On this quick dip episode of The Dive the gang are going deep on Uzi and his decision to step back from competitive League. - The Dive | Uzi Retires (Season 4, Episode 15)
This is always something that has interested me because I come from a traditional sports background. I grew up playing sports all my life and even though I have never been seriously injured, I've had a few nagging minor injuries that always seem to pop up and require attention.
In traditional sports, you can only train or practice so much due to the physical nature of the sport, which means that you have to find other ways to improve outside of these times. Sports Psychology, Mental Health, Injury Prevention, Film Study are just a few things that you can do without putting your physical body at additional risk.
The news that Uzi retired at the young age of 23 shouldn't surprise anyone, who has been following his career which started when he was just 15.5 years old. In the latter years of his career, he would quite often take extended breaks during the split to recover from shoulder and wrist injuries.
Besides Faker, who is 1 year older than Uzi and started his career 6 months after, Uzi was one of the longest standing professionals in the League of Legends scene. He has established himself as a legend in the ADC role with many of the top names (Doublelift and Perkz) stating him as their role model.
It has been rumored that doctors have been warning Uzi about his health for a while now and there was one report that stated that Uzi has the physical health of someone twice his age. He has spent over 1/3 of his life as a professional esports player and probably longer than that playing video games at a high level. Esports players are known to grind 16 hours per day, have bad sleeping, and probably worse eating habits, which can all catch up to you really quickly if you don't pay attention to them.
This will be the beginning of my exploration into Esports and Health and looking at ways to better understand how the two areas overlap as more and more people are getting into the esports industry. Please reach out to me if you have any experience within this space, I would love to get other opinions and perspectives on this topic.
Comments