Discipline may sound like an outdated concept for oppressive systems and the military, but it is in fact central to be successful, no matter the field you’re in. When it comes to competitive League of Legends, one of the things that strike our minds is “Korean Dominance”. Even though SKT isn’t doing so great at this year’s MSI, the dominance of Korean teams cannot be argued. Having won 3 World Championships in a row, each in impressive fashion with very few games lost against foreign regions, Korea has set itself up as the Leviathan of the League. As one of the most important reasons for Korea’s impressive strength you often hear their culture, which apparently leads them to pursue success with more vigour than people in the West. I’ll shorten that up for you, the reason for their astonishing dominance is: Drill and Discipline.

Let’s talk about the drill part of my thesis first, even though both of them are very much linked together. Drill is a very effective way of practicing a certain ability in a controlled environment, to be able to use said ability better when first confronted with a less controlled situation in which it is needed. In our military platoon, we speak of drill as soon as we repeat an activity at least 15 times in fast order. Sometimes there are complicated aspects involved in a drill run but most of the activities are very straightforward. In the end the goal of a drill session is always to finish the parkour as fast and clean as possible. This is very much applicable in League. Now of course each game of LoL is way too unique and different from the last one, to use full matches for your drill parkour.

Playing 15 games in a row in fast fashion may help improving your performance but not as effectively as a real drill parkour. As I said, the quintessence of drill is that you repeat the same activity. A good example might be last hitting or the laning phase. You can definitely improve those aspects of League by playing several custom games in a row. For last hitting you may play them alone. For practicing the laning phase aspect, you might need up to 9 practice partners, depending on how real you need the environment to be. A good idea for AD carries and/or supports may be to find a second bot lane and to simply practice the first 3-4 levels of the laning phase. The same goes for mid and top lane, too. Also, if you happen to play as 5 a lot, you might as well practice lane swapping with a custom game drill.

Drill has a lot to do with work ethic and work ethic is based on being disciplined, but discipline also has other important aspects. Discipline means being able to receive and follow orders effectively, communicating and interacting with other human beings constructively and without distracting emotions and, last but not least, it means being able to focus on the tasks ahead. As soon as people work together, there will always be different opinions and ideas of what to do or of what is the right thing to do. If human beings weren’t able to unite behind only one of those ideas, or maybe one combination that emerged from several of them, we wouldn’t have been able to create a working society.

If we’d act each on our behalf, being unable to follow others when it matters, each on their own, humanity would have ceased to exist many ages ago. I’m talking about organization, the ability to combine the power of multiple human beings behind a certain goal and reaching it through combined strength. In sports and e-sports we also speak of teamwork, which is basically the same thing: Men are most effective when they are working together through communication and organization. As I already implied, this organization might need orders, hence a leader, to function effectively. This is true for the military, where a squad leader will take the last decision and give out the final orders, and it is also true for League of Legends, where the shot caller or the coach will have the last word on what to do next. Why is this important? If the 5 players of a team don’t synchronize their actions, they will lack effectiveness.

It is important to always follow the order of an established leader and follow it immediately or the whole hierarchy loses its strength, its effectiveness and, ultimately, its reason. To prove my point, I will use a short situation that could happen in almost every game of League of Legends: Nashor or not? Your team just killed the enemy support and happens to be in mid lane. At least one enemy has to recall and there is a decent amount of wards in the area around Baron Nashor. Your shot caller wants to push the middle inner turret but suddenly somebody calls Nashor. There are several possible situations that can emerge:

-Your team starts to discuss the situation. As you talk, some of the players walk towards Nashor, some run down mid lane and one guy stands still close to your middle outer turret. You argue for about 5 seconds before deciding to follow the shot caller’s call. As you reach the inner turret as a team, the enemy mid laner, who had to recall, is already back and clears your minion wave. As you fall back without having accomplished anything, someone mentions that Nashor might have been the better idea.

-Your team starts to discuss the situation. As you talk, some of the players walk towards Nashor, some run down mid lane and one guy stands still close to your middle outer turret. You argue for about 5 seconds before deciding to do Nashor. As you reach Nashor as a team, the enemy is already reorganized and starts poking you over the wall. Your shot caller mentions that pushing might have been a better idea.

-The whole team instantly gathers around the idea of Nashor and starts running there. If it works out fine, you just got an advantage and your shot caller learned nothing. If it doesn’t, well, jokes on you, you just played yourself. In both cases your leader didn't learn a lot for the future, except that his team is not willing to follow his lead.

-Your team dismisses the idea and follows the lead of your shot caller. You push the inner turret and successfully earn an advantage. Or: You all follow the call but still cannot push the tower. In both instances the shot caller can now evaluate the effectiveness of his call and learns for future situations.

Of course there can be a short discussion of the two options before the leader decides but as soon as the shot callers takes a decision, this decision should be followed upon, otherwise there is no reason to have a shot caller.

The quintessence is that it is important to act as a team; otherwise nothing is going to work out consistently. To be able to consistently act as a team it is important to listen to the call of your leader. Now, there might be instances in which his call is the wrong approach to a situation, but these are the exact moments in which he can learn and improve. You didn’t happen to be the perfect AD Carry on your first day in League, did you? Being a leader is difficult and calling correctly has to be learned, but it can only be learned, when calls are being followed upon, because only then you know for sure, whether your call was right or not.

This is why discipline is important. Only if you are able to work hard by drilling your abilities, to communicate but also to listen to your teammates and, last but not least, to give and follow orders, you can eventually improve as a player and as a leader, or “just” as a part of a team. But there is more. I promise you right now, that if you can successfully improve your discipline a little, you will not only get Gold in League of Legends this Season, but also improve as a human being. Many people in our modern, Western society lack discipline because they think it is an outdated concept. Believe me, it is not. Discipline is one of the things that made humanity great and made great men who they are. Of course you don't need to become Prussian level of disciplined, but to some degree it doesn't hurt, and if only our Pro Players weren’t in vacation before important tournaments, maybe they could also beat the Koreans sometimes.

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