words Al Woods
People may not know that you can actually injure yourself when gaming online. Because it’s not a physical contact sport – it’s easy to think that there isn’t any risk of getting hurt but that’s not the case.
The mixture of overuse and staying up all night can have effects on your overall health. We’ve put together some tips as to how to avoid these injuries.
Monitor Time Spent Gaming
It’s easy to get into a gaming session and pull an all-nighter or spend hours on end each time you play – but that’s not something that’s great for your physical or mental health. Instead of this, you should monitor the amount of time you spend gaming every day. If it’s more than 2 hours a day, you should be looking to limit this if possible. You can do this by setting an alarm and when your time is up end your session.
Maintain a Good Posture
If you are hunched over a computer all day, it can have damaging effects to your posture. A great way to get around this is to find yourself a gaming chair. As well as improving your posture position – it will make your gaming experience much more comfortable all round. There’s a great selection of gaming chairs out there these days, and you can discover more at bestgamingchair.com who have a number of useful guides on what’s available.
Take Regular Breaks
Just like if you were sitting at a computer at an office all day, it’s important that you take regular breaks when gaming. Sitting in the same position for hours on end can cause problems. Think about a healthy activity you like to do. It could be anything from taking a walk, to riding a bike, to going swimming – and pull away from the chair from time to time at regular intervals – specifically if you aren’t sticking to the 2 hour time limit!
Exercise Regularly
As well as a good gaming chair improving your posture, it’s a good idea to take regular upper body and core strength exercises to do this too. This will help you avoid gaming shoulder pain and other pain. You might also find that stretching your thumbs will help you avoid injury. To do this, you should make sure that your palm is faced down on any flat surface that you can find – and then lift your thumb up. Once you do this, try and keep it there for at least half a minute but up to a minute before relaxing it. Do this 10 times. If you also tuck your thumb into your hand and clench your fist, this will help to stretch the tendon that your thumb uses when gaming.
If you Feel Pain – Stop Gaming
If you do happen to feel any pain when you are gaming such as gaming wrist pain, then don’t make it worse by continuing to play. Make sure that you stop before it gets any worse. You don’t want to put any additional strain on any injuries.
Hopefully these tips will give you a good idea as to how you can stop injury when gaming.
