LoL: 25-year-old shows off his kinky schedule from when he became world champion

South Korean Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang was at the height of his power in League of Legends in 2019: With the Chinese team FunPlus Phoenix he beat G2 in the finals of the LoL Worlds in Paris and became world champion. Today the 25-year-old shows his timetable from that time.

What has Doinb achieved?

• Doinb was the Outstanding Player at Worlds in League of Legends in 2019. He was considered a “super carry,” someone who could carry his team to success.
• Doinb played a wide range of heroes in the mid lane: could totally dominate games or brilliantly outplay his awesome jungle partner, Tian. There was simply no remedy to be found against Doinb in 2019. The Europeans had to learn that painfully from G2, who went down mercilessly against him in the biggest game of their career, the final.
• Doinb also had a great story to offer: actually, he had already given up his career. Only his wife, whom he had just married, could convince him to continue. The image of his wife on the sidelines, cheering for her husband, went around the world at the time.

14.5 hours of LoL a day – only 5.5 hours of sleep

That was behind the success: In an interview, Doinb has now shared his timetable from the World Cup. He says:

• 10:30 p.m. – 3:30 a.m.: Ranked play
• 3:30 a.m. – 9 a.m.: Sleep
• 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Ranked Play
• 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.: Lunch
• 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.: Scrimmages
• 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.: Dinner
• 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.: Scrimmage

He also went to the hospital once a year to have a full check-up.

Recommended Editorial Content

At this point you will find external content from Twitter that complements the article.

Show Twitter content

I consent to external content being displayed to me. Personal data can be transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy.

So he only played LoL for 14.5 hours a day:

• 8.5 hours a day in solo queue in ranked
• 6 hours a day training games with the whole team

How is this discussed? The background to the discussion is that players from the two major Asian regions, South Korea and China, perform so much more successfully in international competitions than players from Europe and the USA.

North Americans in particular are criticized by fans for having too much private life and playing too little. Some fans complain that they pay “too much” attention to their work-life balance.

The legend is:

• After training, the US pros lie on the couch and eat chips
• The teams tacitly expect professionals in Asia to continue training privately after the training sessions in the team, tear off their hours in the solo queue, try out new champions, continue to deal with LoL, maybe even stream

What is the problem with Doinb’s training method? Even the training of Doinb, with this insane amount of time, does not seem to be the truth that guaranteed success, because Doinb only had this absolute high in 2019.

In the years that followed, he was strong nationally, but hardly played a role in international LoL.

Virtually no player in LoL has managed to consistently dominate internationally since 2016, since Faker. Even the best teams of a year often collapse the year after, losing players, getting cabin fever, or just not being able to cope with a new meta.

So much LoL under pressure comes at a heavy price

Many top-class players from Korea are now also complaining about the insane pressure that prevails in the region:

How is this discussed? On Twitter, many gamers are amazed by this work ethic that Doinb exhibits. Many thought it was just not possible to do more than 5 training matches a day.

For Western players, this workload is unimaginable and apparently not even desirable. A Twitter user says:

If I were a pro, I would play LoL for 8 hours, sleep for 8 hours and, of course, do something else for 8 hours.

You can see how hard the life of a LoL pro can be in stories like this:

LoL: Pro breaks under pressure and gets criticized by supermarket cashier – Now afraid to buy food