In-person tournaments are the norm for traditional sports competitions and esports are no exception. While theoretically, online competitions are completely possible – connection latency, equipment, and timezone challenges add extra factors that threaten the integrity of legitimate competition. But preparing and competing at a controlled local area network-connected (LAN) tournaments offer their own challenges for esports athletes.

The global nature of esports sees competitors travel in from all over the world, and in an effort to sprint toward competition readiness, teams often organize “bootcamps” – designed for athletes to acclimate to the timezone, improve team cohesion, and prepare as a unit for tournament conditions.

It’s Logitech G PRO Series’s mission to provide our partnered teams, athletes, and PRO Alliance members with access to high-performance gear and out-of-game support to reach their potential. One of those opportunities is access to our Esports Facility in the San Jose office to bootcamp.

We recently surveyed 40+ esports athletes to find out what were the most important aspects of a bootcamp experience to ensure they go into high-stakes tournaments in prime condition.

High-performance workstations and high-grade internet were baseline needs for a bootcamp location for all respondents. Two-thirds of respondents also mentioned a gym or fitness equipment as essentials for their bootcamp routine. Half brought up nutritional services, either in the form of a kitchen space or a dedicated chef to prepare meals for the team. 

It’s clear that athletes desire a frictionless experience to focus on the competition. Quick and easy access to equipment and essential needs serviced on-site reduce the need to leave the facility and endure transport times. Maximizing time practicing and reviewing is paramount to get the most of bootcamping, from their perspective.

Gameplay focused time was divided between respondents. More than half estimated 80% of their available time while bootcamping was focused on gameplay, while the rest estimated closer to 60%. Exertion needs recovery to maintain performance. These variants could be due to the length of the bootcamp and different coaching techniques – however, more that 50% of athletes' time are spent in or around the game.

Regardless of exact time-tables that athletes and staff commit to, regimentation was clear across all responses. At home, aside from matches and practice sessions, athletes are often left to structure their days independently. At bootcamp, all aspects of the athletes’ day are assigned set times – wake up, scrim, meals, match review, and sleep.

Studies like The Importance of Creating Habits and Routine (Arlinghaus & Johnston, 2018) suggest that scheduling and set routines benefit optimal physical and mental health. Unregimented days requiring a constant stream of micro-decisions – when should I eat? How long should I practice? – can lead to decision fatigue and be more reactive to stressors.

Not a single participant praised the home environment over a bootcamp setting and 75% reported observing a positive difference in athlete behavior post-bootcamp.ks when we look at the scientific literature on that.

Participants highlighted shared activities’ importance on bootcamp outcomes. A Cornell University study on firefighters, Eating Together at the Firehouse: How Workplace Commensality Relates to the Performance of Firefighters (Kniffin, Kevin M et al. 2015), found a direct link between groups that ate meals together and exhibited higher group job performance. 

Spending leisure time together builds social bonds and trust, which pay off in high-pressure situations requiring group high-performance. This underlines why team dinners and group off-time is scheduled into intense bootcamping – to best equip players with any competitive edge they can gain as a unit before heading into tournaments.

Athletes noted that bootcamps aren’t a regular occurrence on their calendars, only happening ahead of major international tournaments. Bootcamps are a major investment of time and resources for everyone involved, so they need to be optimized and effective.

I think a lot about how much they train. The common perception, or maybe misperception, from non-gamers is that esports professionals are really sedentary. They don't do anything except sit there and just play games all day, they try to do the same things over and over and over again and just get better at the game.

I try to highlight in classes, or to newcomers in the space, that these guys aren’t incredible simply because of how much time they put in, but from the types of training and practice they do. The training itself has evolved so much from when I first started 2011, even just a few years ago it was “scrim all day and then compete”.

Today, there's a lot of real sports science behind what they're doing and that's a really interesting place for me. Because it's digital, I can show a class just how much training they do per week or just how many hours they've logged on a particular game. I love to highlight this big repository of skill execution and acquisition to sports science or psychology students to blow their minds.