Staying Healthy - A Guide to Playing Melee Better and Longer

[ofrocks]

Hey thespymachine , thanks for this thread ! Tonight i had a pretty intense training session on PM and i woke up with headaches and my wrists were hurting a little bit... The first thing i thought was that i had to look up to some exercises to relax my hands before and after training and that i should take a break for my eyes and entering smashboards i see this thread (actually i first saw it on twitter) ... Thanks for those tips i'll start doing them and probably my conditioning will improve :D

 

[thespymachine]

Keep it up every day and you'll be feeling great.

 

[TOGOpuff]

i'll be doing those exercises before training no doubt ! and i'll make my friends do them as well :D haha will be #1 on rules of the house !

 

[TOGOpuff]

Sorry for double post i'm having internet issues and it said i hadn't post before ! if someone can please delete this i'll be glad.

 

[thespymachine]

Recently, instead of doing the strengthening exercises posted, I've just been doing high repetitions of inputs on my controller that I would do in-game. For example, I'll do y-button -> down-c-stick over and over until my thumb/wrist gets really tired.

My thinking is: strength = speed, so by working muscles in my hand/wrist/arm that I'll actually use in matches, I'll strengthen them, thus speeding up my play.

Also, it's good to have the game on and you playing so you can keep your inputs at least slightly accurate to what they would be in-game. But, it's fine not to, because it's just for strengthening the muscles.

 

[TOGOpuff]

Recently, instead of doing the strengthening exercises posted, I've just been doing high repetitions of inputs on my controller that I would do in-game. For example, I'll do y-button -> down-c-stick over and over until my thumb/wrist gets really tired.

My thinking is: strength = speed, so by working muscles in my hand/wrist/arm that I'll actually use in matches, I'll strengthen them, thus speeding up my play.

Also, it's good to have the game on and you playing so you can keep your inputs at least slightly accurate to what they would be in-game. But, it's fine not to, because it's just for strengthening the muscles.

couldn't this be a double-edged sword ? I really agree that doing the same move billion times makes you execute it faster but at the same way you'll be repeating countless time the same hand movement which can improve the chances of muscle stress due to repetition ?

 

[thespymachine]

couldn't this be a double-edged sword ? I really agree that doing the same move billion times makes you execute it faster but at the same way you'll be repeating countless time the same hand movement which can improve the chances of muscle stress due to repetition ?

Strength training is absolutely dependent on the same movement over and over. The muscle 'stress' is mitigated by rest, stretching, and working other muscles.
I don't necessarily think it's a double-edged sword in this context.

 

[thespymachine]

Did a little more research for stuff in this.
Found some interesting stuff on resting the mind and meditation.

 

[SpiderMad]

http://smashboards.com/posts/17071426/

 

[thespymachine]

http://smashboards.com/posts/17071426/

I'm trying to figure out specifically what I can take from that and put in this.
It's great stuff because it talks about how damaging playing competitive Smash can be - and I'm glad certain aspects of PM (whether put in on purpose or not) are mitigating some of those problems.

Would you like me to just link that post in this thread somewhere? Or would you rather me put something specific from it?
If it's the latter, let me know what you think would work best and where in the OP.

To health!

 

[raymundoTheGod]

You're the man.

 

[SpiderMad]

I'm trying to figure out specifically what I can take from that and put in this.
It's great stuff because it talks about how damaging playing competitive Smash can be - and I'm glad certain aspects of PM (whether put in on purpose or not) are mitigating some of those problems.

Would you like me to just link that post in this thread somewhere? Or would you rather me put something specific from it?
If it's the latter, let me know what you think would work best and where in the OP.

To health!

I'm not sure, what do you think?

For Melee, they should know about Kadano's videos
http://youtu.be/tL3zzBMGPaY Lube + Hard press rubber weakening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwJ20lYS9bw&list=UU5kTkoEn9jKYDhQ0p2nz9IA#t=1359 Spring shorten + Hard press rubber weakening
There's also guides out there on inserting a spacer into it if you removed most/all of your spring to raise the click out
Another tip would be for people to light press their L-cancels.
Also if people are able to, playing Melee/PM on a Wii with $5 component cables if your CRT allows it is better quality: possibly reducing eye strain.

For people concerned about PM, they already can be glad of the jumpsquat fix. I don't think they're ever gonna revert it to have a "dead" frame of button check that Melee had. Sometimes people confuse it with the physics delay, which is an issue that causes actual actions to be different than Melee by a frame.

People should be concerned and show support for the "Light press air dodge" to be coded as an option into the fullset (Player/Trigger specific like Rumble On or Off). People who have played the Wifi version of PM currently experience it, and those that actually light press with it instead of pretending to still hard press begin to see its benefits: especially if their triggers suck/are unmodified or their hands are in or close to a weakened state.

 

[thespymachine]

I'm not sure, what do you think?

For Melee, they should know about Kadano's videos
http://youtu.be/tL3zzBMGPaY Lube + Hard press rubber weakening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwJ20lYS9bw&list=UU5kTkoEn9jKYDhQ0p2nz9IA#t=1359 Spring shorten + Hard press rubber weakening
There's also guides out there on inserting a spacer into it if you removed most/all of your spring to raise the click out
Another tip would be for people to light press their L-cancels.
Also if people are able to, playing Melee/PM on a Wii with $5 component cables if your CRT allows it is better quality: possibly reducing eye strain.

For people concerned about PM, they already can be glad of the jumpsquat fix. I don't think they're ever gonna revert it to have a "dead" frame of button check that Melee had. Sometimes people confuse it with the physics delay, which is an issue that causes actual actions to be different than Melee by a frame.

People should be concerned and show support for the "Light press air dodge" to be coded as an option into the fullset (Player/Trigger specific like Rumble On or Off). People who have played the Wifi version of PM currently experience it, and those that actually light press with it instead of pretending to still hard press begin to see its benefits: especially if their triggers suck/are unmodified or their hands are in or close to a weakened state.

I'm just going to link directly to your post about all of that stuff.

 

[Sensei]

This is a great guide, not just for smash but for general well-being. Thanks for the op!

 

[Host Change]

I'll have to give some of these things a try. It was worth the read!

 

[Oddyesy]

Thanks for this man! A guy on Reddit was feeling some pain so I directed him here. I probably need to start on these as well haha.

Can we get the mods to sticky this...?

 

[Zone]

So now that we made my Melee be better and last longer, can we do something for my sex life?

Play falcon,

Bring extra pairs of clothes to tourneys though

 

[Jackson]

Wow! Thanks for this man. I've actually worried about hand problems in the future because of smash, but these exercises seem to mitigate them.

 

[Kidney Thief]

As soon as I stopped smoking my skills in melee doubled, and I didn't even smoke that much. Maybe 10 cigaros a day. Would recommend to anyone trying to get better at maylay

 

[King Mob]

Why isn't this stickied?

 

[SonicWinDX]

Can't thank you enough for this, I'm dying of wrist pains playing Falco, so this is a huge relief.

 

[FoxeR]

Is there any optimal way to hold controller Ie resting arms on knees or anything? Im trying to learn to not grip the controller as hard.

 

[MagnuM]

According to my thread activity, this is my first post since November 24, 2008. If you take note of my join date, I'm not exactly new around here. I'm an old Bowser pro from the past, but my return is for less-than-fortune reasons.

I can attest to how important it is to follow the recommendations in this invaluable thread. I'm on my second RSI (repetitive strain injury) now, and this one is in both wrists. It started on August 7th, 2015 while at work, and the pain came on suddenly. I'm a server administrator for a provincial health insurance company, so I do a lot of typing and screen-staring. Doing this 40 hours a week, every week - and not including personal PC time doing the exact same activity - takes quite a toll on the body after a while. Our bodies were not designed for such repetitive activities for such a sustained period of time.

While age is a factor, I don't think it can totally be blamed. My first RSI was while I was 19 in the peak of my Smash career in 2005. How does a Bowser pro manage to get injured you ask? Well it was the combination of all my Smashing, plus being a full-time computer student, working part-time at a call center, playing StarCraft excessively on a tiny travel laptop mouse, Smashboards, chat, etc that all added up. Looking at my old log, I had issues for a good 8 months. I'm not even sure what eventually got me better besides rest, and buying a split ergonomic keyboard. I had relief for a good 9 years before this latest nasty relapse.

Even to type this message, I'm wearing two heavy-duty wrist guards that prevent my wrists from bending in any direction. This helps support my wrist tendons as they (slowly) heal. Any type of recovery has been agonizingly slow. I'm also attending physiotherapy on a weekly basis in my attempts to get better. My injury is on the pinky (ulnar) side of both wrists. The technical description would be tendinitis of the flexor carpi ulnaris. Tenosynovitis (tendon sheath) instead of tendinitis was another possible explanation. What's the likely cause? Pure overuse is the most likely cause, but it could also be from a habit of bad typing posture due to ulnar deviation to hit some of the far keys:

http://www.ergomatters.co.uk/images/wrist_bad2_sm.jpg

Amazingly though, this isn't even my only computer-related issue I'm juggling right now. I also have issues with chronic eye pain while using digital displays that is pretty severe, and I've had it for over 3 years now. Someone even updated SmashWiki and posted this fact as the reason why I have an inactive status. I'm not sure how they knew - aside from perhaps one of my posts on my Bowser fansite "The Bowser Shrine" - but it's a pretty accurate reason.

I heard through the grapevine that Mew2King had injured his hand(s), and has been playing with pain for a while. Quite a few months ago I tried reaching out to him through a SmashBoards private message. I've yet to receive a response, because he needs to see a doctor.

My intention is not to scare anybody, but to raise awareness that these issues can and do happen. If you ever feel any pain or discomfort that does not feel normal, it is imperative that you cease that activity immediately until the discomfort goes away. This is often an early warning sign, and ignoring it can set back your recovery for a long time.

Game safe everyone!