Over this last year I have really started to take charge of my general health and fitness. Deciding that I don’t want to feel like I’m 60 when I hit 40 has been one of the best decisions of my life. I feel better and I look better, and that has translated to confidence in every aspect of my life. It’s not easy. There are days I hurt. There are days I don’t want to go to the gym. There are days that I just want to pig out on junk food instead of eating something with actual nutritional value. But that’s the grind. Learning that discipline to go and lift some heavy things despite not wanting to is a powerful thing that can be applied to every aspect of my life.
This includes gaming. As I was sitting at the gym the other day I realized that there are more than a few lessons that I have learned from lifting that can be applied to gaming – both table top and board games. So this week, I’m stepping out of the workshop and taking you into the weight room.
- Don’t just play to your strengths
So you can bench 300 pounds for 10 reps and your chest looks like it’s chiseled from stone. That’s great. But if you can’t reliably squat 150 pounds then there’s a major disconnect in your training plan. Maybe you can squat 500 pounds for one rep. But if you don’t spend some time doing any conditioning work, be that cardio or something else, you aren’t going to be able to sustain that level of effort when it counts. Your weaknesses are things that need to be addressed.
This lesson goes hand in hand with the next point – educate yourself about the game. If you find a certain strategy that works for you, that’s fine – but don’t focus on it to the detriment of the myriad of other ways that are out there to swing the game in your favor and come out with the win. Maybe your opponent is wise to your strategy and knows how to counter it. Maybe the party already has three martial characters but doesn’t have a healer. No matter how good your fighter build is, a cleric is going to be much more effective for the group, not to mention a chance for you to learn to play something new.
- Feed yourself
Proper nutrition is key when working out. You need to be ever mindful of what you’re eating to make sure you are getting the maximum amount of nutritional bang for your grocery dollar. Figuring out calorie targets is one thing – make sure you hit protein goals and adjusting for weight loss/gain is another level entirely. Trust me on this – there is a reason I jumped on the Soylent bandwagon, and it’s not because I love the taste.
You need to constantly feed your brain for your tabletop hobby. Read the rules for other games out there, both in and out of your chosen genre. Watch other people play the game. Maybe they can teach you something you didn’t know about it or show you a trick that you didn’t see before. If you’re a tabletop player read genre fiction, both sci-fi and fantasy. Don’t just read the big authors, though they’re a great place to start. Find lesser known authors that know how to speak the genre and help you with your characters and world building.
- Rest
Rest is as important as nutrition and programming in the fitness world. Making sure you are giving your body adequate time to repair itself from the constant beatings you give it are important. Making sure you get enough sleep to keep yourself alert and mentally sharp is just as important. It’s also incredibly important to know when you need to step back from what you’re doing to avoid injury.
Burnout is a real thing that happens to gamers as well. We get fatigued with the game sometimes. We need to step back or step away entirely. Listen to that voice. Respect that. There are few things worse than wasting time on something you aren’t enjoying. And odds are if you aren’t enjoying it, you’re affecting the enjoyment of the other people at the table as well. Let yourself rest and recover if you need to in order to come back to the game stronger than before.
- Progressive Overload
You don’t make progress in the gym by lifting the same weight over and over again for the same number of repetitions. You make progress by either adding weight to the bar or by increasing the number of times you can lift that weight. This concept is called progressive overload, and it is one of the cornerstones of strength training. You don’t start by bench pressing 225 pounds. You work your way up to it. It’s a long, grueling, and sometimes frustrating process. That’s why they call it a grind.
The same concept can be applied to gaming, as I myself learned. You’re not overly familiar with highly competitive, resource driven eurogames where you can shoot yourself by not playing competitively in the first few turns? Maybe Power Grid isn’t the best choice to start out with. (It kind of soured me on board games in general for a while.) Start off with something that isn’t quite as cutthroat. Work your way up to those kinds of games if that’s your end goal. Jumping in the deep end isn’t necessarily advisable.
- Discomfort
I’m going to preface this by saying that I am not talking about being made to feel uncomfortable by someone else at the gaming table. That is harassment and no one should stand for it happening at their table. No one.
The kind of discomfort I am talking about is the kind that you put yourself into by stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone. This is less a lesson learned from hitting the gym and more of one learned from life. You don’t grow as a person unless you are willing to make yourself uncomfortable by trying new things. The worst that happens is you don’t like it and you’ve still learned something about yourself. But this is doubly true in the gym – there’s a saying that I really like when talking about pushing yourself to make progress. “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” You are going to be sore. You are going to hurt. There are going to be days that you don’t feel like lifting weights. You deal with it and and you do it.
The same thing is true about gaming. Stretch your comfort zone. If you always play fighters, try playing a wizard or a cleric instead. Even a rogue would be a change of pace. If you’ve played humans your entire gaming career, try out a dwarf or an elf. If that’s too much much of a break, try a half-elf or half-orc for something closer to your preferred race. If you always play competitive games, try something cooperative – and vice versa if you aren’t a naturally competitive person. If you put yourself into discomfort like that you are going to grow as a gamer and as a person.
- There is no right way to do it
Whether you like cherries, chocolate sauce, or something else entirely on top of your ice cream sundae, know that that’s okay. There are so many ways to do things in the gym that there is no “right way” to do things. As long as you adhere to the basic principles and put in the time, you’re going to get better. Same at the gaming table – as long as you adhere to the basic rules of the game, there is no “right way” to have fun.
And there you have it. I’ll see you at the next session. But first, I gotta go hit the showers.
Ben Erickson
