We’ve all been there, the times where we play all of those ranked games yet it looks something like this…
Firstly you win a few and you think you’ve finally got it!
“I understand what I have to do to win now!”
“All I have to do is this ONE thing …”
“It was just my teammates all along!”
“The next division is just a couple more wins away!”
Shortly after the next loss streak arrives and then I’m saying…
“My teams are all so bad”
“Why can’t I carry these games?”
“I versed a smurf”
“I don’t why I’m losing games?”
I get it guys, I’ve been there before. I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs to reach this point…
That empty, lost, confused feeling followed by the self talk around giving up and blaming others comes out until you get on another win streak.
When I win I feel like I know what to do, but in reality I’m not actually improving. I am just going around in circles. When I lose I feel hopeless because I don’t know what’s going wrong.
It’s a vicious cycle.
I know how you’re feeling right now.
Let me share 2 things with you that worked for me and I think will also work for you.
Firstly, I realised that I was not doing anything differently to anyone else, I finished up my day, played my ranked games then went to sleep. There was no proper process for improvement.
So I asked myself What is one concept I know that I don’t do well every game?
For me it was tracking the enemy jungler and warding appropriately.
So I wrote down on a sticky note:
“Curtis, after every game I will review my ward placement and see where I am going wrong with tracking the enemy jungle.”
That’s it. That’s all I did. I only reviewed one part of my game.
I realised what I was doing unknowingly, was something called deliberate practise. A fancy term used for consciously improving on a specific thing with a goal in mind.
It blew me away the results I was getting and I really wasn’t doing anything special!
Secondly, I started asking myself, “What am I missing in my gameplay?”.
I started realising what was even more important than improving on what I know, it was actually finding out WHAT I DON’T KNOW.
After asking around and especially talking to players on Dire Wolves, there were concepts that I hadn’t even heard of and people at the highest level were constantly implementing. How was I meant to beat them if we aren’t even playing on the same level?
I now try my best to ask myself the question, “What don’t I know?”.
For example:
Back when I played professionally it was completely unknown to me that I could ‘build waves’ or ‘freeze waves’ in laning phase. People did it to me and I knew it felt bad to verse but I had no idea what it was or how to even do it.
Try these 2 things and let me know how it goes. It will be a little tricky at first to get into the habit, but I promise it’s worth the time investment.
Let me know what concepts you recently have found out within your gameplay that have changed the way you view League of Legends.