Fitness makes a difference — even in esports

Bilal Almashni comes from a family of bodybuilders, so he understands the importance of peak physical fitness.

But as starting small forward on the Orlando Magic’s competitive video game team, the 23-year-old will have a personal trainer and nutritionist for the first time.

Physical fitness “makes a difference in esports,” said Almashni, a Chicago native who moved to Orlando for the NBA2K League team last month. “Getting your blood flowing is like a natural caffeine to me.”

As the world of esports continues to expand, it has brought into focus the effects of prolonged exposure to video games on players.

The Orlando Magic have worked to address that issue by requiring a 10-minute break every hour during the esports team’s twice-a-day, three-hour practice sessions.

“Burnout is a huge issue and while we want to make sure we push them, we want to be cognizant of their mental and physical health,” Magic Gaming Director Ryan DeVos said.

The players work out for an hour with a trainer, who puts them through basketball-based routines at RDV Sportsplex in Maitland, an Orlando Magic partner.

The team also gives players regular eye tests and helps them to improve decision-making speed through game-based exercises and watching game film.

“Physicality is important but, ultimately, decisions have to be made in-game so being able to assess and decide quickly could be a big factor,” DeVos said.

Avid video game players can sometimes put in as many as 14 hours of gaming in a day, if not more. As esports become more popular, that has meant more gamers doing so in an effort to go pro.

But that has also meant risks involved with exhaustion, said Shawn Stafford, a human factors scientist who oversees Full Sail University’s user experience lab.

“Anytime you get fatigued, you’re talking about eye stress along with discomfort from being in a chair for extended periods of time,” said Stafford, who says he participated in esports in graduate school. “You have to have a physical regimen to go along with it. You have to exercise and stretch before you can perform.”

University of Central Florida instructor Gideon Shbeeb compared it with track stars who push beyond their limits in an effort to get one more run in.

“It comes down to how they balance it with the rest of their life and making sure they don’t sacrifice other parts of it, like diet or working out,” said Shbeeb, who teaches in the university’s School of Visual Arts and Design.

Magic Gaming’s debut did not go as planned, with the team dropping all three of their games last week in a preseason tournament.

But the team hopes paying attention to mental and physical health can help them compete during the regular season, which starts Friday.

The league’s 17 teams will play through a 12-game schedule, with players competing against each other in a modified version of the latest installment of the NBA 2K series.

The schedule also includes tournaments with total payouts of $300,000 up for grabs.

The players say the mental and physical preparation will be good but that they have been playing marathon gaming sessions for years.

“You can get fatigued playing so much but we have been doing this for a while,” said 20-year-old Cameron Ford, one of the team’s power forwards. “I don’t think it’s overtaxing. It’s our job.”