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How to become a pro gamer: Rekkles’ top 3 tips

Fnatic’s professional League of Legends ADC player, Martin ‘Rekkles’ Larsson, says that being competitively natured with a lot of focus is key. Here are his top three tips:

1. I think climbing the ladder shouldn’t be a goal, it should be something that just happens with the other goals. Playing the game a lot and putting 110% into every game is the first thing of ever becoming something.

2. I would say the second thing is to be really open minded. I would even say that playing one champion or a few set of champions is the way to go, which kind of goes against being open minded. But even when you’re playing a certain champion you can’t tell yourself you’re doing the best you can possibly do, you need to always look outside of the box and try to find new ways of playing the game. I think that’s how you grow the fastest, even though you might only be playing a few champions.

3. As for the third thing, I would say something that always struck my mind at least, is patience. It can be used in your favour inside the game, because there are many moments where it’s really tense, like if four people died on each team and it’s one on one. If you don’t have that patience, you’re going to lose that last duel which you wouldn’t have otherwise. This can also apply outside of the game. It’s going to take you time to get somewhere. Even for myself, I played League of Legends for almost two years before I really started improving. I’m sure if I didn’t have this patience, I would’ve given up earlier or I would’ve allowed myself to not give 110%.

What are the hours like?

Players are required to put in many hours in order to reach – and stay at – the top level.

It’s not unusual for players to put in 10+ hours of practice in a single day. At the same time, with a young retirement age (anything from the mid to late twenties), it’s important for the player to look after themselves, stay fit and healthy, and avoid burnout.

Rekkles, speaking to the British Esports Association in 2016, said: “Having downtime is really important, because it’s pretty much the only thing that gives you perspective on how you’re doing and how you are in life.

“For example, when I meet up with family and friends, they often give me these opinions that aren’t maybe expertise level, but they still can give me very basic life advice that I can use to my favour in many situations I face on a daily basis.

“I think in the beginning of my career, I didn’t value this at all. I just thought if I played 16 hours every day for a whole year, I’d be the best player. But I think these days that’s one of the worst things you can do. Obviously you should play as much as you can, but you shouldn’t block out other things due to it.

“These days I play as much as I can, but if we’re having dinner in 20 minutes, I won’t play an extra game and not have dinner with my teammates, because eating dinner with my teammates is going to help more than playing an extra game.”

James ‘Bakery’ Baker, added, in 2020: “Players aren’t required to put in as many hours as they have been in the past – 8 hour days are the average, with some scenes requiring as low as 1-2 hours while others can exceed 10 hours if you include individual practice.”