Aleksib: "I'm super worried about [burnout]"

We nailed the start, there's no going around it. Our plan was to cut the player break a bit short, starting from home and then travelling to bootcamp and I think it was a great plan and a great move by us.
We took EWC seriously, but at the same time, we thought the start of the season would be this three-tournament block, that being EWC, Groups, and Cologne, and we thought we needed the best practice we could get before heading into it.
We evolved throughout EWC, played better and better, and eventually won the first tournament of the season, which is a great feeling to win another trophy this year and who knows how this season will go, but the whole team is really proud of our work thus far.

I think it was during Spring Final, we were constantly discussing because the schedule is really hectic, which is a shame because you want to perform but those days off are sacred.
There's a fine line because we are travelling almost 24/7, so when you have the time off, cutting it short is something you second guess but also the team performance is super important.
We didn't cut it short that much, but still ended up four days shorter travelling to the bootcamp.

Yeah, I'm super worried about it. I think it's a thing that we will see in this season and the next.
If you want to be a tier one team and you've been doing it for a while and want to perform, you obviously need bootcamps with the whole team as well.
We're joining every tier one tournament from now until the end of the year, and some of them are far away, including the Major at the end of the year and the RMRs for that, so when you look at all of the tournament dates you also need to take the days you will travel into the events to reduce jet lag, so maybe you travel a bit earlier.
Then, there is the other layer of bootcamping. We are a team that likes them and evolves through them, so if you want to add them to your schedule, you're looking at five or six months in both seasons that will be very full.
At the same time, we will try to make it work and have some days off or days at home. But, at the end of the day, the team is feeling fired up after winning the second trophy, so that helps a lot.
Speaking about burnout, you never know when it will hit. The wall might come to some colleagues or fellow pros whenever, but it's going to be exciting to see how the whole season pans out as well as the next one.
The next season has something like 25 tournaments, it'll be crazy. At the same time, I hope that our management department figures out the best way for us to perform because I feel like part of the burnout is your team starting to fall in terms of your potential if everyone can not put 100% into the system.

I don't know how it works exactly, I'm pretty sure there are still some degree of partnerships between orgs and some TOs, so it depends on if you're on a team that has a possibility for that, then who are you partnering up with?
I don't think it's possible for tier one teams to partner up with every single TO next year, so there are going to be tournaments where you won't see many top teams. Or, if a top team fails in a tournament and goes out in groups, maybe they beg for a last-chance invitation to another tournament so they can fill in their calendar.
But, I feel like it will be impossible to join them all. If you do it throughout the whole year, it would be pretty crazy and I think you will lack a lot of days, or even weeks, of practice.
You never know, and I think we've reached a point in CS already, because I remember back in the day the players had a lot to say, but now it will be more the organisation and the staff figuring out the best way to approach the season and deciding which tournaments to join and which not to.
That's out of my hands and I will listen to what NAVI has to say, and if they ask me for my opinion, I will give it. I'm just going to focus on what comes ahead of me and hope for good seasons.

I'm not sure exactly, I think it might be weird. I've already seen that some teams are making their way up the Valve ranking by playing every online tournament they can, which is respectable if you're in tier two or tier three.
But at the same time, even if you weren't winning all of the online tournaments you play but you still have the volume, you'll step up the rankings anyway.
I think Valve has been making some adjustments to the ranking system they have and I hope they continue to do so because you would hope that in the future, if this will be the way they go, then it will be the perfect system one day. I still think people value HLTV rankings the most, so if Valve keep improving their system and everything goes according to their plan, it will be a good thing.

It's an interesting one because, for example, it was the biggest moment of my career and no other Finn has managed to win a Major before. For the sake of my career, and anyone else who is playing the game, everyone is dreaming of lifting the Major trophy and I was the first to do it in this game.
After the tournament, we played badly, we weren't the same team, something was missing. We had a couple of team talks and we could understand the issues, and we kinda fixed ourselves during Spring Final and reached the final but still got outclassed by Spirit. Despite that, we saw the spark of hope in terms of playing like we did during the Major and we found the motivation and hunger.
To me, we ended the season on a good note because if we failed in London as well then we would have started to second guess ourselves, I would have, for sure. So, starting this season, we already felt like we were on the right track.
With winning EWC, I felt like the Major was extra special and I was just trying to find myself for the past five years of my career so lifting that trophy meant the world to me. But, when I lifted the trophy at EWC, I felt like it was more to prove a point rather than to find myself again. I felt like I was lifting the trophy because we are a good team, with sick team work and we played off each other well.
It was a win that we deserved, not that we didn't enjoy the Major win, but it felt like the Major was just meant to be in that moment, at EWC it felt like we were there to win and we can lift a third trophy this year if we keep it up.

I'm not going to lie about it, no matter what, the Major trophy is the most special thing there is. I also saw the amount of people who were following us during the Major: friends, family, friends of friends, and random people, none of who really follow CS, so that will always be special and therefore the most important trophy.
But now, it was an amazing tournament to win because nine teams out of the top ten were there and we played a really solid tournament.
We had a couple of maps that were really bad, at least one against MOUZ, but that meant that we showed resilience to come back from it. Also in the final, we lost the first map and still managed to win, and that's another strength of ours, which is something we have actively trained for. That's also a really good feeling.