Coach Locus Discusses The Mental Aspects Of Coaching And Why VOD Reviews Are Just As Important For Casual Players
“I look at VOD reviews like going to the gym. You can do whatever you want when you go to the gym. There’s like a million different things you can do.”
Level Up is a series of interviews with esports professionals, coaches, and individuals playing their part in innovating the competitive gaming scene. Follow their story and advice as we shed light on their journey.
Similarly to traditional sports, coaches remain one of the most important elements of a competitive esports team. Having strong talent in your roster isn’t good enough if there isn’t a mentor to guide them. Because the esports industry is still young, there is no established “playbook” for aspiring coaches to reference. Traditional sports boast decades of precedent and popularized coaching methods and strategies; in esports, however, coaching is a blank slate ready to be molded by anyone willing and able to take on the role as a coach.
Locus is a great example of someone who challenges the norm as a coach. Through his experience as a piano teacher and a professional Smash Ultimate player, Locus has found his calling as a coach who focuses not only on game mechanics and strategy but also mental performance for a wide variety of students. This week, the Insights team had the opportunity to talk to Locus about his coaching career, the mental aspects of coaching, and why VOD reviews are just as important for casual players as they are for professional players.
When did you start coaching?
I started coaching in esports in 2017 when I got big as a smash player. But when people ask me this question I always think about my experience as a 12 year old who started teaching piano. Teaching piano is clearly a little different than coaching but it’s where I established the foundation to be able to effectively communicate feedback to people and inspire them to work hard. I’ve been teaching for almost my whole life and since I played League of Legends and Smash Ultimate for a while, it felt natural to want to help people become the best players that they can be.
What inspired you to be a coach?
Referring back to my point about piano, I have a lot of people in my life that are very important to me and that are inspiring, like my mom who is a piano teacher. Since my mother taught piano our of our house, I was exposed to what she does and how she helps people go from wanting to start playing piano to becoming an extremely good pianist at a very young age. My mother made me want to help others in fields that I felt strongly about, like esports. I also had a really good music director in high school. She inspired me to be more like him as she would help his students to bring out their best self. These people had a pretty profound impact on me and the way I look at teaching and learning.
How would you describe your coaching position?
So it’s very different on a day to day basis. I do a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I tend to just like, call myself a coach, which is pretty broad, but it encompasses everything that I’m doing. Like I have people that will come to me for purely technical information about smash but I also have people come to me asking for help with mental focus and stage anxiety when competing. I’ll dissect those emotions with them to figure out what triggers those negative emotions and help them work on coping with issues and avoiding triggers. I also coach the mental performance side of things like taking care of yourself physically and mentally as a competitive player.
What did you do before you became a coach?
I was competing as a player here and there. In Smash, there was a period of time where they started allowing mid set coaches. This was where they allowed players a minute break during each set to talk to the coaches and see what needed to change or be improved. I was in a position where I was a pretty good player at the time so a lot of the top players would come and ask me to coach them for their sets. At the time, this was new and no one had set coaches that they travelled with. Initially, I felt pretty confident that I could do it because I knew that I understood the game well and how the players should be thinking when they play. Then after coaching for a bit I realized that there was so much that I didn’t know about coaching, like how people can perform optimally under stress, and it blew my preconceptions about coaching out of the window. And that was kind of, I think, what lit the fire for me to want to find more about how to coach and how I could help these people more effectively.
How did you maintain your confidence as a coach and what is your coaching philosophy?
This might be a weird answer, but I think the reason I have confidence as a coach is because I know that there are a lot of things that I am not ready for. So I know that there will be people who come to me and I won’t initially have the right answer for them. I think that I can coach my whole life and I would still be in the same position. The confidence I have comes from understanding that regardless of whether I have the right answer or not, I will be able to work with people and bring them to a place that they are happy with as well as challenge these people with what they believe in and what they think. This answer doesn’t mean I am not confident in my abilities as a coach because I am, but it comes from a place of understanding that I don’t know everything.
My coaching philosophy ties into what I just mentioned above; I tend to believe that in almost every situation, I have so much to learn. I learn as much from teaching someone as they do from being coached by me. My philosophy is to try and keep that mindset steady throughout coaching and that’s the quickest way for me to continue improving as a coach and help others.
What are your greatest strengths as a coach?
I think my greatest strength is my ability to play chameleon for my students. Sometimes, when you just deliver information to a student they might not be receptive to it. I think my strength is in being able to cloak information in manners that my students will better comprehend and accept my advice. I know it sounds a little weird and kind of like deception, but a good coach needs to have the ability to pass on information to their students or they won’t be able to coach properly. It’s interesting, because I’ve talked with so many coaches and some of them tell me that my only responsibility is to pass on information and if they can’t accept it, then they can’t be my student. However, I pride myself on the fact that I can change others and inspire them in different ways that will work for them.
How are VOD reviews different in Smash Ultimate as compared to team oriented esports?
Personally, I don’t think that they’re that different. I’d say the main difference is that they are different games, but in general you do the exact same things. I tend to use this analogy a decent amount, but I look at VOD reviews like going to the gym. You can do whatever you want when you go to the gym. There’s like a million different things you can do. It just depends on what you want to focus on. When you compare smash to other games, I think that you can do very similar things like look at the technical aspects of what went wrong in a fight and those aspects will be game dependent. The overall process of conducting the VOD review however, stays the same.
What tools do you use when coaching your students or when you personally are trying to improve your game play?
It completely depends on what the student is looking for. I’ve done a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I tend to use Insights.gg when people want to utilize VOD reviews to improve their game play. For example, if somebody comes to me, and wants to figure out why they can’t focus when they are in sets I’ll ask them what they were thinking about when they were playing? If they say they can’t remember we will watch the set together. Sometimes rewatching a VOD will help the jogs their memory about what they were thinking and what they were feeling in those moments.
How do VOD reviews support pro players differently from normal players?
This is actually gonna sound a little bit backwards, but I actually think that VOD reviews are more important for the average player than they are for the like pro player. Players who are new and haven’t played quite as much tend to have worse recall when it comes to things. Top players in Smash can often play a game and be able to tell you exactly what went wrong in each stock and what they need to do to change. Whereas players that are new are more likely to tell you that they don’t understand what went wrong. So I think VOD reviews actually help new players build the player’s ability to recognize their mistakes by allowing them to rewatch the VOD and identify what went wrong so that in the future they will know . It’s a lot like writing down your dreams and slowly remembering them without writing them down. Rewatching matches with students, allows them to build the ability to identify mistakes on their own and eventually not have to use the VOD Reviews quite as often.
Do you have any advice for aspiring coaches?
I’d say the biggest advice that I could give to any coaches is to tell them to be very humble. I’ve seen a lot of coaches who pride themselves on knowing everything but I just don’t think that’s reasonable in almost any situation — to assume that you know everything. So I think it’s great for any coach to be able to say, “hey, I recognize that there is so much I don’t know and I most likely will never know all of it.” This mindset is just as helpful for students as it is for coaches. Ultimately, my main advice is to stay humble and understand that you have plenty to learn from literally anyone and anything.
To learn more about Locus, be sure to follow him on Twitter.
To keep up with our coverage of esports professionals like Locus, and to see how Insights is equipping these individuals, follow us on Twitter or visit our website, Insights.gg.
