How Team Liquid Created an Esports Phenomenon

Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition, the show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research and diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Thorne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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Hi, everyone and welcome to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. This week we're speaking to Steve Arhancet, the Co-CEO of Team Liquid, and Caleb Anderson, the Senior Director of Global Partnerships also at Team Liquid. Welcome to the show, both of you who super happy to have you.

Steve Arhancet:

Thank you so much for having us, JT, appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Caleb Anderson:

Yeah, thanks for having us on.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, I think this is going to be an exciting topic, and it's a little different from the podcasts we normally do focusing on individual human performance folks. This is a bigger picture of how partnerships come together and how Thorne and Team Liquid came together to support both athletes and the actual athletes, but the team behind the team and the whole Team Liquid organization, there's so much that we agree upon and how similar the organizations are. But Steve, I'm going to start with you. I know this could be a whole podcast, but just a brief overview of how Team Liquid came to be, how the journey of Team Liquid brought you to the point where you're really building the elite high-performance model, supporting your athletes, from everything from the best gear to coaches to this partnership for health.

Steve Arhancet:

Yeah, absolutely. All right, I'll do it as quickly as possible. So the genesis of Team Liquid, we started very early on in esports all the way back to the StarCraft days. It's an RTS genre, which is considered one of the hardest to play, it's like basically playing the piano while playing blitz chess simultaneously. And that was over about 20 years ago now, and Victor [Goossens] had founded the company. I then later founded my own company in League of Legends. We merged our entities about seven years ago and became co-CEOs of the organization.

One of the first things that both Victor and I set out to do was establish a mission and a vision for the company. What we found was that there was a lot of alignment within the values that we shared on running our organizations. Some of those things were about competitive excellence, that we wanted to strive to be the best. What we found was that our brand and the ethos around Team Liquid was a big differentiator within the esports space. A lot of other teams were more of these bro-y organizations that were about Lamborghinis and mansions and YouTube videos and thumbnails and that superficial validation.

Team Liquid, we kept centered on, “Let's be here to win. Let's build a sports franchise. Let's be a multi-generational organization where fans can rely on us to win.” And so we built gaming facilities that got us out of gaming houses where our players would train and we would have coaches and analysts and cooks and chefs. They would work out at our facilities, and they would have a psychologist that would sit down with them and prepare them for matches and work through things – sometimes things through their childhood – to get them ready for stage. And we started thinking about a lot of the physiological components associated with athletic performance and started to think about nutrition and supplements.

And there's just so many ways to approach this. And what we then came out of was, wow, we actually have a competitive advantage. We are now providing all of these things to these athletes. And you know what? It resulted in a lot of winning, so we ended up winning more than any other esports team in the world. So now Team Liquid, we've won more championships than any other team. We've won more prize money than any other team. We are the most-watched esports team in the world for seven years in a row. We compete in more games than any other team. We have over 160 players. We have three facilities, one in Utrecht, one in Los Angeles, and one in Sao Paulo, where we house and train our players to compete.

And we are the third-largest network on Twitch for an esports team. And we've won some of the biggest championships in all of these sports like the international and the pinnacle of success in Counter-Strike and back to back to championships in League of Legends and these are some of the top games. So yeah, that's a little bit of the journey. It started a little small, but both Victor and I love gaming and esports. We're both gamers, and we've kept our heart and our passion into the business and growing it from there.

Joel Totoro:

That's one of the things listeners of the podcast know always comes up. I always say you can't hide or fake passion, so it's great to hear that in everything you do from the top down. You made a great point, and it's anytime you're asking anyone to be a lead at anything, you really do have to take care of, all right, think about all the things that go into it and have a plan for everything that's potentially going to happen. So just hearing the realization you've come to over your years, “OK, hey, we have to have a solution for this,” or “Hey, this is how we get a competitive advantage of our competitors,” is great.

The fact that there's from top-down leadership, that vision to really support everything that, and a lot of things that often get overlooked, and that's something we talk about a lot. 

So Caleb, for our listeners who aren't really in the world of sponsorships and partnerships, how do agreements come up like this come up? And I always say we do partnerships, not sponsorships, but what do you look for in a partner and making sure that they're aligned with Team Liquid and really go in the same direction?

Caleb Anderson:

Yeah, I mean I would say the No. 1 focus for us is always that brand-value alignment. If our brands are not in sync with the same working goal, the partnership can definitely struggle. And for us, finding partners who have the same vision, the same idea of what it means to progress in a partnership and having those goals in sync is usually priority No. 1 that we look for.

The second thing beyond brand alignment is just people who support the same ideas that we have. So with one of our other partnerships, the idea of building this training facility to advance our athletics performance, provide better practice environments, and ultimately grow that to what it is today was an idea that we brought to them. They were so excited about it that they wanted to help us build it and make these training facilities come to fruition. And that starts with the foundation of the brand values being aligned, and then was able to take it a step further by having them buy in on an idea, this massive idea that nobody else was doing and trusting us to take it to the next level and become what it is today. So brand alignment, same ideology, and then people who want to do really cool stuff I think is the third thing I would say. Steve, you always echo, we want to find partners who want to do cool shit with us and that's exactly how I feel as well and people that will trust us to do that cool stuff with them.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. Steve, I want to talk about, obviously you've been in the industry for a long time. When did you see the shift start to be like, “OK, we need to take this serious; we need to treat ourselves like elite performers.” You mentioned some of the old habits of the bro house and the Lamborghinis and YouTubes. But when did you see that shift and what have you seen grown in the last couple years to really be like, "Hey, we're asking a lot about our bodies, we need to make some allowances for that."

Steve Arhancet:

It was a realization that happened a bit over time. So we started off in gaming houses, and our players were all living and working in the same house, literally in the living room. And firsthand, I also lived in the house, and I was seeing the deterioration of mental health, physical health, just that type of environment. And at the same time, I saw the passion, the dedication, the sacrifice that was happening from these athletes to win. They were giving up their lives. They were taking all of their personal life out of their pie, all of their family life out of that, family, business, and personal. They were just all business. They were all career; they were like Olympians sacrificing everything to win.

Within that I realized we're not doing enough. Team Liquid is not doing enough. We need to be providing the right environment, the right training, the right methodologies and best practices in order for them to function at the highest level, not only in practice and scrims, but also on stage. And so what does that look like? And I remember going to this MIT Sloan Analytics Conference on the East Coast and I was walking the halls of this expo, and they wanted me to speak. I saw hundreds of businesses that were all set up on athletic performance. It was like tracking movement with cameras and supplements and training and gear and the type of clothing they'd wear and the shoes that they would have.

And I was like, "Oh my gosh." It just hit me, this industry of professional sports, whether it's football or basketball, or soccer, they have seen decades, 50, 60 years, 70 years of advancement on making players better. And what has it been in esports? No time at all! Even esports has been around for 20 years. Those 20 years, no one's been paying attention to any of it, right? If I tried to Google, what do you do to be an amazing esports athlete? You get some blogs and Reddit posts, right? There's no scientific studies that are showing how to improve cognitive function, or endurance and stamina, or improve sleep quality or prevent carpal tunnel, or affect mood and motivation, or how to prevent burnout and how to increase decision making and focus and pattern recognition in game, or learning and adaptability and the hockey stick approach to that, and timing associated with meta, or any of these things.

There were some parallels to professional sports, but there was nothing about an esports athlete. And then you add on top of that, that most esports players – not all – did not grow up in high school and middle school playing sports. They weren't on the soccer team or the football team. They have no idea what it means to even have a coach. They were sitting on the computer, they were gaming. 

And so for us it was like, how do we introduce some of these coaching things that exist in other professional sports, introduce them for the first time for esports athletes, alongside all of the esports performance? Then the last thing was like how do we look at all of the data that we can gather when a gamer is actually competing? Because when a tennis player’s playing, it’s really hard to get the data. You have to have cameras and monitors, and they have to be wearing sensors in order to get all of this stuff. But when you’re a gamer, you’re sitting at a computer, you’re stationary, which means that you can actually get a lot of input. You can get eye tracking on the monitor, you can figure out how they’re taking in information and how they’re processing it and how quickly. And so all this stuff is happening and then you have so much data, how do you filter it? And then how do you present it to actually coaches and players in order to improve their performance? So we started just to peel back these layers, and we realized how much could be done and we're still figuring it out. 

And so that is one of the things that Caleb touched on our partnership with Thorne. It's like how do we figure this out? How do we figure out what supplements are actually improving sleep, improving scrim practice, improving game day? I don't even think we know yet, but we are figuring it out through testing. And so within that, this is what's keeping Team Liquid at the competitive advantage and will keep us winning, is our commitment and focus on competitive excellence and the pursuit of excellence.

Caleb Anderson:

I was going to say one of the biggest differentiators with our partnerships is it is exactly what Steve said, where it's like we will walk away from a partnership no matter the size of the money, no matter how beneficial it could be for us if it doesn't make sense from a values perspective or the goals of the organization. So when we talk about working with Thorne to figure this out, figure out athletics, performance, cognition, mental, physical, all these things that go into being an athlete, we don't have the answer to that today, and we want a partner that will help us get there, and we think Thorne's definitely one of those partners to help us get there.

Joel Totoro:

Steve, you mentioned Team Liquid as a concept's been around for 20 years, Thorne's been around for almost 40, and we're both leaders in our industry. We have longevity because of the commitment to be great. I come from the sports world, and I didn't know as much about the esports gaming world, the actual demands of it. So when I started looking at it from my lens, I had the opposite of your reaction at the MIT conference was, “All right, I know what I'm doing. I know what high performance looks like. I know team building and what the biometrics we look like, and I understand performance.” But then I got in and started talking with Team Liquid and some of the challenges you've mentioned, Steve, from cognition to sleep to overuse injuries. And I was like, "All right, I know what to do with that from a performance side, I've got the biometrics, we've got the lab testing, you've got the data."

As Caleb mentioned, we just love cool people doing cool stuff. And we did a previous episode with Tanner and BSJ getting real nerdy about the performance side of stuff. But yeah, there's a biological cost to everything that we do there, and it's been really exciting figuring out, “OK, where do our expertise align?” And the sum of the parts has been great. Now that we have data and we've got the nutritional data and the medical data, we're like, "Oh wow, yeah, what we thought is now what we know," and that's when some really cool stuff happens. So I'm really excited about where we've gone already, but where we're going. 

We talk about this a lot on the podcast, the idea that you have to be a human before you're a human performer. So understanding some of the basic needs of, yeah, what are the demands of the sport that are just sleep? It's a weird schedule. You're playing internationally, you're playing hours on end at times, and there's a human cost of that. So before you can even be this excellent top-end performer on the cognitive side, what are we doing to take care of the human side? And Caleb, another reason this partnership came together and why we're so passionate about it is supporting the human side. Can you talk a little bit about your Thorne journey?

Caleb Anderson:

Yeah, no, I'd be happy to at least touch on a little bit. As you know, but maybe not everyone, I was a huge Thorne user before the partnership so when it was brought to my attention that this partnership could potentially be a thing between Team Liquid and Thorne, I mean I was jaw-dropped. I was like, "Please, let's do anything we can to make this happen. This would be so amazing." And for me it is really two areas. For me, weight loss was one, I was currently getting into functional medicine, treat the body, not the symptom methodology. I was finding out a lot of food sensitivities, health issues that I was just frankly not aware of. My functional medicine doctor at the time actually recommended Thorne products for me to use, and so I was on this whole supplement regiment and getting healthier, losing weight.

When I just saw Thorne, I was like, blinders, “Yes, let's make this happen," because they played a huge role in my personal life, but then also mine and my wife's pregnancy journey. I've talked about this with some of the Thorne folks, but we had a few miscarriages and that was a really tough thing for us to deal with, and what we ultimately found out through books, like It Starts With the Egg was a really noteworthy book for us. And some genetic testing, we found out there were some underlying health issues we weren't aware of. And again, that same functional medicine doctor recommending us to Thorne products to help us. The most notable one at the time was a Methyl-Guard product you guys provide.

And then the next time we got pregnant, we had twins and identical twins, and it was like, "Whoa." We went from having this struggle to an extremely healthy pregnancy. She went full term with identical twins, and that's almost unheard of. And obviously there's a lot of factors at play when we're talking about a pregnancy, and my wife could tell this story probably tremendously better than I can, but the thing that I noticed was Thorne was a part of that journey because that's who our functional medicine doctor recommended to us. High-quality ingredients, products, even things like fish oil that Thorne does is more notable because of where we source the fish, which is something people don't realize when they buy fish oil across the counter in a grocery store. Just high-quality products played a role in that journey. I'm still not done with my health journey. Definitely done having kids, we don't want any more twins coming along, but helped us have two beautiful kids that are now over two years old.

Joel Totoro:

That's just such a powerful story and really tells why Thorne does what we do is trying to make an impact on, we are talking about performance, but the legacy of the company is just providing people in their health journey. If you look at, hey, what should I do nutritionally? What's a gamer diet? You're going to get all these crazy… There's not really a trusted source of education out there. I always say you have to be the CEO of your own health. Caleb, you and your family went along with that and really had to take the knowledge into your own hands. So one of the things we try and do is provide that education. So that's one of the things we talk about a lot in our partnerships is of course we want to support the top-end high performers, but we're all performing in some level.

We have our own personal performance goals. A lot of stuff we're talking about here is about supporting the top-end athlete and elite athletes, but early performers. But that same model really needs to apply to everybody. So for our casual listeners, our casual gamers or just fans of Team Liquid that are tuning in the same principles really need to apply to yourself. So just really, really great to bring that 360. We're going to come back, take a couple of questions from our listeners, but this has been a really great conversation so far.

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Joel Totoro:

We're back. Now it's time to answer some questions from the community. I think this next question, we've gotten a couple different forms, but I really want to talk about diversity and inclusion especially in the gaming community. How are initiatives like Valorant Game Changers all-women teams, non-binary teams changing the sport, and how is Team Liquid really at the forefront of that?

Steve Arhancet:

So this is a question that first came up to me at a conference that I was at up in Seattle, this is pre-COVID. A young woman came up to the mic during the conference, there was 2,000 people and we did a Q&A at the end. She asked me what Team Liquid was going to do regarding the under-representation of women within competitive gaming. And I paused because I hadn't thought about it enough, and she then interrupted me graciously and said, "Well, Team Liquid is the largest esports team in the world. You have a responsibility to do something about it." And it hit home for me. And since that moment, we have put focus on it.

And the first part of that was to do research, and to figure out what is causing this lack of young girls dreaming to become gamers, for more women to be on the top teams in the world on esports and Dota and League of Legends and Valorant, and why are there women and non-binary teams that run alongside co-ed teams or mostly male teams in games? And what we came to realize is that this is a multifaceted problem. Some of it has to do with culture, having more inspirational moments, and more comforting places for women and non-binary folks to compete and to game and to train. We realized that we don't have enough women coaches and support staff to help recruit more women to compete.

We also realized that there was a lot of leagues that were women-only teams, and there's a pro and con to that, because we thought, “Oh, should we have a number of teams that are in Game Changers?” for example, which is a women's only team for both Valorant – and they're also doing that in League of Legends, which actually later today I'm headed over to our facility where the Game Changers team is going to be, I'm going to hang out with them later this afternoon. But is that a good model? I couldn't help but think that this separate-but-equal thing just doesn’t sit well for me. There should be women competing on the highest tier of competition. So what we realized is that we needed this combination approach of, yes, fielding women and non-binary teams to have a place where more women would be inclined to go and compete, but simultaneously also put the resources in place where women, non-binary folks would move from those teams to the co-ed teams, the main teams.

And so we've been doing silent tryouts with women to compete on our main rosters. And the reason why they're silent is so that there's not the peer pressure and the social pressure of those tryouts. We've been supporting our women's Valorant team in Brazil, which is one of the best teams in the world. We need to do more is really where it's at. But we have put a focus, and I'm not happy with how much we've done, but I am really happy with how much we've focused on it. There's just so much more to do, and we're just at the starting point, but we must change this, we have to. And like that young woman said to me, we have a responsibility to do it because of the position that we're in, in the space.

And to some of the things that we said earlier, we are leaders, both Thorne and Team Liquid are leaders in our space. What we say and what we publish gets looked at, we're innovators. We're usually the first to do a lot of things and we do them really, really well because we're extremely thoughtful in how we execute. And so we've got to get this right and we've got to put the blueprints out so that other organizations will follow, and then we'll have a bigger impact, and we'll accomplish our goals with regards to diversity, inclusion, more women competing. There was just a woman who was coaching the Valorant team for EG, and she led them to a world championship in Valorant just a month ago, which was so awesome to see. And so we need more of that and that will happen over time, so it's great.

Joel Totoro:

Part of your answer there leads to the next question. I know we touched on it briefly, mental and emotional well-being of esports players and really all of us as a whole, but specifically in the esports players and the demands of it's such a… A lot of times there are younger adults that are playing, and it's a short high-stress career, and we're doing a lot to hopefully increase that longevity of that. But can you discuss some of the initiatives or practices that Team Liquid is doing to support outside the game and the athlete on that mental-health side of things?

Steve Arhancet:

OK, so we do a lot. I'll try to mention just a handful of things. OK, No. 1 is we focus a lot on psychology. What we’ve realized is that most players need to treat their mind as a muscle and they need to talk with somebody in order to improve focus on their game. They are usually distracted with a lot of noise that is either from how they have acted or behaved in the past, the people that they talk to, the advice that they’re given, or the stress of social media, the stress of their teammates and coaches, and they need some guidance on how to manage all of that. And we’ve found that both doing an intake when players signed to Team Liquid, and we do a physical check and mental check, and then we basically prescribe the right type of regimen for that particular person, is really helpful.

In addition to that, we have physical therapists that come in weekly with our players. A lot of this has to do with preventing carpal tunnel, to be really direct. We've seen carpal tunnel as a major issue for a lot of players, and the conclusion that we've come to is that a lot of it has to do with both physical therapy but also working out; that it's a lot to do with blood flow and just having a healthy lifestyle where you're actually going to the gym, you're doing a little bit of cardio, you're ensuring that that's happening, and it's reducing some of the risk associated with getting it that far. And we're preventing the injury before it gets worse, when they start to feel things around playing too much and taking the appropriate amount of breaks.

And then we've also focused on it from an ergonomics perspective. How do you sit at your desk? What is the distance between your feet and your knees on the chair? What about your arms and your arm rest? And should they be pointed straight or to the side? What is the right level of the desk based on your height? How is the monitor supposed to be in terms of distance from your eyes? How is your mouse supposed to be handled with your hand? Should you be holding it like you're playing the piano or should you put your wrist down? Should it be sitting on a mouse rest or not? Should you have something holding the cord to reduce friction on your mouse to reduce the amount of friction when you're moving it? What about the size of your resolution on your screen, the FPS associated with that? What is the optimal monitor size? All of these things, it's like, “Oh my God.” Most go, "I didn't think about any of that. I just grabbed my computer monitor and my mouse." So thinking about that and how that factors into everything as well.

And then lastly, I'll just say nutrition. Nutrition is really important because sleep is actually one, having enough sleep and having enough REM and deep sleep is one of the highest impacts to cognitive function on day of performance, which we've realized. So if you just don't get enough sleep or you didn't sleep well, you actually can't think as well. You can't process as much. If you're a computer and your processing speed, it's just not as good, and you want your processing speed to be top-notch on game day, that means getting into the habit. And then when you travel to competitions, you need to get there in advance. You need to get through jet lag, you need to be able to... So being able to get on that clock and have it for scrims and then having it for game day is essential.

And a lot of that has to do with what you eat, what you drink, how much caffeine, how much sugar, what supplements you're taking. You need to put yourself on that regimen, and if you move off course, you're just going to increase the probability of not being able to focus on game day. We do that both with the food they eat and supplements they take and everything, so all of that is also monitored by the coach to optimize performance. These are just some of the things that we need to look at, but we take this really serious because yeah, it makes a big difference on game days

Joel Totoro:

There has to be an answer for all that. Once you start digging down like, “Oh hey, what do we do and why, right?” That's a question a lot of organizations need to ask themselves on a lot of different areas. But that brings up a question, Caleb, looking at it from the organizational support side. All right, so you've got all those things to deal with on multiple different teams on multiple different continents. What does that look like being part of such a massive organization and accounting for everything?

Caleb Anderson:

One thing I want to add just from a staff member perspective of everything Steve just said is, it's funny to see, or not funny, but it's very interesting to see the cultural shift happen on the player and coaching side and then see a trickle down to the staffing side. One really cool thing that we have going on in our Utrecht office is because one of the coaches there, [William Lee, aka] "Blitz," our Dota coach. Big gym guy, hitting the weights every day and he started getting his players to do it with them and now we have staff members doing it with them and they have a fun competition over there for it. We just had what? Strava run group startup, I think, Steve, this past week or two. So people can compete on run times, hiking times, all these things. Of course we're Team Liquid, we need to gamify some of these nutrition and fitness goals. But it's cool to see something start with the players and trickle down to the staff as we see all of this come into the organization. We learn more, we see more, and then we want to apply it to ourselves because obviously we're learning really beneficial things. 

And one guy in our LA office during COVID got a running app where it's like zombies chased after you or something like that, so it makes you want to run faster and for farther because you tell the app how far you want to run and then you start hearing footsteps behind you if you slow down and you're like, "Oh crap, zombies are going to get me. I got to hurry this up a little bit and improve my pace." That's just been a cool thing on the staffing side to see really kickstart these past few years.

More to the question on the international support for all of our talent, one really cool thing that we do that was really innovative at the time, and to Steve's point, a lot of organizations copy after they see us do it. It's just the total infrastructure that we're providing for each player and talent. So when we have a player or a content creator come to Team Liquid, they're immediately staffed not only with their manager, analyst, coach, the full coaching staff and everything that comes along with that based on the game, but they're also provided with a talent manager, a marketing manager, a partnerships manager, and this overall group that's helping that talent succeed at Team Liquid.

And if it's an athletic player that's competing like League of Legends, they have their coach who's always there to help them about game improvement, how to play better, practice schedule; their manager makes sure they're fed, they're going to sleep, all these things that they should be doing to maintaining a healthy balance to their day. But they also are provided with a talent manager. And that talent manager will help them focus on what partnerships work they need to do, and scheduling their calendar and when they're going to do this video and then this practice to make sure nothing's interrupted.

Because back in the day, I mean, gosh, 10 years ago when I first started, it was a lot of one person doing everything, and it can get messy and how do you fit all this into a calendar. There's only so much you can do in a week. As we've added more support staff that have different lines of thinking and different focus, whether it be for marketing content or for player performance, that's brought more balance to the players' lives or the content creator lives, and allow them to succeed more and enjoy what they're doing and it's not so much I'm being made to do this. We're actually taking the time to talk to them, what do they want to do? What's the type of content they want to be in? What do they want to talk about? And try to align what we're doing with our partners, with what the players really want to do with their careers.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, it's a lot, right? And it takes a lot of people and a lot of great minds all going the same direction. I'm going to lead into my last question, really appreciate the time we've had. But Steve, you mentioned how all these things that these elite athletes are doing, these elite sport organizations are doing and how that inform some of the stuff you re doing. But it's pretty interesting to note even with the relative youth of the idea of high performance in the esports world, we're seeing it impact already some of the work we're doing together and with it because there's so much data, the esports world and the idea of performance at esports is impacting already impacting other organizations, right? 

It's impacting the idea of cognitive performance, like you sai’, your brain, it's not actually a muscle, but for what we’re talking about, it’s a muscle, right? We rehab our muscles, we do ice baths and this, that, the other, but we don’t do much for the brain and the central nervous system. Traditionally we haven’t had an answer because nobody had really looked at it. So a lot of the data coming out, we’re seeing it apply from baseball players, understanding what we’re doing in esports to really show that we’re nutrition and health and all these different modalities are impacting performance. That’s translating down to traditional sports like for sure NASCAR or race car, really high cognitive load, to decision-making at, “Am I going to swing at this ball? Reading a defense, goalies, all these things. 

So we're learning a lot of stuff in the esports world that is transitioning both of the elite athlete in other traditional sports, but also to the idea of the cognitive performer, whether that's military and drone pilots or cybersecurity or coders or really anyone that's just using their brain to be a high performer. All the way down to some of the things we're seeing about how the brain reacts to this high demand, and actually monitoring a lot of the things we're seeing is that informing research questions in the medical world on long-term brain health and brain processing at the highest level. It's really exciting to see all the worlds talking to each other, and it's just the nerds from all around the world are making each other think of different questions through their lens. 

So that's leading to my last question, a thought question, but what are you excited to see? Technology, whether it's advancements in computers or advancements in technology, investments in testing, what are you excited to see the next five to 10 years? What's your crystal ball of what's going to happen?

Steve Arhancet:

OK, I'll tell a quick little story to get to your answer. So I remember growing up as a kid in my household, and I was on the East Coast. My parents would watch the Super Bowl, he’d sit on the couch and they would scream at the television. And I couldn’t help but think like, “Oh my God, so annoying.” And here I was on the computer playing video games, and it was all about throwing a ball and catching a ball, and that's how I saw it. It was all the physicality associated with this display, running and jumping and sprinting and all this stuff. And what we came to find is a lot of that is easily measurable.

And then you go, and you watch an esports competition and they're just sitting at a computer, and most people that have never been to one, they say, "What are they watching?" That's usually the first question. It's like you're watching a big screen of them playing the game and they're like, "Wait, what? I don't get it." And so really the way I would describe it is when you see everybody at an esports competition start cheering and screaming and getting on the edge of their seat, they're actually seeing this display of intellectual sparring. They're seeing people fight it out mentally. It's almost like a chess match, but not as boring, with a lot more bells and whistles where you're just seeing this intellectual display.

I used to play a little bit of tennis, so for me that was where both professional sports and esports collided for me where I was like, "OK, when I played tennis one-on-one, I feel like once you master forehand, backhand, you have a decent serve. It's a mental game." I really feel like it's a mental game more than it is a physical game, which is interesting when you think about it. And so for me it's like how can science, data, technology track all of the inputs of pattern recognition, cognitive function, reaction time, eye movement, eye focus, and take all of that and also the communication stuff, and filter it in a way where can then be presentable and absorbed by players to improve their performance.

That has not yet happened. It is not real time. I don't know how when I play a League of Legends game, if my eyes weren't scanning the screen enough, or if I didn't process pattern recognition of certain moves in team fights, and it didn't give me that real time feedback after the game, none of that is happening. And so for me, I'm really interested in the instantaneous feedback that is maybe possible to gamers in general to make them play better the next game.

A lot of it is just this period of repetition. If I just play over and over, I'll just get better. Yes, you'll recognize patterns a little bit better than before, but there's got to be a better way. There's got to be more feedback, more reporting, more data collection and filtering and presentation that has me experience that, have that experience of playing the game is even better. If I keep following this methodology, I could be a pro gamer one day. We are still in such early innings associated with player improvement and deciding on the things that players need to focus on in order to get better, and so however that’s woven in from a tech perspective and built into games is a little bit of our future.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, that’s great because everything you’re looking at and everything you’re talking about, and we’ve already seen it a little bit in our time working together, the quick advancements in supporting the performance side with the data side, with the nutrition and food side, everything you’re talking about, I have equal excitement about where we’re going with what we learn about the body and nutrients and how that affects performance. So just really looking forward to seeing where this partnership and where our minds go to continue to support this and push the forefront of innovation on the idea of high performance in the gaming space. I do really encourage anyone that wants to hear more about to listen to our companion episode with Tanner and BSJ from the idea of really digging into the nerd side of stuff of how we support performance. But I really want to thank you guys for coming on. And Steve, Caleb, where can our listeners follow Team Liquid, those who aren’t already aware of it?

Steve Arhancet:

Yeah, totally. And just real quick, I dream of a state where we can accomplish some groundbreaking things together, not just for Team Liquid and not just for Thorne, but for the entire gaming community to just be better gamers. To your point, a lot of that stuff may be used in professional sports, too. Maybe we'll be the innovators saying how to best cognitive function because it happened. I can't wait for that to happen, so let's pioneer together. Let's make it happen. That sounds amazing. In terms of following Team Liquid, just Google us. I mean, we've got everything, TikTok, Twitter. Just type in Team Liquid into Google, you'll find us.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, that's an easy one. Usually we're directing people to a specific activity. It's pretty easy to find Team Liquid, guys, so definitely check them out. They're doing a lot of great stuff. There's a lot on the education, like Steve mentioned, diversity, inclusion, just a ton of initiatives over there on Team Liquid, and we're putting on some education together. So just a ton of information to have and just a wildly entertaining universe to be part of. So whatever interests you, they've probably got a team there, for sure. But yeah, really appreciate the time guys. I know we could have talked for hours, but looking forward to a follow-up episode where we talk about all the cool stuff we've done in the partnership over the next year. But yeah, really appreciate everyone's time. And as always, thanks for listening.

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Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast: Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting Thorne.com and checking out the latest news videos and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. For this Performance Edition of The Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.