Over the past few years, there’s been a major shift in the sports arena. While footballers, basketball players, cricketers were the only sportspersons until a decade ago, a new wave of professional eSports has emerged and how! However, despite its popularity, many don’t wish to provide this a status of professional sports. Here’s a comprehensive viewing of their lives and how they are different from each other.

1)   MAINTAINING A ROUTINE:

Well, the pressure of maintaining a well-balanced social life is more for the e-athletes as their work requires them to remain tucked away in the corners of their houses. The practices can be mentally taxing, and they need breaks from that. Getting up at a particular time, helping people with household chores, taking at least 6 hours of sleep, going out to meet people, and going out for stretch exercises. The idea of holistic lifestyle and gaming is emerging and is increasingly affecting thousands of individuals around the world.

2)   MONEY:

Money is one of the most important incentives which needs more exploration to understand an e athlete’s life. Well, a conventional NBA player can earn around $ 6.2 million on average, while NFA players get around $2.1 million. The net worth of these players are quite praiseworthy and celebrated.

However, for an e-athlete, there isn’t any fixed income as things work very differently when we take things online; an industry that’s thriving on its ease of access and extremely fast results. Whether you’re playing FIFA on the console, participating in a poker tournament in an online casino, or planning where to plant the next bomb with your counter-strike teammates, the virtual touch entirely changes the scene.

So, these esports athletes are more of freelancers. Some companies may pay around $55000-65000 but they don’t have a majority of the player bases under them. Independent players rule this market, which is why, getting revenues from their uploaded videos and posts in social media, or winning prizes worth $3-9 million is how they earn majorly. Their income needs to be divided amongst other players of their team then. But the growing market of eSports is being noticed, and companies ranging Dell and IKEA are also deciding to collaborate and sponsor these gaming championships they have.

3) TRAINING:

Well, regularly, the players of traditional sports do a lot of physical exercises which is a concoction of weightlifting, aerobic exercises, and field practices. Talking about NFL players, as the season of the games approach, they minimize their actual field practice, however, carry on with non contact drills, and watching videotapes of matches played by them and their opponents. So as we see, the traditional sports require more physical movements than any other sport.

However, that doesn’t take away the hard work done by the e-athletes. For a person to stay on their toes in eSports, they also need to go for training exercises. The training ranges from fingertips to forearms. Opposition movements to full-blown forearm muscles curls and presses are to be done. Another muscle that is overused are the eye movements. Near to far focus, smooth pursuit H pattern, X pattern and practising target gaze help the eye movements get enough amount of exercise.

4)   REFLEXES IN PLAY:

The type of reflexes required for dedicated console practices are very much different than the ones needed in a soccer field. The rapid eye and hand movements needed for these games, and the sheer pace of it makes it not an easy job. A fair amount of time and effort are needed to build them up. While in the soccer field, gross reflexes play out more than these.

5)   PLAYER LANDSCAPE OF ESPORTS VS TRADITIONAL SPORTS:

Undoubtedly, traditional sports have been our source of entertainment and happiness for a very long period of time. However, with every long-lasting industry, comes it’s downsides. The traditional sports industry is beset with problems of widespread lobbying and gender and social bias. There are certain classes of people who manage to get adequate guidance and training to reach up to the top of these traditional sports, and even then can diffuse into oblivion if the organisation or the government of that country feels like dampening his career.

However, the foundation of eSports is something as democratic as the Internet. The Internet makes all of these players first players of their own and then part of some team. Besides, there has been an increasingly high upsurge of female players coming and being a part of the competitive gaming arena. Female players have been part of traditional sports as well, but we all know how that plays out. eSports are known to transcend the boundaries of class and gender and nothing can be more welcoming than that.