Nine off-table habits from pros who figured out the same thing: your body is the first edge you bring to any session.
The ten minutes before a session. What you ate four hours ago. Whether your apartment looks like a crime scene. None of it shows up in a solver.
But after sitting across from dozens of pros and hearing how they prepare, one pattern kept showing up. Players winning at the highest level spend more time managing their bodies than studying ranges. And they don’t treat it as optional.
These are nine specific habits, pulled from nine different conversations with players competing at the top. Each one is something you can test this week.
1. Sweat for ten minutes before you play
Jose Jimenez keeps it simple. Wake up. Move. Get your heart rate up before you open a single table.
“You do exercise for 10 minutes, you have to get sweat, and then your mind goes wow. It’s amazing.”
His explanation is practical: your brain wakes up faster when your body signals danger. Ten minutes of movement triggers that switch. You don’t need a gym membership or a workout plan. Jumping jacks, burpees, a fast walk up stairs. The bar is sweat.
If you’re sitting down for a session after eight hours at a desk, your body is still in neutral. Ten minutes of effort changes that before the first hand is dealt.
2. Cut the sugar before long sessions
Thomas Boivin pays more attention to what he eats on tournament days than to his opening ranges.
“Basically a really low carb diet, high in nutrients, high in veggies, high in good oils and nuts. Not a lot of carbs and sugars that impact my insulin and I go on a roller coaster, tired and excited and tired and excited.”
The logic is blood sugar stability. Carbs spike your energy, then crash it. During a twelve-hour session, that roller coaster costs you focus at the worst times. Boivin frames it as compound interest: “Maybe you’re going to have a little bit more endurance. Instead of a six-year career, maybe it’s 10. Instead of an eight-hour online session, maybe it’s nine or 10. You do that for 10 years, everything adds up.”
For your next long session, swap the sandwich and energy drink for nuts, vegetables, and water. Track how you feel at hour six.
3. Clean your space before you sit down
Julian Shultheis starts every morning the same way. Make the bed. Clear the flat.
“When I walk in 20 times and see chaos, an old cup, clothes lying around, this doesn’t give me peace of mind.”
He connects it to mental clarity: “Sometimes I realize it’s not as tidy as I want it to be in here, and then I think, what about your head? And I see my thoughts are spinning around.”
Ten minutes of tidying before a session sounds trivial. But if you’ve tried to focus while your desk is buried under dishes and laundry, you know the drag is real. Your environment sets the baseline for your attention. Start clean.
4. Walk. Every day. No exceptions.
This one showed up across three separate conversations. Elias ZerosPoker walks four kilometres every morning to a coffee shop and back. Pieter Aerts walks for sunlight and distance from screens. Luke Johnson put it the simplest: “All you’ve got to do is put on the shoes, and once you put on the shoes, you’ll leave the door.”
Elias frames his version as non-negotiable: “Every day when I wake up I will walk 4 kilometers. It’s the first thing I do.”
Walking is boring. That’s why it works. After hours of high-stimulus decision-making, your brain needs low-input recovery. A thirty-minute walk with no podcast, no phone, no stimulation gives your nervous system space to reset. You come back sharper than when you left.
5. Use cold and hot exposure to regulate your nervous system
Thomas Boivin stacks modalities throughout his morning to hit a specific state before he plays.
“Workout takes me up. Hot shower takes me down. Cold shower takes me up. Meditation takes me down. You can really regulate and end up in that sweet spot where you feel like, oh my god, for six hours you’re flying.”
This is deliberate nervous system control. You sit down for a session in whatever state you woke up in. Boivin engineers his. The specific tools matter less than the principle: alternate between activation and recovery until you reach the zone where focus comes without forcing it.
Start with the simplest version. Finish your shower cold for thirty seconds tomorrow morning. Notice what happens to your alertness.
6. Treat the gym as your anchor during downswings
When results go sideways, you chase the problem at the table. Julian Shultheis goes the other direction: “Have something that is stable that you can stick to when you’re standing in the storm. Go to the gym three times a week. You can have an influence on that, and you see your body improve.”
Adam described the same instinct: “When things aren’t going well, my girlfriend always notices. I’m doing the gym harder, I’m tracking more things, I’m really holding onto the things that are very controllable in my life.”
Matt Berkey took it further during a career low point. After weeks of poor eating and sleeping all day, he used the gym as his first recovery tool: “As I got positive momentum going with training more and eating well, my mind cleared up. The doom and gloom and the sinking sensation of being a failure started to escape me a little bit.”
The gym gives you measurable progress when poker won’t. During a downswing, that matters more than another solver session.
7. Try a floating tank for sensory reset
Thomas Boivin on what happens after a session in a float tank:
“I go out from there, my senses are enhanced. I smell things in my car I haven’t smelled in three weeks. The brain is so restored that it can intake more signal. I have more patience and empathy and I’m a great husband for at least 24 hours.”
After days of sensory overload at a tournament, a float tank strips input to zero. No light, no sound, no gravity. Your brain stops processing input and starts recovering. Boivin recommends building up slowly if the idea of sitting in silence for ninety minutes sounds like torture.
If you’re in Vegas during the Series, most float centres offer single sessions. Book one on a day off. See what your focus looks like the next morning.
8. Protect your sleep like it’s your bankroll
Sleep was the one topic where no pro disagreed. Pedro Toledo put it bluntly: “Sleeping is actually the only thing that makes me not grind. If I didn’t have good sleep, I feel like shit all day.”
Matt Berkey takes it further: “If I only slept six hours, I’d be like, today is fucked. I’m gonna just study all day and then try to sleep at least eight hours the next day so I can actually play.”
He would cancel a full session due to poor sleep. Skip the tables, study instead, fix your sleep, and come back the next day ready.
If you’re playing for six hours and telling yourself you’re fine, you’re wrong. Your decision-making degrades before you feel tired. The pros who last in this game prioritise sleep above all else.
9. Build a post-session wind-down protocol
Thomas Boivin has a specific sequence for after long sessions, designed to get quality sleep despite twelve hours of adrenaline.
“As soon as the last hand is finished, red glasses on, increase the production of melatonin. Don’t eat too much before sleep, ideally four hours. Take a few supplements that improve sleep quality, magnesium, 5-HTP. A little yoga, some kind of movement to release and circulate all the hormones. A little walk, something chilled. Little meditation. Avoid the screens, or if you do, really use the red glasses.”
The red glasses block blue light that suppresses melatonin. The movement clears the adrenaline and cortisol from the session. The gap between your last meal and sleep gives your body time to shift into recovery mode.
You don’t need the full protocol. Pick one element. Red-light glasses cost fifteen dollars. Magnesium is at every pharmacy. A ten-minute walk after your session costs nothing. Start with one piece and build from there.
Pick one. Start tomorrow.
Nine habits from players competing at the highest stakes. You don’t need all nine. You need one that sticks.
Pick the one that would most change your next session. Run it for a week. If you feel the difference, keep it. Add another after a week.
There is work that matters that doesn’t happen at the table.
