Since 2014, over 65 million individual people have played League of Legends, a real-time strategy game by Riot Games, every month. Sixty-five million people. That’s 1 million shy of the population of France. ESPN has even added an “eSports” vertical, and though there’s a healthy mix of titles, League of Legends dominates the coverage.
Now most eSports are geographically popular—Counterstrike, for example, is widely played in North America and not so much on other continents. But League of Legends is a rare title with global appeal, massively popular in North America, Europe, and Asia. There are regional championships in each area, but the best in the world take home a $1 million price and a 70-pound trophy called the Summoner’s Cup.
Gunning for that Cup this year is the newest team to join the North American League Championship series, Immortals, a team made up of players culled from other teams that never managed to bring out their full potential.
For context: League of Legends involves two five-player teams, each player leveling up a character in the match, and then attempting to pummel each other. Eugene “Pobelter” Park is the mid laner for Immortals, taking a position in the middle of maps. “It’s the most versatile role,” he says, “so it requires a lot of experience. My job in the game can range from protecting my other teammates and making sure that they can beat the enemy team, or trying to do damage myself, so it’s a role with a bit of variety.”
Like most professional gamers, Park is college-aged (20) and, like most professional gamers, fitness has never been his primary focus. Immortals performance coach Robert Yip says that keeping the team in shape is uber-important and can counteract the mental dulling that comes from the fatigue of spending eight hours in front of a screen on any given day. “The big focus is on helping to make behavioral changes and not spoon-feeding them,” says Yip. “These are your college years. If you ask anyone that age, this would be a dream job and they would jump at the chance, but it’s exceedingly stressful.”
Basic fitness helps to keep concentration strong, but other fine-tuning (like the core or auxiliary muscles like the delts and upper back) also help. The real obstacle though? Most gamers are underweight. “During the course of each day they usually eat a calorie deficit, even if they’re having one huge meal a day,” says Yip. “When players are hungry or tired or sick, they tend to play worse, and their stress management is a lot more difficult, they get more irritable.”
“Throughout high school I ran track and field,” says Park, “and I would say I definitely eat more now and I’m still at a calorie deficit. Honestly, I was pretty miserable and I never knew why, so I just stopped running track and field.”
Park still struggles to eat up to his coach-approved 2,300 calories a day, but the efforts from the coach and team seem to be kicking in. While League of Legends games can last up to an hour, Immortals has already scored two under-20 minute wins, one against last year’s North American League champions, Cloud9. And while Immortals are prepping for big prize money and even bigger numbers of viewers, a few of us—this writer included—are still struggling to learn just how the game works.
“No worries. That was me [Sunday] watching the Super Bowl,” says Park. “I was saying, ‘I don’t even know what any of these initials stand for.’”
Breakfast
Eggs, sausage, toast
Lunch
Lemon and garlic chicken and rice
Dinner
Korean style chicken and rice
