Paweł ChalacisPaweł Chalacis

Despite not being able to spend so much time in front of computer recently, I am still a geek who loves to play games. I've spent countless hours playing World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Diablo. Back in highschool, when there was no internet yet (yes, there was that time) I disappeared for two weeks when I got Baldurs Gate. I've even finished Crysis 2, just to see how good the graphic were. Years of gaming gave me bad back and glasses (actually, my job gave me that...), but as it turns out, it is possible to transfer skills learned while gaming to workout.

Disclaimer

I haven't been playing anything for a while, so everything that you read might be little outdated. I'm also simplifying things, as it's impossible to give a full description of few games in one blog post. On a fitness blog, for that matter.

World of Warcraft

If you don't know what is WoW, well, good for you, as you probably still have a free time. It took a huge chunk of my life, think about literally hundreds of days. I've leveled all available classes to highest level, played with my friends, with my girlfriend, with random people around the world. That was the first real English speaking environment for me as well, but that's the different story.

Anyway, character starts at level 1, with no money, no equipment and no skills. By completing quests over and over again (basically killing whatever you see) you gain experience, strength, intelligence, you name it. You get new equipment and learn new skills. After few "warm up" exercises, you meet real opponents that can kill you whenever you don't pay attention. While you get better, those became less and less of a threat to you and you can kill things faster. You feel really powerful. For a moment!

Thing is, you can't do the same things forever, because at some point they stop giving anything meaningful to your character, so you have to move to new areas, with new things just waiting to feast on your corpse. Rinse and repeat.

The game is designed, so you are basically not able to kill anything that is 10 levels above your character. When you reach maximum level, there are new challenges, and even if you complete them, you can always complete them again, only faster, for better rewards or, generally speaking, in better way.

In the end, it's endless repetition of the same tasks. It gets boring eventually and then there is a new content added to the game and all journey can start again.

Fun for whole family! Actually, many families actually break because of that and people are losing jobs and, friends as the game is highly addictive. Despite game being quite old now, there are around ten million people playing for subscription each month. Yep, crazy!

Yet don't get me wrong - World of Warcraft is great, but just requires too much of a commitment.

Starcraft 2

Now that's completely different story. There is no character progression and no money nor gear to collect. There is experience and "Player level", but it has nothing to do with the matchup outcome or your ability to kill and win.

Starcraft is purely player versus player game. Each match starts with both players having the same amount of resources and basic units. Player has to use his prepared strategy, his ability to click stuff fast, his reaction time and decision making skills in order to win the match.

All players are divided into leagues, so you are matched against player with similar skill in the game, so it's impossible for you to fight with someone that is just way too good / bad for you. To get better, you have to play a lot. You have to try different strategies, learn from your mistakes and plan for the future. Matchmaking system will try to challenge you with better players from time to time to see if you are ready for the next step or not, and when you are, you will be moved to the next league, where, once again, everyone is at better skill level.

Damn, I really want to play few games now ;).

Why do I even write about it?

Well, we could summarise the progression through those game in few steps

  • do some stuff, realise that you suck at it
  • learn, exercise, gain experience, and learn some more
  • think that you are awesome and just too good for whatever you are doing
  • move to the next challenge and realise that if was just a step in a journey, not a finish line and you still suck, but little less.
  • repeat

Sounds familiar? Well, that's my life recently, but now instead of playing games, I work out. But I can still apply to my training the same patterns that I've learned while sitting in front of computer.

When I started cycling to work (the very first step in my fitness journey), I could do it only 2 or 3 times per week, otherwise I was too tired. When I got better, I signed for a gym and basically couldn't move next day after a HIIT session.

In january I was able to swim about 50 meters without break. Now I can swim more than 2 kilometers and people tell me "you are such a good swimmer" quite often. Yet I know it's not the case (as my Mumbles race showed!), and there is a huge place for improvement. I'm only good swimmer when matched against people that can only stand in the water :D. That's why I went to the next level and started doing some crazy drills with swim coach (more on that soon).

Same goes with everything you can do, either it's signing, working out, dancing or programming. At some point you will feel great only to figure out you still know virtually nothing. At other time you will feel that you are a big failure at whatever you are doing. That is normal. Before you can do something perfectly, it's very likely that you will suck at it. Embrace it and move on.

I did 8 reps of squats with 40kg on a side yesterday. It hurts today, but I can still move. In few weeks I will put 50kg and I will probably fail to do 8 reps. And you know what? That's ok.