Straight answers from a PhD in esports performance. No bro-science, no 10-step listicles.
Skill gets you noticed; durability gets you signed. Every scene is full of mechanically gifted players who burn out, get injured, or fade in long series. Beyond deliberate in-game practice, the players who last have a physical base: structured training, sleep aligned to their competition schedule, and recovery habits that keep wrists and backs functional through a 10-year career.
Start here: 3 short strength sessions a week, a fixed sleep window, and a real break every 60–90 minutes of play. Then let your in-game practice compound on top of a body that can carry it.
Four parts, in order of impact: Sleep, 7.5–9 hours, consistently timed around your matches. Train, 2–3 short sessions weekly targeting posture, neck, wrists, and general conditioning. Recover, movement breaks every 60–90 minutes, eye and hand care. Perform, a repeatable pre-match warm-up for body and focus.
That's the IRL Athlete Method. None of it requires a gym membership; all of it requires consistency.
It's usually not the gaming, it's sitting still under heavy cognitive load, on top of a sleep debt. Static posture cuts circulation, sustained attention burns through your focus budget, and dehydration quietly taxes both. The fixes with the strongest evidence are boring and effective: a real sleep schedule, hourly movement breaks, water, and enough conditioning that holding posture costs you nothing.
Increasingly, yes. Top organisations now employ performance staff, and research on esports athletes links physical activity with sustained performance and career longevity. The physical bar in esports is still low. That's exactly why physical preparation is one of the cheapest competitive edges a serious player can buy.
An in-game coach improves your decisions and mechanics. A performance coach improves the player: training, sleep, energy, recovery, game-day routine. Different job, different results, and they compound. IRL Athlete is the performance practice of Dr. Oliver Szabella, PhD in esports performance and sport-federation leader.
Same as other athletes: 7.5–9 hours, consistently timed. Reaction time and decision quality degrade measurably with sleep restriction, and competitive players feel it first in late-game concentration. The highest-leverage move is a fixed sleep window anchored to your scrim schedule, protected from "one more game" drift.
Five things, over six weeks, one on one. A full performance and health assessment: intake questionnaire covering training history, injuries, schedule and playing hours, followed by a call where we set your baseline. An individual training plan built for desk athletes, targeting posture, neck, wrists and general conditioning in three short sessions a week. A sleep and energy protocol anchored to the hours you actually play. A weekly 20-minute check-in call, every week of the six. And direct message access between calls on weekdays, answered within 24 hours.
What it is not: a downloadable PDF, a generic program, or an aim coach. The plan is built for you and adjusted every week based on what your week actually looked like.
€199 covers the full six weeks in a single payment. Nothing recurring, no upsell inside the program.
The founding rate applies to the first eight clients. They get the same programme at a lower price in exchange for something valuable to me: detailed feedback on the process and, if they are happy with the results, permission to reference their outcome. After those eight places, the Reset runs at €297.
You can request a full refund within the first seven days if you have not yet received your training plan. After the plan and assessment are delivered, the work is done and the fee is non-refundable, which is standard for coaching.
Life happens. If you are injured, ill, or your competitive schedule changes, the programme can be paused once for up to four weeks and resumed at no extra cost. Tell me early rather than disappearing; a paused client is welcome back, and I would rather adjust the plan than have you quit it.
If I have to cancel a check-in call, it gets rescheduled the same week or added to the end of your six weeks.
No. This is performance coaching: training, sleep, recovery and routine. It does not diagnose or treat any condition, and it does not replace care from a physician, physiotherapist or psychologist. Where a clinical issue shows up, my job is to tell you plainly and work alongside the professional treating it, not around them.
Every client completes a health screening before being accepted. If you have a current injury, a diagnosed condition, or you are recovering from surgery, clear it with your doctor first and bring their guidance into the programme. The Reset is for adults, 18 and over.
The 6-week IRL Athlete Reset builds all of this around your game, schedule, and body, one on one.
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