Tucked away in a nondescript complex in Santa Monica, California, is a one garage-doored building surrounded by palm trees. It’s easy to miss, with an entrance hidden far from public view on the rear side of its plain slab exterior — which is important given the exclusive clientele that come and go daily.

Inside is every high-end piece of workout equipment you can imagine — and some you can’t. Alongside standard dumbbells and cable systems are hyper specific devices like on-rails trucks for linebackers to push and mechanical booms for world-class sailors to wrestle. Multi-camera systems surround the treadmills and stationary cycles where athletes wear masks to measure their breathing during exertion. There’s even cryochamber pods that feel ripped from a sci-fi film. It seems like there’s a specific machine tailored to every individual sport. This is the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center (APC for short), and it’s where hundreds of the most elite athletes come to train, rehabilitate, and assess their progress.

On this day, a different kind of athlete is here for training: Timothy “iiTzTimmy” An, a professional esports player who’s been signed to Red Bull since 2022. An is one of more than 800 athletes sponsored by the company from nearly 250 different disciplines, ranging from snowboarders to fencers, and of course aerial athletes (people who jump out of planes for a living). And while he spends most of his time competing behind a PC screen, An is part of a growing contingent of esports players that are incorporating fitness and mental conditioning into their training.

And while most people wouldn’t necessarily associate esports with intense physical training, in practice it makes a lot of sense. Top-level contenders spend hours glued to their chairs while streaming or competing, and having a healthy regiment can improve awareness and reflexes, as well as shortening the time it takes to get into the groove mid-game — which is essential, whether they’re performing from home or in front of a crowd of thousands.

Working with elite trainers, dietitians, and cutting-edge equipment, esports athletes like An are on a mission to not just improve their own performance, but dispel many of the misconceptions around what it means to be a pro gamer.

Ask almost anyone what their idea of a professional gamer looks like, and you’ll likely hear a lot of the same things: sheepish, tired, and not necessarily in great shape. The schedule of esports players doesn’t really foster a healthy lifestyle. 

“One of the bigger challenges with esports athletes is, often, they have a lot of sleep challenges because of the times they have to stream, because of competitions,” says the APC’s performance dietitian Craig Moore, who is tasked with assessing players’ needs and sees a prevalent trend when it comes to gaming. “I know with Timmy, in particular, when we first started working with him, one of the things he was known for was how long he would do streams. I think he did a 66-hour stream at one point.”

Playing for such extended periods, outside of content creation and constant travel, esports athletes face unique challenges. On top of irregular sleep, many struggle to manage poor eating habits and perpetual stress from the need to perform both on camera and off. “I’ve always been able to be comfortable on an empty stomach,” An says. “Sometimes you just forget when you’re so dialed in.”

An’s game of choice, Apex Legends, is a particularly taxing one. As a 60-person battle royale, matches can be extremely long and, in tournament play, repeat over and over for hours until a winning team can be crowned. It’s a lot of pressure to be on, even more so when he’s expected to be performing at his peak.

The day we meet, An is a little more than 10 weeks into his training. He’s been working out three times a week for 90-minute sessions wedged in between his two other training sessions playing Apex, two-hour “scrims” that occur twice every non-competition day.

Previously, An had wanted to work out more but found the lack of direction and slow gains “demotivating.” It’s a cycle just about everyone is familiar with. “I have always been super skinny my entire life and, naturally, that has caused a lot of insecurities,” he says. “Working out has always been possible, [but] when you go and you don’t really know what you’re doing, [you’re] not getting into it or really enjoying it.

Red Bull’s APC in Santa Monica isn’t the only one of its kind; it’s actually one of two the company built (the other being in Austria). Outside of these, there are many other gyms and training facilities offered to esports players — either by their sponsors or club organizations, or just basic options they find themselves. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a hotel gym or whatever’s available on the road.

It’s not just Red Bull-sponsored athletes that are seeing the benefits of a healthier lifestyle. Like An, professional Overwatch player Hadi Bleinagel, 24, sees the direct correlation between physical training and improved performance while gaming. “The gym has really positive effects on my mental state,” Bleinagel says. “If you don’t have a physical outlet, you have restlessness. When you’re a pro gamer, you have to think a lot. But when it comes to actually playing matches, it’s that good to overthink. You need to quiet down your inner voice. I feel anything physical is good for that.”

As an esports player, An’s needs are different from most traditional athletes in training. Sofia Smati is one of the performance coaches at APC and has helped identify the strength and conditioning needs for An. Having previously worked with other esports athletes like Australian Fortnite pro Lachlan Power and Dominican Street Fighter champion Saul “MenaRD” Mena, she’s tapped into many of the problem areas that affect gamers.

Smati leads An’s daily workouts, which are broken into training blocks. After this particular block, he’ll be assessed for improvements to his strength, power, and body composition — almost like he’s a video game character himself. But An’s needs are distinct and require special attention that even the most high-end machines alone won’t fix. Unlike traditional athletes, whose training might resemble the real-life actions they’d do in their sport — running, jumping, or rowing — esports players are mostly exercising in ways that support their lifestyle, even if it doesn’t exactly reflect what they’re doing during competition (“They’re sitting,” Smati says).

“You don’t want to be deconditioned when you’re sitting all day, and you play for 10 hours,” Smati says. “My goal for him is to stay active and have a long and healthy lifestyle. A lot of times, when you’re sitting at the desk and just playing, you come with injuries [like] neck pain, shoulder pain, lower back pain. He’s always in the flex position, so his hunch, his hip flex is always pretty tight.”

As with any athlete from different disciplines, esports players don’t all have the same needs. While console players use handheld controllers and fighting-game enthusiasts can rest their arcade pad on their lap, PC players like An are bound to a mouse and keyboard, and the precision micro-movements of mouse tracking can lead to issues like headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome, and numbness of the wrist.

“With our esports athletes, something we’re concerned about is posture,” Moore says. “They’re kind of crouched with a forward neck posture. So, there’s a lot of work that goes into, ‘Let’s open up your chest. Let’s strengthen the back so it actually pulls the chest open so you’re not [hunched.]’”

Outside of strengthening their bodies to resist deterioration and pain, one of the biggest objectives for esports players is improving their reaction time. At the Santa Monica facility, there’s all kinds of equipment designed specifically for flexing the mind — including machines that are utilized by Formula 1 racers.

An describes one reaction test where six pairs of dots rotate on a screen in different directions and speeds — some clockwise, counterclockwise, etc. — and some are highlighted at the start. Eventually the highlights disappear, and subjects much rapidly click on which were the correct dots. They’re assessments that measure spatial awareness and memory. “That test, I actually aced,” An says.

Others focus on reaction time, centering the test subject’s eyes on an arrow and determining whether it’ll move left or right, or following inputs in the peripheral space around a central point, matching the inputs without breaking eye contact. “It’s interesting to me as a gamer. It’s just like playing a game,” An says.

While it may be easy to balk at the idea that esports players are under the same duress as racecar drivers (granted, there’s no g-force at play), it’s a fact that pro gamers are competing in a state of heightened stress where their performance is entirely dependent on pixel-perfect precision with unbroken focus for hours at a time. “The amount of constant effort that you need to put in when playing mouse and keyboard — it’s just [doing] that for six, eight hours straight. It’s very hard,” An says. “Some of my test results were actually close or even better than the F1 drivers,” he notes proudly. 

Outside of the obvious physical improvements, the benefits of training go beyond just becoming stronger or faster. Working with dietitians and trainers, An’s habits have improved substantially. His exhaustive training and reminders to eat have helped regulate his circadian rhythm, and the impact has been noticeable. “Looking back, the difference between my mental state then and now is substantial,” An says. “Before, [my] body felt very sluggish. I didn’t feel like I ever had a bad day because every day was the bad day.”

Previously, it would have taken An a few hours of in-game practice before he hit his stride. Now, he’s doing physical warmups prior to his virtual training sessions, and it’s created an increased clarity of mind. “Before I worked out at all, I always said [that] at the four-hour mark when I was streaming is when I was playing my absolute best,” he says. “Nowadays, I would say about two hours in is when I feel my absolute best. It has definitely decreased that time frame. I’m playing good immediately whenever I get on.”

The ability to form good habits also stems from social elements. As part of a team, many athletes begin picking up insight and influence from their peers and successful veterans. But the pool of athletes sponsored by Red Bull includes many types of people who are usually competing solo. “We take athletes from all over the world, and they get to train together, yeah. But also, these are athletes that usually don’t get to train with anyone because most of them are coming from individual sports,” Moore says. “It’s not like a soccer team or a football team or a baseball team where they have group training sessions. So, there’s this camaraderie that develops.”

Even though An himself has team members to bond with, his experiences at the gym with other athletes have helped him break out of his shell more than ever before. “It’s nice because, as somebody who’s always been a shy guy and eventually adventuring into the streaming industry and pro play, I started having to be out of my comfort zone,” An says. “From a nervous, shy person, not really talking to a lot of people, then going in here with these people. They’re just so comfortable that they can have that vibe. They’re cool — they don’t even have to try. So, being around that energy just makes it a lot easier to want to better myself.”

It’s well-documented that esports players experience increased levels of burnout compared to traditional athletes. Practicing and competing for extended periods with minimal breaks, constant travel, and the constantly changing nature of the games they play put additional stress on competitors. On top of that, they’re often content creators who serve as their own personal brand ambassadors, usually livestreaming during their practice sessions or outside of their mandated work hours. While they may not be tearing their ACLs or getting concussions, the average length of an esports player is only about 10 years, often ending well before their thirties.

By increasing their quality of life through healthier routines, it’s very likely that the next generation of esports players will have longer, more fruitful careers than ever before. It’s an uplifting outlook that An himself takes stock in. “The mental health aspect is the most important one, for sure. This is always about me, right? I’m always going to be improving myself,” he says. “I’m always going to feel good when I go workout. When life gets stressful, when you’re not necessarily making enough money or performing well, and things just aren’t going your way — when you work out, things will always go your way.

“I think it’s just a positive reinforcement that you need in your life,” he adds. “I think positivity will eventually leak into the other things in your life as well.”