Gaming performance - Become the gamer you ought to be.

Hey!

It’s common here on steemit to have an introduction post so that you, the reader, will know a bit of whom I am. Since I will focus on gaming and gaming performance with my future texts I feel like the gaming area is a nice place to start.

My gaming introduction was on an Atari connected to a small TV, where I put floppys into the “keyboard”. However my gaming on the Atari came to a sudden stop when my 8 year older brother spilled a glass of water on it... Instant death!

Soon after I got a PC where I was playing games like Quake, Age of empires, Starcraft, Red alert and Warcraft 2. Since I am born 1990, I was about 6 years old when this started to take off. And this was all fun, but mainly single player gaming. Soon we had a few computers at home and a small LAN setup where my friends, my brothers and I was playing together.

But in 2002 something changed, Warcraft 3 (Wc3) was released (one of the best games of all time if you ask me). The single game I put most hours into playing, and also the first game I was competing in. I remember my first online game on Wc3, I dialed up the 56k modem, connected to a FFA and at the same time as my Death knight came out I was attacked and killed.

Some years later I had become pretty good at Wc3, On the expansion The Frozen Throne. With some friends, both that I met online and from where I grew up created a few Clans (teams) together and signed up to some tournaments. As my skill improved I started to become cocky, jumping around different clan channels and challenging that teams best player. When beating them in a bo3, i went to the next one and so forth. To defend my actions, I need to say that I was a teenager that surpassed most of my friends skill level, so in my tiny world I thought I was amazing… Clearly I was not.

I had a few people around me that were better than me, and some were much better… It did not matter that I put in 2x, 3x, 4x as much time into the game as they did… they still kept beating me.

Looking back at that point of time in my life, It’s not a surprise. I was overweight (almost obese), had bad cardio, slept very little and ate like crap. All these things suppress the mind's ability to focus and perform. Something I had no idea about at that point of time, but I am very well aware of today.

Playing E-sport games where your reactions or your ability to multitask is not only important, but essential… Having good physical health and a good diet is a great advantage.

Later in my life, when Starcraft 2 was released, daym! That made me so happy. A new RTS game to dominate! It did not take long to reach the highest division (Master League), but later they added the Grandmaster league, top 200 players in the region… And I could not manage to get in there. I met the players, most times I lost, but every now and then I beat them. My physical health at this point of time was better than before, but not great. Even though I played well in the leagues, I could not really perform in tournaments… except when my team depended on my win. I was nervous, I made stupid mistakes and I froze. I was a Zerg player with 150-250 APM per game, average was about 190, which means I did more than 3 clicks per second, all game, every game. So a game that was 25min I clicked about 4750 times. Sure, some clicks was unnecessary, but at the same time it shows the amount of things that was done on a very short period of time.

The guys with the highest APM at that point of time was ofcourse the koreans. You could find players with an APM of 300+, crazy.

But without getting sidetracked into the game of Starcraft 2, I have at the same time worked 6 years as a chef, studied chinese in Beijing for a year, worked other jobs for 3 years and I have a bachelor in sports and exercise psychology (well, I have one test I need to redo...). I have at the same time worked part time as a gym instructor and right now I work as a Personal Trainer. And about one year ago I started a coaching company that works with lifestyle and health changes.

Few weeks ago I went to Dreamhack Winter 2017, It was amazing!
However a few things got stuck in my mind, since I now work with health related problems, exercise, nutrition, sleep etc… I could not let it go. The health of the average gamer is not great. Their posture, their hygiene, the muscle to fat ratio and their overall appearance did not speak to me like someone that cared about their health.

Sure! There has been a change, more and more gamers understand the importance of cardiovascular ability for their gaming performance, they understand the importance of sleep, nutrition and so forth, but I still got the idea that a lot of people don’t understand in what way it will affect them.

Not everyone on Dreamhack is there to perform at esports, not everyone wants to become a better player, so sure, for that reason this won't be as important. Everyone will benefit from a better cardiovascular health, good sleep and proper nutrition, but its not up to me to judge you for your decisions. That is not what I am trying to do, instead I am just stating that it raised a thought within me.

So from my point of view I see that the amount of knowledge in the area of health related aspects to increase performance in esports are low. And that is what I want to help with, I want to gather, read and summarize studies, methods and enhancements that can improve your performance.

If this sounds interesting, please comment below and share this to other gamers. Every post here on steemit will also be published on http://gamingperformance.se/ , where you can sign up for a newsletter. I will take 2018 to start a blog, write about how to improve your performance and if it's appreciated by the community, I will continue.

My goal for http://gamingperformance.se is that all the content will be free, I do not want adds on the site, and I do not want paid content. I simply want to create and share good content that are relevant for gamers. So if this sounds good, please visit http://gamingperformance.se/ and donate crypto for me to be able to put in a lot of time into this project.

Thank you for taking the time to read this
Best regards
Anders Björk
Personal Trainer, health coach and gamer.