Causes and consequences of the healthcare crisis in the esports environment amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Turning to the Internet with such a request, you can see that there are very few opinions on this topic. The number of solutions, and even more their essence, tends to zero. And the proposed solutions are rather half measures. Therefore, there is no doubt about the necessity of this article series.

The HAWK platform welcomes readers to a new information heading: «Healthy Dota Player - Healthy Networth». Our team hopes you find the following text helpful and wishes you enjoyable reading.

Below in the text is a huge number of difficulties faced by both professional e-sportsmen and amateurs. But first, it is worth mentioning one - the most important, due to which all subsequent ones occur.

The condescending position of the public that at the global level does not want to recognize esports as a full-fledged sport. Despite the fact that esports is a sport, for people it is just a «game» and «entertainment».

The organization's frivolous attitude in terms of funding and competition systems, when a cyber athlete gives all the best comparable to a professional football player, has an overloaded wrestler schedule and earns when he does not win at international competitions, the sums of which are suitable for the epithet - «frivolous».

But the most important thing is the attitude of the players themselves to what is included in the responsibilities and constitutes the real needs of a professional athlete. Here, the needs do not mean whims, but banal security and health care, which every cyberattler must be provided with in order to be able to perform at the peak of their capabilities.

When trying to understand the issues of professional diseases of cybersportsmen, searches have shown that for every case of a good attitude towards the player person, there are many facts of classic connivance.

They are of the broadest nature. Starting with the aggravation of traumatic conditions, when the athlete, having already been exposed to the disease, is allowed to compete, after which it comes to complications. Ending up with banal dismissals of players due to unsatisfactory results. (Due to the lack of an established base of contract law in e-sports)

Of course, dismissals are for secondary teams, where reputation is not at the forefront. On the other hand, injured players are played on e-sports arenas even at the highest level.

For example Clinton «Fear» Loomis, a former Evil Geniuses player who played in Dota 2 discipline. He has not recovered since The International 2014 and took part in TI5. After that, he needed a year's rehabilitation, already untimely, because of which the pain syndrome in the wrist still prevents the athlete from giving all his best. Perhaps because of this, Clinton is no longer an active player at the moment, but took over as coach of the Thunder Predator team.

Returning to the today`s issues, we are faced with the problem of the Covid-19 pandemic, which only raises the relevance of health problems.

Athletes are at risk, due to the properties of the virus, to exacerbate the condition of untreated injuries and aggravate chronic diseases.

Cybersportsmen, as mentioned earlier, are also athletes with a unique set of stressful loads. Added to this is the player's specific lifestyle at the time of his becoming a professional. This leads to the fact that the industry is replenished, for the most part, already initially not the healthiest persons of electronic disciplines.

For the sake of success, these people have to deal with the highest level of stress, if we talk about the period of training camps - bootcamps. Taking into account the schedules of such events, when almost 20 hours a day are occupied by certain preparatory moments, only people with a colossal reserve of endurance and the strongest health can be allowed to such a regime. But, for the most part, players keep only on their own enthusiasm, a habit of a similar lifestyle and stimulants of various types.

Then comes the period of logistic and competitive stress, both physical and mental, which translates into a whole list of diseases.

A disappointing picture, no matter how you look.

Based on the experience of esports organizations, in particular OG, or rather its teams, which demonstrates the most worthy results in the Dota 2 discipline, we can draw the following conclusions.

The team should include not a person with a discount for pizza delivery and a room ventilator, but a nutritionist and doctor should be a functional diagnostician who can determine the cause of any ailment, from mechanical to endocrinological, and refer the athlete to the appropriate specialist.

Only after that, when the health of athletes reaches an acceptable level, it makes sense to work with a psychologist to maintain a moral tone. Otherwise, instead of the experience, when the professional work of Mia Stelberg helped the OG roster to maintain a sufficient level of motivation to defend the title of the champion of TI9, the experience of the Virtus.pro team will turn out, bringing the hired specialist to dismissal.

There is also an example from the leadership of PSG.LGD, when players were provided with a physical training course from a fairly competent person, which is quite good. True, it was the help of a person competent in preparing women for basketball competitions.

The team should not have a women's basketball coach, but a physical training and rehabilitation specialist who develops preparatory programs exclusively for the specific needs of athletes in electronic disciplines.

An e-sportsman is not a football player, not a basketball player or a boxer. He is faced with the tasks of strategic planning and meta-calculations in order to be ripped out of them by an unexpected shake-up, which he can cope with only through the mobilization of all the body's resources within minutes, which is comparable to the manifestations of strength endurance.

An e-sportsman is a new type of athlete, a fusion of a chess player and an armwrestler. And a new sport and its consequences require the study and development of new methods of training and therapy.

Professional sport is a work. How, with whom and on what a person works always has a huge influence on him, the consequence of which is called professional deformation.

By giving a person a job, you take responsibility for him, including for his health. The player himself must understand this, unconditionally following your instructions in this area. Thus, taking care of it will bring you profit.

After all, no matter how experienced, theoretically and practically savvy your ward would be, if he lacks physical and mental health to perform a decent game, he will not show it. Instead of thinking about rotation when a player loses interest in winning, think about it. This is the same young man who participates in competitions in the field of his skill and interest. Perhaps he just needs to be taken to an appointment with an endocrinologist.

You have a huge number of tools in your hands to keep the played rosters and improve their shape. If you are ready to tackle your wards seriously, then the HAWK platform, in the subsequent articles of the series «Healthy Dota Player - Healthy Networth», will systematically reveal these tools.

See you in the next article: «Gamer's grocery basket. Why buying a mango is always a good idea.»

Remember, healthy people are strong people, and only strong people win.