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I play at 3400x3700 dpi, which I consider to be fairly high. I found that I had a lot of strain on all my hand and wrist muscles because I was used to making much larger motions and I had to tense up my hand a lot to make such fine motions at a fast speed.
As I trained more, however, I learned to use my fingers more to move the mouse, and make as little use of my wrist as possible. Now I use a combination of wrist and finger motions to control the mouse, which causes a lot less stress because it simply isn't possible to make the fingers move the mouse as far, so I don't need to strain my hand to get it to stop moving.
So if you raise the sensitivity but continue to rely on your wrist (which is for course motions), you will obviously strain your hand. Raising the sensitivity allows you to control the mouse with your fingers (which are for fine motions), which causes less strain to the wrist by dividing the strain between more muscles. Just raising the sensitivity without changing how you use the mouse is pointless.
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On August 01 2011 01:09 SentinelSC2 wrote:
I don't know if it helps carpal tunnel specifically but I play with a wrist band now and my wrist doesn't hurt anymore. The problem wasn't because of my mouse movement, but just the fact that my wrist was on a hard surface for 9+ hours a day.
I do the same thing. I mean, CTS is caused by basically a collapse of the bone around the carpal tunnel (which is that little nub at the base of our palm that we all love to use as a pivot), so it makes sense that if we cushion that point in some way, it'd reduce the risk of getting it.
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To clarify, when you put your wrist on the edge you tend to tense up a lot more than when you just put your whole arm on the table
you should still keep your wrist as your pivot point on the table to maintain accuracy. It's so much easier to relax when you have your arm on the table
Just try switching from wrist on the edge to arm on the table and see how it can be so much more relaxing. Feel the stress in the top part of your wrist when you lean on the edge.
:D
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On August 01 2011 02:18 philipov wrote:
I play at 3400x3700 dpi, which I consider to be fairly high. I found that I had a lot of strain on all my hand and wrist muscles because I was used to making much larger motions and I had to tense up my hand a lot to make such fine motions at a fast speed.
As I trained more, however, I learned to use my fingers more to move the mouse, and make as little use of my wrist as possible. Now I use a combination of wrist and finger motions to control the mouse, which causes a lot less stress because it simply isn't possible to make the fingers move the mouse as far, so I don't need to strain my hand to get it to stop moving.
So if you raise the sensitivity but continue to rely on your wrist (which is for course motions), you will obviously strain your hand. Raising the sensitivity allows you to control the mouse with your fingers (which are for fine motions), which causes less strain to the wrist by dividing the strain between more muscles. Just raising the sensitivity without changing how you use the mouse is pointless.
Try this
Try moving your mouse a very tiny little bit up and down
then try moving your mouse about a centimeter
notice the chance in stress.
Obviously your wrists are going to get stronger over time, but there is a big limit with how your muscles grow and how your body is strained.
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On August 01 2011 02:33 opiemonster wrote:
Try this
Try moving your mouse a very tiny little bit up and down
then try moving your mouse about a centimeter
notice the chance in stress.
Obviously your wrists are going to get stronger over time, but there is a big limit with how your muscles grow and how your body is strained.
well, when I move the mouse up and down only a tiny bit, I do it by just making a slightly motion with my thumb and not moving the rest of my fingers or wrist at all. When I move more, I have to use all my fingers, but my wrist still doesn't move. When I move the mouse left or right, I can do this either by translating the mouse with my wrist, normally, or by rotating the mouse with my fingers. As I get more comfortable using the mouse entirely with my fingers, and as my fingers get stronger and more precise, I don't have to strain my hand as much.
Strain is caused by compensating for imprecision by tensing all your muscles up so they can't move as much. You need to deleverage your motions so you can make finer ones. Instead of doing this by tensing up my wrist and hand muscles, I attempt to do it by replacing my wrist muscles with my finger muscles, and then learning to use both together. This reduces the strain by distributing it among more muscles.
As for your last point, if I'm understanding you correctly, this is the foundation of my plan. I feel that wrist injuries are the result of not exercising your hand/wrist/arm enough and pushing yourself past your limits. I don't think enough players do specific exercises to improve muscle strength, nor give their arms enough rest to let the muscles heal themselves between exercise.
If you raise your mouse sensitivity and don't retrain your hand motions to be more precise (by using your fingers) and strengthen your muscles overall, of course it will lead to injury. Simply playing a lot is enough to do that too.
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Could you define sensitivity? Is 2100 DPI (42% on sc2) too high for browsing or gaming?
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On August 01 2011 01:09 hugman wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2011 00:58 untilMay wrote:
I've played video games sense I was 5 years old and I've never had an issue with any wrist injuries and I've not been doing any of the things you suggest. I highly believe wrist injuries are mainly due to a mental fear in people. (To be clear I played Quake 3 at 5 years old, my dad was into it and wanted me to play next to him ^_^ so the games I played were somewhat strenuous even tho I never played at a pro level 10 hrs a day on Quake 3 I eventually got into Unreal and Starcraft and now Starcraft 2 where I play atleast 4 hrs a day and most days playing 10-14 hours a day.) I played games for 20 years to with no problems until suddenly out of the blue I got problems. It has nothing to do with mental fear. I don't kno wwhy you think it does. Anyway, Imostly stopped using the computer for about a month and did some stretching exercises fairly regularly (many times a day) like putting my arms out straight then pulling the wrists back as much as you can for 10-15 secs, then pulling them down for 10-15s a couple of times, and also just stretching out my fingers and then clenching my fist. I don't have any problems atm so it seems to have worked. I mostly had pain in my fingers and forearm, not wrists though.
Yea for sure I understand about RSI but I was talking more CTS. Sorry to hear that and yea you're right I'm 18 so I haven't encountered issues in my wrists due to aging. However i was trying to add by saying stretch a lot and go to the doctor very soon after a max of week long pain in the wrist (or fatigue). I wasn't trying to flame the discussion 
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sensitivity is an amorphous concept made up of a number of different components that aren't always consistently classified. I define sensitivity as the distance your mouse has to cause your cursor to move a certain number of pixels. The base sensitivity is determined by the dots-per-inch, which is the physical resolution of your mouse's sensor. The sensitivity most people are familiar with is the software multiplier on DPI. 6/11 in windows is the middle setting and means there is no multiplier. If the mouse has 1000 dpi and moves 1 inch, the cursor will move 1000 pixels. If it's set higher, you'll skip pixels which will decrease your precision, so it's always better to increase your sensitivity by raising the DPI of the mouse itself.
As for whether 2100 DPI is too high, that's entirely dependent on the strength and precision of your fingers. I'm comfortable browsing at 3400x3700 dpi (more sensitive horizontal scale to compensate for widescreen.), but it took quite a bit of pain and soreness to get there. The same kind I get when riding a bicycle uphill; it's important to know the difference between that and injury.
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I once knew a guy who was very much into isometric exercises and martial arts, and his policy was to train hard 6 days a week, but have 1 day where he simply did no physical labor at all, to let his body regenerate. Muscles grow and become stronger by being torn apart in small ways, and then healing. That's how exercise works. But I think because people aren't used to treating the hands as something you would exercise like you would your arms and legs, they don't give it the same considerations. Injuries naturally result from exercise when you don't give your muscles time to regenerate.
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even better, low sensitivity is even better for accuracy and precision, since fore-arm movement is more consistent and precise. (you are not going to feel that right after switching from wrist, but you will)
having played cs1.6 (basically as much as i could, from gr 7 - gr 12) i can guarantee you that fore-arm movement is the way to be pro, as i started out with very high sensitivity when i was a n00b, but later realized all the pros were using whole arm wide movements and big big bigass mousepads...
anyways, i would suggest a big steelpad qck+, and your mouse, from left of screen to right, should move alteast 4-5inches (if not more)
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Just stop skinning the eal and you're fine
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On August 01 2011 03:01 jHERO wrote:
even better, low sensitivity is even better for accuracy and precision, since fore-arm movement is more consistent and precise. (you are not going to feel that right after switching from wrist, but you will)
Arm, Wrist, and Fingers, acting in coordination, is what it takes to be a real super mouser.
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i really like and agree with the OP's tip on laying your forearms on the table while you're playing; this is 100% invaluable advice. to add to it, there are two ways to aid in forcing yourself to get used to playing like this that i've learned after having played broodwar since 98, sc2 for the last year, and doing software development throughout school and now as a fulltime job.
first, rip the arms off your chair. this will remove the need to support your arms from the elbows while pivoting on your wrists. it actually forced me to move my keyboard into the table more, and now i pivot from my forearms.
also, to help, you shouldn't use the little risers on the back of the keyboard. play with the keyboard flat. this will cause you to curl your fingers more to use the keyboard, which is actually a strategy that's taught to a lot of piano players to avoid issues with carpal tunnel syndrome (from what i've been told) -- the strategy being curling your fingers, not taking risers off keys 
since i started doing this stuff, i stopped losing feeling in my pinkies while playing or programming, and i also don't suffer from elbow pain nearly as quickly as i used to when i rest them while driving. you should actually avoid resting them while driving too; that's the next habit i've been working on breaking to avoid CTS :-)
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On August 01 2011 00:45 imSOZO wrote:
hey, i am a master level terran player who was once at the top of my master league playing about 5 hours a day, watching replays for 1 hour, and watching streams/tournaments for 1 hour. basically i was spending a ton of time. when i got a 2 week break during college i bumped my play up to 9-10 hours a day to get into the top rankings of us ladder(sidenote: i was eating fast food, candy, drinking alot of soda everyday, and i wasn't excersising at all). i was playing in a ton of tournaments and all of a sudden my forearms began to tighten up mainly in the extensor area and my wrist began to ache in pain. aching in the hands soon followed. i played with my wrist at the edge of the table with a small mouse called the razer orochi at 2000 dpi. i know i tense up alot when playing. i remember having this pain one time during beta but i took a 3 week break and it went away. this time this pain was constant all day everyday for 6 months. and here i am 6 months later with the same pain. i have been to doctors and they say its rsi. no carpell or tendonitis. just little soft tissue damage and rsi. so i took a month off and did physical therapy and nothing worked. it got a little better and i went back to play and made it worse. how long does it take for this to heal? and what am i going to have to do.. its extremely irritating. i may have to take a full month off from all computer use and start strengthening my arm/wrist/finger muscles. does anyone have experience with this? how do i get back to 100%?
i know tlo has had my same problem for a year now and from what ive read its all cleared up now.
Did they give you an EMG? I got one and they now they think I have radial tunnel syndrome. I also have pain in my extensor area, but also above my elbow. Wrist pain isn't too bad (although there is some sometimes). I'm going to start physical therapy soon so we'll see how that works out.
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Guys, at the end of the day some people have a predisposition to RSI and CTS. Not everyone will get it even if they have bad posture of the wrists while playing. I've been playing RTS games for at least 4 hours a day for like 10 years now and I doubt I've had the right posture most of the time, yet I'm fine.
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I use my arm to drag the camera around with middle click, and if I lowered the sensitivity, middle click dragging the screen would be very slow. I'm not sure FPS games make a good comparison to starcraft because of the difference in the range of precision required for each game.
FPS games have much more common use of course motions to turn yourself combined with fine motions to aim your weapon. It seems natural that you would use your arm for the course motions because you're using your wrist to do the fine control. If you set the sensitivity too high, you'll be relying on your fingers alone to do the work of finely aiming the crosshairs. It took me a long time to train my fingers to be as precise as my wrist for controlling the mouse in regular situations.
In comparison, starcraft has a much wider range of precision, but you usually only use one band at a time, and it's not as demanding at the finest end of the spectrum. I use my fingers for very fine control in small areas of the screen, my wrist for moving between different parts of the screen, and my arm for moving the screen across the map very quickly. (It's as good as clicking the minimap in most situations). There are 3 levels of precision instead of just 2, and while you don't really need to use them at the same time, you must be able to switch between them very quickly.
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On August 01 2011 03:18 Blizzard_torments_me wrote:
Guys, at the end of the day some people have a predisposition to RSI and CTS. Not everyone will get it even if they have bad posture of the wrists while playing. I've been playing RTS games for at least 4 hours a day for like 10 years now and I doubt I've had the right posture most of the time, yet I'm fine.
It does not need to be determined in your gens.
I just made a weapon for cosplaying and was sawing for several hours plus filing and sanding. The next day my wrist felt like my hand would weight several kilos and it hurted A LOT.
I never had any problems what so ever with my wirst before (played DoD very competitvly, with high dpi/sens as sniper).
Those things can occur just because you played/worked/whateva too much OR can be caused because u are more likely to get such things because of your nature.
Injuries naturally result from exercise when you don't give your muscles time to regenerate.
True point.
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The best pianists have to spend 10+ hours a day practicing. At high levels, that's 10 hours with a functional "APM" of at least 400. Piano keys take 20-100x more force to press (don't actually know how much), In other words, the amount of strain is probably hundreds of times more than what it requires to play Starcraft, and RSI are big problems with amateurs because of it.
There is ONE thing that professionals need to do to prevent carpal tunnel. it's the only thing that matters; and if you don't do, it, no amount of stretching and other techniques will ward it off. All you need to do is play (piano or Starcraft) with a relaxed body. It's harder than it sounds, but you hardly need to use any muscles at all to move a mouse or keyboard. Just relax - there's no need to perform any action with more effort than is required. Most players tense up in the heat of a game and clench all the muscles in their hands and wrists and shoulders to try to force themselves to go faster. It might feel good in the short term, but it's just going to cause injuries in the long term.
Watching players like TLO, it's completely utterly obvious why he has problems with his wrists. He's ridiculously tense when he plays. On the other hand, watch HuK;s stream and look at his mouse. He's touching it so, so, so lightly that the cursor just seems to flutter about the screen. Anyone have videos that show his mouse hand?
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no they never did. 3 doctors i went to kinda sucked. i also have pain above the elbow and inside the elbow above the inner forearm area. what exactly is an emg? i may need to go to a 4th doctor...
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EPT
