This is so sad :<
Pro teams in other games practice 8 hours a day exclusively with other pro teams on top of learning and outside play. I know it isn't possible without a sponsor, but at least serious practice on a near daily basis should be the minimum top players are doing.
Doesn't Du do a ton of serious homework and online grinding near daily to keep himself strong?
Wouldn't this go back to there just not being enough money in fighting games to justify it?
As an example, watching Justin Wong play SF5 was always a bit frustrating since he wasn't doing stuff every other Karin player near that level would do... but when you think about it, it makes sense. He works at least 40 hours a week (and knowing a lot of tech jobs, it might be a fair bit more than that) and is traveling every weekend to events. There really isn't a ton of time for him to practice (or do anything else, really). Granted, there may be some optimizations that could be made (such as spending the flight time watching match videos) but who knows if he's already doing that or has to do other things (like work).
So yes, it would be nice if top FG players could put into the time into training and film study that professionals in other sports and games do. It would also be nice for the developer/publisher of said game to make a product that could actually support such an enterprise, but we're stuck with a bunch of middling (at best) boutique Japanese developers that can barely cover their own paychecks.
Your average day kid plays nearly 8 hours a day in all sorts of games. People who grind Esports games are way more crazy than FGC people. They factor in their diet and everything.
Again, that comes down to the money. And let's not like act even LoL LCS teams are rolling in dough. Most (all?) of them don't make enough money from the pro games themselves and need to augment their revenue from a number of other sources... and some of them still don't end up in the black anyway.