“Itching for some more tips to continue improving your gaming setup and flow? Well, you’re in luck. I’ve got 5 more for you!
6. Get up and take a break for 5 minutes every hour or so (if possible). Use focus booster to keep track.
This is an easy way to ensure that your body gets a break. If you can, take a break and stand up and walk around every hour or so (obviously sometimes the intervals will vary due to being in game). I like using Focus Booster to keep track of time and get alerts as to when I should be taking a break. Try and stretch out a bit during your break if you can and get even more benefit out of your brief respite. As a bonus, you can use Focus Booster to get yourself focused on a task for a defined period of time and reward yourself with a break when appropriate!
7. Make sure you have proper back support.
I’m quite obsessive about the design of chairs and proper back support because I suffered from chronic back pain for a 3 years while I was in high school. Eventually, I figured out that I needed orthopedics to change the way that my feet were absorbing shock and ended that awful, constant pain. But I will never forgot what it was like, and thus, will not settle for anything that doesn’t offer proper back support. If you’re going to be sitting for 8, 10, 12, whatever hours a day you need to make sure that the chair that you are sitting in allows you to sit comfortably whilst supporting your back. An ideal chair supports you from your lower back up to just below your shoulder blades and should allow you to sit without slouching or arching your back to find a comfortable position. There are an incredible number of chairs out there that have been designed by people who obviously didn’t think at all about their effect on the users after long periods.
Please be careful and remind mindful of whether your chair is supporting you properly. You don’t want to end up with constant back pain! It’s one of the worst, most frustrating issues to deal with.
Note: If you’ve adjusted your chair and taken care to set up an ergonomic workplace and are still suffering from back pain you may want to start doing core exercises regularly. Strengthening your core will allow you to hold yourself in an ideal position and allow you to avoid putting too much strain on your back when sitting.
8. Consider standing!
While I was suffering from my back pain I decided I’d had enough of sitting all the time and exacerbating my condition so I set up a standing desk. I built a stand (that you can see in the photo below) and put my keyboard and mouse on it. The first few days were pretty brutal as I was standing in one spot for 6, 7, 8 hours at a time. But as I got used to standing all day I found that I was much less tired at the end of the day, my gaming had improved (more alert) and my back was hurting less! Now, whenever I go to a friend’s place, I gather together whichever materials are suitable and set myself to be able to stand while playing. They love to laugh at me and tease me but eventually I plan to convert them all to standing desks so that they can also experience the joy that is not being stuck in a chair and slouching all day.
9. Get a keyboard and mouse that suit your needs.
Although this may seem obvious, it is critical that you find a keyboard and mouse that suit your preferences and the size of your hands. For example, when I was playing Starcraft II with my girlfriend I just couldn’t understand how she could micro so inefficiently. Rather than dismiss her as just being incapable (she’s actually a pretty good gamer and learns super quickly!) I thought about it for a bit and tried out her mouse. She was using a mouse that was way too big for her hand and it was so large that even I was uncomfortable trying to hold and use it. I termed it the “”spaceship mouse”” because of the clunky and unnatural feeling you got when you tried to use it. We got her a smaller mouse that fit her hand better and she instantly improved noticeably.
Don’t settle for some shitty setup. As with the other factors, you don’t the state of your equipment to be a reason for you performing sub-optimally. Honestly, it’s not even a question of how expensive the product you are using is. It’s more about whether it fits you properly. You can find plenty of quality keyboard+mouse setups (my entire setup is $189.76 before tax and shipping on Amazon) for under $70 or even less if you get some good deals at the thrift store.
Links for my gaming equipment if you’re interested: Steelseries Apex [RAW] Gaming Keyboard $48.02| Steelseries Sensei [RAW] Gaming Mouse $42.55 | Steelseries Siberia V2 Full-size Gaming Headset $69.20 | Logitech G440 Hard Gaming Mousepad $29.99
10. Check out flux.
If you’re like me and you game deep into the night at times you should check out flux in order to reduce the eyestrain and confusion that your body will be experiencing due to being awake and staring at a computer screen when everything else around you is pitch black. What flux does is change the colour tones of your screen to match the time of day you are using your computer. This means that at around 8PM (during the summer) your screen will become slightly less bright and brighten up again when the sun rises in the morning. It’s a subtle change but it gives your eyes a break and helps you eventually settle down and go to sleep by reminding your body that the day has come to an end.
I love gaming and am devoted to maintaining performance so keeping in good shape has the dual benefit of ensuring my health doesn’t deteriorate whilst preserving my level of execution that allows me to continue to excel (or at least attempt to). Consider this, would you want to be hampered by a nagging pain in your wrist while struggling for survival in a epic 70 minute game of DotA 2? Would you consider it to be a valid excuse to your teammates in CS:GO if you claim that you couldn’t see your foe and shoot him first because your eyes were too tired? No, you’d feel pretty shitty about messing up in DotA 2 and your teammates in CS:GO would rag on you for needing glasses or some such (and that would be a real shame if you’d managed to avoid having to get them so far!). Preserve your physical health for your own good as well as for the sake of continuing to be able to play the games that you love.
Preserve your physical health for your own good as well as for the sake of continuing to be able to play the games that you love.
That’s all for now. Keep healthy and keep on gaming! Have a pezant day.
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