsh1t wrote: keep in mind that these discussions about 12+ hours days doesnt mean it was 12+ hours for 365 days. theres still time allocated for theorycrafting/analysis, in house scrims etc. skt was known to play soccer occasionally with i think mbc? best was well known for going to the gym in his free time regularly. were talking about the average grinding day being 12+ hours, with players putting in even more hours by using their free time if they wanted (bisu, jd). these werent some human rights abusing sweatshops
Yeah definitely, not sure if gym sessions were at the outset or something that were added over time to compensate for the sedentary life.
Seemed to get results i heard that NaDa works out and has a pretty good body. I think I saw a picture on here but i cant find it.
Legend has it that there's a thread on a website dedicated to that.
On April 02 2021 15:43 evilfatsh1t wrote: keep in mind that these discussions about 12+ hours days doesnt mean it was 12+ hours for 365 days. theres still time allocated for theorycrafting/analysis, in house scrims etc. skt was known to play soccer occasionally with i think mbc? best was well known for going to the gym in his free time regularly. were talking about the average grinding day being 12+ hours, with players putting in even more hours by using their free time if they wanted (bisu, jd). these werent some human rights abusing sweatshops
Yeah definitely, not sure if gym sessions were at the outset or something that were added over time to compensate for the sedentary life.
Seemed to get results i heard that NaDa works out and has a pretty good body. I think I saw a picture on here but i cant find it.
Legend has it that there's a thread on a website dedicated to that.
On April 02 2021 00:48 TaardadAiel wrote: Arguing about the best practice regimen with calls for hard data or any kind of evidence is kinda pointless, since we don't really have a control group with the same baseline characteristics. A bunch of factors have made the Korean StarCraft scene the best in the world and the rigorous practice routine is just one of them.
The optimal practice regimen is basically unknown to us - heck, even their practice regimen back in the day is unknown to us. Do we know anything about warning-up routine to prevent strain on the structures of the upper limb? Professional musicians even warm DOWN on occasion (John Myung, the bass player for Dream Theater, off the top of my head). Was ergonomics taken into account? If it did, at what point of the development of the pro scene? To what degree? Probably different coaches had different coaching styles, do we know details about them? Maybe some old-timer die-hard fans on this website can shed some light on these issues, that would help the discussion. Don't forget, esports coaching was basically developed then, people were learning on the job and that's completely understandable. We might discuss things now with the benefit of hindsight that they didn't, and that's completely understandable too. And I'm just skimming the surface here.
My point is, "practice" might mean a lot of things and it does absolutely no wrong to discuss (theorize, in fact) ways to optimize practice regimens. I suppose those guys knew that what they're doing will have a price, everything has a price, although they were pretty young at that time. This is beyond the scope of the discussion. I think it's fine to think about ways to reduce the risk of injury; even if the ways proposed are wrong or lead to an unacceptable reduction in performance, such a discussion still has merit.
For those interested, Nony and Idra talks about their experiences in korean team houses in this vod.
It doesn't sound like it was very sofisticated other than playplayplay and git gudd
at this point i just accept that esports is relatively young and their overall methodologies/practices are still generally low-brow and innovation in it is restricted to the whims of certain exceptional players and coaches (seeing players serral and reynor and his coach lambo in sc2 for example). hard work is important but SMART WORK and more project-oriented approaches are far more significant if u want to actually see continued success and to ensure that even the average player can have a comfortable career and post career prospects.
please stop with this enlightened coaching bullshit. you dont know wtf youre talking about, or you would be a multi-title winning coach yourself. youre pretty much spewing the same "forced slavery sweatshop" crap as timebones and its stupid. the players chose that life because thats what it took. like seriously how difficult is it to understand the fundamental idea that if a lot of your competitors are putting in x amount of hours, unless youre fucking faker and have an extremely rare gift, you have to at the very least match the hours your peers are putting in. this goes for anything in life, not even just sport. if you want to keep up with other people you put in the effort. its that fucking simple if you want to be bang average at everything in life and not put in the effort to be better at something than others, good for you. or maybe youre a 1/1000000 freak that can actually put his words where his own mouth is and "work smarter" to achieve results. but the majority of people arent like that, so they grind through life to make something of themselves. instead of shitting on their efforts why dont you show some respect for the sacrifices they made to get where they are. fucking appalling how users of a site dedicated to gaming has so little consideration for the sacrifices progamers made. i dare you to go to last's (quite honestly a mid tier pro during the proleague days with no major accomplishment, now with damaged wrists) stream and say to his face that he was an idiot to grind 12+ hours a day because he has nothing to show for it but fucked up wrists. let me know how that goes
i literally posted in your quoted post that hard work is important. you didnt even read that and just continue on your tangent on just because hard work suddenly means you are a better person or that you are entitiled to something. guess what? there are people who barely put in any effort in their life and yet already reap all the rewards that most people will never see their lifetime (those are lucky enough to be born in rich/royal families basically). why don't u go scream at them lmao?
my narrative has always been about calling for a need for adjustments/refinements to their training approaches to ensure that injuries are minimized players welfare are always on top, all without disrupting the rigour of their training. obviously im not a top tier coach but this things are so fucking common sense that you have to be sociopath to ignore it.
where have i stated in any of my posts that hard work automatically means youre better or that youre entitled to something? dont put words in my mouth. and wtf is the bolded part about? how is that even remotely relevant to this discussion? take your wealth inequality bullshit elsewhere i like that you pointed out that your stance is a narrative. you have no evidence to support your claim that adjustments to the training programs could be made that simultaneously reduced injuries and maintained their practice workload. you proposed therapy for best once. how do you think thats gonna work in a teamhouse setting? youre gonna ask the coaches to pay for your therapy because youre a choker, and therefore need months of sessions to work through this mental block? hes in competition with other people. the moment he goes to a coach and says "i need therapy because of my own incompetence", hes risking the coaches thinking that hes not cut out for the job and will replace him. the coaches jobs arent to be the players parent. whether or not the player has a future after progaming is irrelevant to the coaches. thats a concern for the player, not the coach. get off your high horse and stop critiquing with the benefit of hindsight that the coaches mistreated the players and the players were dumb to grind like slaves. they did the best they could because they wanted success and they were willing to pay the price. end of story
Mental training is something a lot of athletes use, therapy is more than talking about your personal problems, it can be help to deal with the pressure that comes from performing in front of a group of people. A lot of pros “choke” and if some cognitive behavioral therapy could work for them, it would be a mistake to dismiss a player who is asking for help to better himself.
Erling Braut Haaland is one of the best up and coming football players today and he’s using meditation to better himself. You can practice in other ways than doing the exact same thing as your sport is. If he had kicked the ball for 15 hours a day I’m not sure that would be better.
There is more to proper practice than doing one thing over and over and over again. Most people understand this. And while it’s not up to the coaches to be their parents, it’s their job to make them perform as good as they possibly can, using all the right tools and treat each player as an individual that needs to practice what works best for him.
i think the most extreme practice schedules are too extreme. high quality sleep and regular exercise should be priorities. still, after that, you can fit in a ton of practice. 12 hours is tough but it'd be doable. 9 hours with lights off, an hour for exercise, and 2 hours for hygiene and meals. if you don't exercise too hard, you sleep well, and you eat healthy food, you can spend most of the 12 hours playing. but you can take some time to obs games as well and have short chats or 5min breaks. but it's not impossible to do 4 hours of constant games. with bw, the game starts slow enough that you can mentally rest for the first few mins or more. i'd have sessions of literally playing the same person non-stop for 4 hours straight (4 hours was the longest consecutive practice time we had between meals). doing 3x sessions of 4 hours each with a very high percentage of those 4 hours spent in-game is not that absurd
is it necessary or optimal? hard to say. before i went to korea i practiced for ~6 hours a day and strongly felt that i only needed higher quality practice partners to raise my skill level, not more practice time. i'd much rather take the safest approach to increasing skill, like change one variable at a time, rather than radically changing my regimen. so imo continuing to practice 6 hours a day against higher skill players would raise my skill level, why risk changing anything else? but for team camaraderie, i couldn't be an exception, so i had to do the same schedule as everyone else (in fact, it was just the highest skill players who got exceptions or extra privilege, especially being A-team was a big status change over B-team. i was bottom third of the B-team when i started, but was top third of the B-team after just two months (we had regular internal tournaments)).
edit: while i've made comparisons to classical musicians in the past, the problem is that classical musicians are not discovering things and doing new things as much. they aren't in a race with other musicians to figure out something new and then play it better than everyone else. for the most part, musicians are doing things that have already been done. it's like they've got someone else doing research and development, while they just build the thing.
but bw was a constant race to discover something new and then practice it up and perfect it enough for it to compete with things that were already heavily refined and perfected and also heavily practiced by everyone else. if you were predictable without being absolute S-tier in execution, then you lost. i'm not so sure that strategies would have evolved as much as they did without the hours these team houses were pouring into the game. so in that sense, bw practice has been both the research and development of the product AND the actual building of the product simultaneously. thus the ungodly hours
if you were being fed novel strategies and only had to master the execution of them, then i think less practice would be ideal. and indeed that's probably how players with less practice thrived: they'd pick up other peoples strats and execute them better or they had a knack for knowing what strats had potential and also had very good execution. jaedong's story about nada's practice with julyzerg confirms that theory to me imo: nada had a strat in mind, tried it for 4 games against july as a proof of concept, decided it was a good bet and that was that. i also did this (obviously at a much lower level than nada), as i'd come up with a strat / build order / game plan and essentially never practice it against real opponents, only vs the AI. then i'd play normal games so my general mechanics were still competitive or superior to my competition. i did this for strats that won maps vs idra and mondragon
Oh wow, that's incredible insight from Nony, I didn't expect he'd post in here! I can't think of anyone more qualified other than Idra, considering they were the only two foreigners to have actually experienced living in a teamhouse during the "modern" Brood War era.
Okay, I'm done being a lurker pretending to know my Brood War history. Just wanted to highlight how sick reading his recount was, over a decade after the fact!
On April 06 2021 04:29 NonY wrote: but for team camaraderie, i couldn't be an exception, so i had to do the same schedule as everyone else (in fact, it was just the highest skill players who got exceptions or extra privilege, especially being A-team was a big status change over B-team.
i mildly curious about this but in any case thanks for sharing your experience!
EPT
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