Overview
On Mondays, practices are the best place for your teams to improve. It gives coaches the opportunity to help students learn from failure and reflect on ways to improve. A typical practice can last 1.5-3 hours and includes team meetings, warm ups, scrimmages, cool downs, and breaks.
Team Meeting
Team meetings establish expectations and structure for your practice. This is your opportunity to address questions, establish a goal, and create a climate of trust and collaboration.
During this time:
Set individual and team goals.
Review and recap previous goals.
Discuss wins and learning moments from previous practices, scrimmages, or matches.
Examples of practice day goals: review previous scrimmage footage and practice a weak area, clear team communication, defending goals, aerial shots, minion wave clearing, etc.
Warm Up
Like traditional sports, warming up the body is essential for esports players to prevent injury. Key muscles to warm up for gamers are wrists, elbows, fingers, shoulders, neck, and back.
Examples of a warm up: 1HP Warm Up, GamerDoc, 1HP How to Stretch
Scrimmage
Utilize previous game-play to set an objective for your skill development in Scrimmages at PlayVS.
Deliberate practice theory states that to prevent plateauing, players should hone on a specific skill to increase overall playing ability. Skills can be practiced individually or as a team. Strategies can be practiced in custom matches with bots, other teams at your school, or connecting with schools via PlayVS Discord.
PlayVS Tip: To understand deliberate practice watch JaKaTaKtv’s What is Sandbox? video, specifically 0:20-2:40.
Use PlayVS Discord channel to connect with schools across your state and the nation. Scrimmages against other schools allow teams to simulate match days. After a game finishes up circle back and do a brief breakdown. Then decide whether to continue practicing your objective or to move to a new skill or strategy.
Our Custom Match Guide gives the step-by-step protocol for creating custom matches for each of our esports.
Cool Down
As the practice winds down, provide a time for reflection. Growth Mindset encourages players to learn from mistakes rather than get stuck. If it was a difficult or frustrating practice, end with a fun game.
Example of a fun game: “Three-legged race” in which two players must control one character or car. One player controls the mouse while the other controls the keyboard.
After the fun game, players should complete the cool down with a stretch. Like traditional sports, this helps prevent injury and helps close out the practice.
Example of cool down stretches: 1HP Post Practice Stretch, GamerDoc Cool Down
Suggested Content for Practice:
Books
YouTube
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