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The Inner Game of Fortnite – Looking Back To Go Forward
When you hear stories about the best athletes in the world, almost all of them spend a good amount of time off the field reviewing tape. Some of them are almost fanatical about it because it allows them to connect their practice to their performance and then take notes outside of the stress of competition about what actually happened on the court/field/pitch/diamond/etc.
We have a game on our PCs and consoles that automatically records our games, to not add “watching tape” to our process is leaving a lot on the table.
When I played a lot of chess, I found that I learned more from the games that I lost than the games that I won. After each game, regardless of the outcome, I would step through key parts of the game to see how certain moves and setups led to wherever they led. How did I win? What were the key moves or positions? If I lost, what was the error in my thinking? Did I get out-played or did I give up the game? What did I miss? What should I take note of and do differently next time?
Additionally, I started making two types of journal entries: The first was per-game notes on what went well, what didn’t, and what I could improve on or use next time around. The second was an overall look back at the day’s games and what went well and didn’t.
I strongly encourage you to do the same.
After each game where it makes sense to you, hop into your replays and take a look at how you got a kill, positioned yourself, or got eliminated, and take notes. After a short period of time, you’ll have a log of your triumphs and challenges and begin to build a set of things for yourself to practice in future sessions. Did you get out built? Did you have trouble with a certain kind of edit? Are you better with a burst AR or a regular AR? Do you concede high ground and get eliminated as a result? Those are just some things you may find in your review.
I give you drills but I don’t know what you, specifically, struggle with. (Feel free to email me if you want to suggest drills)
If we build our process as 1) warmups and drills 2) deliberate practice and applying drills and 3) video review and journaling, we build a pipeline for improvement.
Sub-Skill Drills – Begin Replay Review and Journaling
Habits take time to develop. We don’t have to be perfect but step one is always to get started.
Starting the next time you play. Try just writing down what went well and what you want to improve on for next time at the end of each session. Do it for your next five sessions and review your former entries before you play your next session, because you gave yourself a todo. What did you want to improve on?
Now go give that a try.
Ideally this becomes habit and part of our practice. Warmup, play, review, repeat.
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That’s it for today, I’m going to get some games in now.
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See you Friday.