I went to study sports psychology to become
a better coach, and everything that I learned
in the two years I was studying, both in terms
of exercise psychology and elite sport psychology,
inform me that I was correct--that the best
position in the world for sports psychological
knowledge to be implemented onto a team and
onto the players was from the coaching position.
So in an ideal world, every coach would have
a master's degree in sports psychology.
Right?
But we don't live in an ideal world, right?
So if you see the trend in elite sport--in
traditional sport--you'll see that sport psychology
trainers are more and more being embedded
in teams, instead of being in like an office
somewhere and the team sends players to them
and a bunch of different teams and a bunch
of other players, and they talk for an hour
and they leave.
They're showing up in the courts.
They're showing up in the locker rooms.
They are looking at psychology in action.
And I'll give you an analogy.
Mindfulness: you train it in like a 15-minute
sitting-down segment in the morning, you know,
in your kitchen or whatever.
But then the place that you actually use mindfulness
is, like, every single second of performance.
So real mindfulness training needs to happen
in a game when you're failing and losing and
2k gold behind, and you need to actually win.
That's when it's important to be mindful.
So--and by mindful, I just mean being able
to reorient to the present, forget about past
mistakes, and focus on what you're doing right
now.
Right?
So with full focus.
So it's the same thing in sports psychology,
like sports psychology doesn't in the one-hour
meeting that you have.
It happens in the training environment and
when you're doing the wrong thing after training
instead of the right thing, or when you're
talking to
your teammate the wrong way.
It happens in these little teachable, correctable
moments, like, scattered throughout the day.
And that's the trend in elite traditional
sport.
If you look at the Olympics in Rio in 2016,
what you see is a lot of--like, the sports
psychology trainer for the U.S. men's volleyball
team--indoor volleyball--was, like, there
on the court, right?
Like, in between points, talking to the players.
This is when the interventions that--I think
it was she--she was doing, like, have real
impact on performance in that moment.
So I think that sports psychology in esports
is evolving in a really interesting way because
we are differentiating--like, we're having
a trainer who specializes in that.
But the difference is a lot of these trainers
are being moved into the gaming houses, which
is fantastic, right?
Because then they're in there, embedded in
the players lives, and they're operating in
a 24/7 thing.
And what they need to be doing is learning
as much as they can about the game and as
much as they can about the team structure,
so they can get into the play.
I remember the first moment when I was coaching
Copenhagen Wolves in 2014 or 15 when I saw
an avatar movement around a tower, and I saw
it tilt for the first time, like, reading
it from the body language of the avatar.
And I knew that all of my study of the game
for the last three years or two years had
finally gotten me to the point where I could
see either choking or just being bad or, you
know, excellent play being in the zone from
the movements of the champions in the game.
And that's kind of what you need to be able
to see if you're really trying to be, you
know, in the lead as a sports psychology trainer.
Yeah, so I have a 20-year plan and a 10-year
plan and a 5-year plan.
The 10-year plan is that amateur esport is
going to be a thing, and it's going to be
local and it's going to be live.
And that, in that situation, if you have good
coaches and good captains, you can have youth
development.
You're going to have development through sport.
It doesn't matter if it's sport or esport.
It's a competitive environment.
That's the point.
And that's where you access kind of the pressure
necessary to develop transferable life skills.
That's why kids do youth sport.
That's why their parents shove them on sports
teams.
At the very worst, the byproduct is you get
a little healthier, but at the best, you have
a really good coach and he teaches you all
sorts of things about life.
So that's the 10-year plan, but if I want
to be in a position to affect that and produce,
you know, coaches all around the world to
kind of know what they're doing, then I need
to build a larger company and I need to have
money.
And so in the short-term, that means trying
to find a successful business related to coaching
in esport as it is today and build that up
using my expertise.
So I have expertise as a teacher and now as
a brand from the last three or four years
of doing brand work.
And I kind of gave myself an accidental MBA
as I was, like, staying up late at night learning
about how to build a brand.
And then, of course, from League coaching,
and I think all those things combined is what
my current endeavor is with League coaching.
There's probably maybe three things that
I practice what I preach most, and that is,
uh, gratefulness, which is to try to kind
of orient my thoughts around what it is that
I have instead of what it is that I don't
have.
Right?
And that's through a ritual that I do every
morning, or at least significantly throughout
my life.
You know, throughout the day, that is.
Just thinking of the things that I have to
be grateful for, so that I notice the things
that most people take for granted, right?
The second thing is probably mindfulness.
So just trying to focus on the present and
and not kind of let my emotions drive my behavior,
but rather let my values drive my behavior.
And the last thing is probably the idea of,
like, be so good that they can't ignore you.
So the idea of working on long-term ambitions
and goals and not being worried about kind
of the short-term outcomes, but more worried
about the religion of where I'm headed in
20, 30, 40 years and the legacy that I want,
and having that be the thing that I work towards.
And also, I try to outwork everybody that
I know so that I can actually ask them to
work hard, but that doesn't always happen
because I also sometimes just watch YouTube
a little too much, you know, here and there
but... so it's not really practice what I preach.
But I do let people off the hook, right, when
they need to slack off, because I know that
I'm a huge slacker as well.
So players should recharge... dependent on
what they need, actually.
So there's two components to this equation:
one is their ambition and their drive.
So, I mean, I don't mean what people say that
they want to do.
Like, "I want to win Worlds."
I mean what people actually--what their ambition
or their drive is keyed up to, like, internally
as a metric.
So how badly they are really driven.
Because the amount that you're driven predicates
the amount that you can sacrifice for that
goal.
So, I mean, this isn't like what people say
that they want, but it's what they actually
map to, right, when behavior maps to action.
So then the second thing is... so, first is
how much ambition do you truly, really, actually
have buried in within you, which is a product
of, you know, how you were raised and what
you want and everything about your life.
And then the second thing is, you know, how
burned-out they are.
And usually if you're thinking in terms of
sports overtraining--you get to the edge of
overtraining, you detect it right away, you
can dial back in three days and recover just
fine.
And a lot of times that doesn't mean you go
all out.
It means you dial back, you increase intensity,
but you decrease quantity a lot.
But if you, for example, actually get to the
point of burnout, then it can be one to four
weeks recovery.
TSM is still dominating NA because Andy, Bjergsen,
Parth, Hauntzer, Svenskeren, um... should
I throw some love on Double and Biofrost there as well?
Yeah.
So basically, when I went into the first week
of the split and I had a meeting with Regi
about the future--actually, this was probably
even before then--I said the thing that
I always put in my contracts, which is, I
want to...
I want to train myself out of
a job, meaning that I want to create an environment,
a culture, within the team that produces mental
resilience and produces a system of analyzing
the game that creates excellence.
And I want to create a coaching structure
and a coaching kind of, like, group that does
the same thing.
And that's what I aspired to do because of
the amount that Regi sacrificed to bring
me to North America, and to do that, I wanted
to try to leave a legacy within the team that
would outlast my work hours.
And, you know, I didn't want to, like, leave
the house and then everything fell out to
the floor, right, cause that's not very nice
as an owner, to pay a lot of money for something
and then when they leave you, you have nothing,
right?
So I think that because all of my actions
the whole split were geared and oriented toward
that, what we have is--you know, they didn't
just like, you know, throw out their whole
coaching staff and their whole roster, as
has happened many times in the past because
of burnout, because of like, you know, whatever
they're trying to adapt and change.
They, you know, they have a process.
Right?
So they were able to build from one split
to the next split for almost the first time
in TSM history.
And believe me when I say that, like, I have
a lot of respect for TSM, but one thing that
I think that they were very bad at was building
on past successes and, like, burning away
past failures, because a lot of times they
were they were super good at talent recruitment,
right, and recognition.
So then they would build stellar teams through
talent recruitment and they would build a
coaching staff, you know, through talent recruitment,
but they couldn't maintain it.
They couldn't build on that.
So I think now we get to see what TSM looks
like when they're actually building for a
second year on success from a first year.
And that's terrifying for the rest of the
world, I believe, because when you have that
kind of drive and then you multiply it and
you fail, and then you build on that failure,
that's a really exciting amount of motivation
that you have.
