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Sumai Agent presents Yokohama BC Count9 Battle 2026 is behind us, and as the organizing committee we’d like to share something it brought home to us.
Today’s theme is “conditioning.”
Looking back on this tournament, we saw moments where players who had been competing since morning lost a little precision as they advanced, from fatigue perhaps.
It isn’t that the skill wasn’t there.
Balls that would drop in ordinary practice.
But in the late stages of a long day, judgment somehow dulls, and doubt creeps into the stroke. Honestly, there were moments like that.
And this is surely not just about the players at this tournament.
In house tournaments or practice rounds, have you ever felt your game slip the further along you go?
Ever felt that your stroke is somehow different first thing in the morning than at night?
Ever felt that, at the big moments, you somehow decide more slowly than usual?
It may be a matter of conditioning.
How many matches do you play in a day?
Most billiards competitions in Japan have you play match after match in a single day.
This tournament, too, began in the morning, with one match after another, each lasting over an hour.
Last 32, last 16, semifinal, final: the further you go, the more matches you have to keep playing.
All that while, your mind is running at full speed.
Reading the layout, building position, deciding where to place the ball in hand, reading your opponent.
Billiards may look like a still, quiet sport, but the energy the brain burns is considerable.
And that drain, the later the match goes, slowly seeps into your performance.
When you lost, was it really just a missed shot?
After losing a match, have you ever looked back like this?
“I tensed up.” “I overthought it.” “I lost focus.” —
Of course, those are fair reflections.
But we’d like you to add one more point of view.
Maybe it was a matter of conditioning.
Did you sleep enough?
How did you eat before and after the match?
Did you keep hydrated?
Could hours of thinking and concentration have used up glucose, the brain’s fuel, and worn down your judgment and focus? How many billiards players make a habit of looking back on a match from that angle?
“My game drops off later on.” “When I get tired, I make more cautious choices.” — it may not be only a matter of technique.
Even “just sitting,” the body is fighting: examples from other games
In games that, like billiards, “look still but run the brain and nerves at full capacity,” the importance of conditioning has already been proven.
Ronnie O’Sullivan, snooker world champion
Ronnie O’Sullivan, a legend of snooker and seven-time world champion, took up serious nutrition management in the season when he was 42, and produced some of the best performances of his career.
Working with Harley Street nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert to overhaul his diet, O’Sullivan said this:
“Before I met Lambert I was playing well enough, but I was running out of stamina. I was tired because I was eating badly. Since I changed my diet, I’ve never felt so full of energy.”
In snooker, play at the Crucible (the World Championship venue) can go on for up to ten hours a day.
Lambert has said: “Snooker demands immense concentration and stamina. Without enough nutritious food, energy, mood and brain function all suffer. Fueling before and after a match is essential to physical performance.”
Billiards and snooker are very close as cue sports.
That the very top of snooker takes nutrition this seriously surely matters to billiards players, too.
🔗 https://ronnieo147.com/2018/05/25/the-importance-of-being-fit/
🔗 https://blog.betway.com/snooker/ronnie-osullivan-on-healthy-eating-exercise-and-snooker/
Magnus Carlsen, chess grandmaster
Around 2017, world chess champion Carlsen felt his performance slipping, and with his father he visited the Olympic training center in Oslo to seek advice from performance experts.
It turned out that the water with orange juice he had loved since childhood was causing blood-sugar crashes late in his games.
After he switched to a mix of chocolate milk and plain milk, his father Henrik said, “the big swings in blood sugar disappeared, and fatigue at critical moments eased.”
He also brought along a personal chef, Magnus Forsell, and managed his diet thoroughly, storing up energy with pasta before games.
He even studied “the optimal way to sit” for chess, developing a posture that keeps physical strain to a minimum.
According to research from Stanford University, professional chess players may burn as many as 6,000 kcal a day during a tournament.
Yoshiharu Habu, shogi player
Yoshiharu Habu, who dominated shogi in the Heisei era, has said that “shogi players, worn down and fatigued by long games, have something in common with athletes.”
Indeed, shogi players are said to lose as much as 2 to 3 kg in a single game, and in the shogi world it is already common understanding that food and nutrition bear directly on performance.
Sota Fujii’s much-talked-about “snacks during games” make perfect sense, too, as a way of feeding glucose to the brain.
🔗 https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/859443
Esports players
At the American pro esports team CLG (Counter Logic Gaming), a dedicated chef manages the players’ meals, serving high-protein, low-GI food on the principle that “because they spend long hours in front of screens, sustaining energy is the key.”
In 2024 the IOC (International Olympic Committee) decided to create a separate international event, the “Olympic Esports Games,” and esports is gaining worldwide recognition as a competitive sport.
Even those players treat nutrition, sleep and a steady daily rhythm as part of their game.
🔗 https://www.yhmf.jp/as/postnumber/vol_80_07.html
What these games share is one fact: “even in a sport where the body barely moves, conditioning shapes the result.”
Football is the same.
Nutrition management, carb-loading before matches, the timing of fueling during them: the accumulated research and practice behind all this is one of the reasons Japan’s national team has, in recent years, become able to meet the world on equal terms.
What our committee members have practiced
Among the committee’s members are people who once competed professionally in other sports.
Here are some of the conditioning practices they actually used.
Recovery: an apple cider vinegar and honey drink
Apple cider vinegar diluted with water, with honey added, was part of the daily routine.
The citric acid in apple cider vinegar helps the body process fatigue-related substances, and the sugar in honey is useful for quick energy.
It felt effective for recovering between matches and after practice.
Turning fat into energy: L-carnitine
L-carnitine carries fatty acids into the mitochondria, where they can be burned efficiently as energy.
It was taken to keep up stamina through long matches.
It is a way of thinking that can apply to long competitions like billiards, too.
The everyday diet: low fat, high protein
Daily meals were kept low in fat and high in protein, to balance weight management with energy efficiency.
Carb-loading before a match (deliberately eating more carbohydrates) is also an effective way to sustain concentration over long hours.
These are only examples.
Still, simply holding this point of view should change the way you approach a match.
What we want billiards players to know
We feel billiards is still a sport where awareness of conditioning is low, professionals included.
But think about it.
From morning to night, battle after battle, each one over an hour long.
To make it through so long a day, conditioning body and brain should matter as much as practice.
What you eat on match day, how you hydrate, when you take in sugar.
How you sleep the night before, how much you drink.
How you spend the time between matches.
Simply keeping these in view may change your performance.
When things don’t go well, we’d like you to make a habit of looking back not only at your shot-making, but at your condition, too.
That, the committee believes, is what leads to the strength to win through a long day.
Caring for the particular strain of billiards through nutrition
Billiards is a sport of holding a distinctive stance for long periods. Many players live with chronic pain or discomfort in the neck, shoulders, lower back or knees.
This physical strain, too, may be eased through daily meals, and by using supplements to cover what food alone cannot.
Omega-3 fatty acids that help keep chronic inflammation down, glucosamine and chondroitin for joint care, magnesium and calcium that support muscle and bone: before giving up with “it hurts, nothing to be done,” it should be worth approaching it from the angle of nutrition.
The quality of your sleep is no different.
Deep sleep is essential not only for the body’s recovery, but for putting the brain in order.
Looking at sleep in terms of nutrients, such as tryptophan (the building block of serotonin and melatonin) and magnesium, which improve sleep quality, can sometimes change how you perform the next day.
👉 Skin is made while you sleep. — On how to spend the night.
And we would also like to touch on vision and the brain’s processing power.
Billiards is a sport in which the brain processes what comes in through the eyes, judges distance, angle and speed in an instant, and tells the body what to do.
Supporting that whole process takes a range of nutrients.
Lutein and astaxanthin that support eye health, B vitamins and DHA that support neural transmission in the brain: if these run short, however good your technique, the precision of your information processing may suffer.
Sharpening your technique in practice, and tuning body and brain with nutrition.
Isn’t it only with both wheels turning that your billiards can perform at its best?
In an earlier post, for billiards players troubled by chronic pain or poor sleep, we wrote a first-hand review of the CBD cream “biyeoji.”
It is full of the candid thoughts of a committee member who has lived with the physical strain that billiards’ distinctive stance brings.
If conditioning has caught your interest, please read it as well.
👉 Good for Athletes, Too? An Honest Review of “biyeoji cream”
Supporters of billiards players, from outside the billiards world
There is a brand we’d like to introduce briefly.
Kokokarada is a brand that supports billiards players widely.
It also sponsors this tournament’s commentators, Hijikata and Lo.
Why would a brand from outside the billiards world support billiards players? The committee feels it is because they understand what this blog has been saying: “the importance of conditioning and nutrition.”
This is not meant as an advertisement.
We simply wanted everyone involved with billiards to know that there are people outside the industry who believe in the potential of billiards as a sport, and who support it.
Preparing to perform at your best is something needed every day.
Please consider, just once, approaching billiards from the angle of nutrition.
🔗 https://koko-karada.jp/
🔗 https://www.healthy-good.net/
👉 Billiards resources from Japan and around the world, organized by purpose: Billiards in Depth (latest updated hourly)
