For WSOP Champ Martin Jacobson, Poker And Fitness Go Hand In Hand
One look at 2014 World Series of Poker champion Martin Jacobson’s social media profile and you can tell that’s he’s just as into fitness and wellness as he is into the game of poker.
While Jacobson has been performing at the highest levels at the poker for over a decade, he’s been putting focus and attention into his body and staying healthy for even longer.
“I’ve been into fitness my entire life really,” Jacobson said. “I played a lot of team sports like hockey and basketball growing up but when I hit 18 I realized that individual training suited me better. I enjoyed the experience of being a part of a team but I’ve never been a fan of committing to being at a certain place at a certain time. As a result, I started going to the gym and quickly became hooked on weight lifting.”
Jacobson’s individual spirit, something that plenty of poker players can identify with, led to him spending lots of solo time in the gym in an effort to “get as big as possible.” However, after 10 years of heavy weight training, he began to feel the repercussions of his regimen.
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“I realized I was breaking down my body and as a result, I kept getting sick at an abnormally high frequency. This realization threw me off weight training for a bit and I started to incorporate other variations in my training and my goal shifted to finding a good balance and become as healthy as possible.
“The older I get the more I realize that training is just like poker in the sense that you’re never fully learned. I think that’s part of the reason that I stay motivated.”
Nowadays, he’ll still hit the weights but he’s using a recovery coach called Morpheus, which he is also an investor in, in order to try and train smarter.
“I do everything from running, kick-boxing, high-intensity circuits, yoga and lifting heavy weights only now and then. Morpheus has helped me slow down when my ego wants to push and go all-out. As a result I’m not getting sick nearly as often despite performing some sort of training every single day.
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“It measures your Heart Rate Variability which has scientifically been proven to have a direct correlation with your body’s stress levels and gives you specified heart rate zones to train in depending on your overall recovery score. Obviously playing 12 poker tournaments for 12 hours straight without any substantial breaks will affect your stress levels so I use this to make sure I recover the day after so I’m ready for the next session.”
For Jacobson staying healthy and staying prepared to play hours of poker at a time help keep him hitting the gym. But one might think it would be easy to slack off when you’ve lived the poker dream, winning $10 million dollars and the title of WSOP Main Event champion. But Jacobson doesn’t see his Main Event victory as the end all of poker.
“Poker isn’t a video game where you beat the big boss and it’s finished. It’s more complex than that. It’s constantly evolving and there’s a lot of new tools on the market which uses AI in order to solve a lot of scenarios. This has led to the game becoming significantly more competitive online in the last couple of years. I get my motivation form being attacked to challenges, the same reason I fell in love in the first place.”
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To that end, poker is a motivation to continue to work out and working out helps Jacobson stay competitive in poker.
“I’d say they go hand in hand,” he said. “To me, it’s never a question whether or not I should work out before I play because I know how much better it makes me feel and when you feel good you usually play your best. Besides, the idea of sitting in a chair for 12 hours without letting my body move that day terrifies me.”
“I believe there’s a strong correlation,” he said of poker and fitness. “Poker, as an individual sport will naturally attract competitive individuals who are more driven and motivated to improve their health as they realize it will benefit their ability to perform at their best.
“It’s quite interesting, I’ve heard strength and conditioning coaches talk about the differences they see in motivation to train when it comes to team athletes like in the NFL and NBA compared to individual athletes as you see in MMA. When you’re a part of a team or a big corporation, it’s easier to slack and blend in compared to when you are a solo player and entirely responsible for your own performance and end result.”
