Chances are, if you’re reading this, you might be interested in improving your skills at League of Legends. You might have even googled for some secret tips or tricks to gain elo/rating/skill/whatever in the past and watched some YouTube video or read some (insert champion name here) guide in an attempt to gain some hidden insight into playing the game better.

Sadly, you might have even shelled out your hard earned money for lessons on how to play from someone better than you.

And if you’re still reading this, you probably haven’t really succeeded in getting any better at the game. If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to get any better, I’m sorry to say I don’t have the answer to that (then again, neither does anyone else). I do however, know of one thing that might play a factor:

Time Spent in Deliberate Practice – AKA How much are you REALLY practicing?

Count up how many ranked games you’ve played today. Solo queue ranked games only – no duo queue, no ranked-5s games, and no normal games. If you’re really (and I mean seriously) trying to improve at the game, and you’re playing less than 5 ranked games a day, you probably won’t see any measurable improvement at all.

Think about what everyone says about mastering a skill or game (or anything for that matter). They say it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to really master something. One ranked game might take roughly 30-40 minutes to play. 5×30 minutes = 150 minutes / 60 = 2.5 hours. If you play 2.5 hours of actual ranked games per day, that’s 75 hours a month and 900 hours a year. Given some context you can see that 5 games (2-3 hours) a day is pretty tame – most pros play over 8 hours daily, every single day.

But wait, what if you’ve played some other similar game and you already understand a lot of aspects of the game? For sure those countless hours spent honing your hand-eye coordination, “mechanics” (last hitting etc, whatever) haven’t gone to waste. While no two games are exactly the same, those skills do play a part in measuring your own skill.

Unfortunately for you, others probably also played the same game, and worse yet, they were probably better than you. Don’t count on just being able to pick up a game instantly and start dominating just because you’ve played a similar game – you’ll more than likely have to put in more time playing and getting used to the new game too.

If you’ve finished reading this and feel depressed in thinking that the struggle to improve and get better is harder than you thought – rest assured that most other people are thinking the same thing. It’s not easy to put in the massive amount of time required to get good at something. Most people give up long before they have any hope of getting better, and that’s okay. But if truly do aspire to become a “progamer”, reach the top of the ladder rankings or even move up a league, know that it is probably going to take longer and be harder than you think.

And if you knew that already – why are you reading this? Shouldn’t you be practicing?