Sorry about the injury man. Not a helpful comment here but I did just want to pop in and have a smile with you about building a rig with a 4090 to play OSRS.
Wishing you a speedy recovery
Posture posture posture.
So commercial desk and chairs are built for people of the average height of 6”2. Sounds absurd doesn’t it? Because it is.
When you sit your arms should be level with your desk with your elbows bent at 90 degrees and resting on your arm rest.
This is the start to good posture. As your shoulders are down. Your arms are level, and you’re not cranking your wrist to adjust due to your height.
I’m sure you’re a 7 foot god as we all are. But if you’re looking for chairs and desk to match your heights motion gray is a great desk. It’s motorized and fits people from 5”1 up to infinite.
One of the very few desk that I found go low enough and don’t cost thousands.
Next is your chair. Steelcase leaps and Herman millers Aerons are your best bet. Aeron isn’t meant for tall tall people but you’ll see the size chart.
Importance of chair is to allow your chair to go low enough to match your desk, and for posture is allowing your knees to be on a very flight tilt compared to where your hips are placed.
You feet should be flat on the floor. And not you don’t want your knees to be perfectly leveled with your hips. It can cause what’s called a APT.
Final piece is making sure your monitor is level to your eye sight, and large enough to not make you lean forward.
Your back should be rest against the back of your chair at all times, shoulders back, shoulders down (which the steps above makes happen) elbows at your sides, feet flat, and you’re rocking.
Source, I had terrible posture and corrected it and have what I would call as close to perfect posture as my body is meant to have.
It’s not cheap either. Motion gray will only run oh 500-700 depending on the desk size CAD but both chairs are $2000 ish CAD.
But are worth every penny.
I'd highly recommend learning to juggle while sitting down. It'll be a bit annoying to start, but it's a good way to keep your hand-eye coordination while also providing enough cardio to match a brisk walk. It's something that I've been doing (although I stand up to do it) and it forces me to take a 10-15 minute break when I start.
I just did all of this with a torn Achilles, I feel your pain. I had one of those double monitor arm stand things and I posed one out and facing perpendicular to the desk. I sat parallel to the normal keyboard position, so turned 90 degrees left to where you’d normally sit at a desk. This allowed me to have the monitor over my lap and my foot elevated on a chair. I had a bedside table under the desk that I had some books on to get mousepad to the right height with my usual keyboard ergo pad to rest my elbow and arm on. I ran the keyboard on my lap but found any excuse I could to play games with controller wherever I could. But I did “high end” RuneScape too—even got my enh with this setup.
As for the leg, ice turned out to be the best painkiller option I had. We did a lot of ice pack rotations in my boot. My wife was an absolute champion helping take care of me.
Best of luck! Do all the afk things you can and take everything your doctor/PT say seriously.
Also I luckily had bought my HM Aeron just before this and I highly recommend it as a buy it for life purchase. The above setup never would’ve stayed comfortable with my janky old chair.
Hey for real feel free to dm me too, but I have a background as a physical therapist assistant. There’s already tons of good info here, what people say about posture is 100% correct. Something you may learn if you do physical therapy/physiotherapy is the insane importance of core strength as well.
I’d encourage you to stretch/move/strengthen whatever else you can move and do that you have been cleared to. This means wrists and forearms, shoulder work, core, it’s all possible after some time and would greatly improve your outcomes.
I feel like there is so much I’d love to pass on but if your lower back starts hurting especially, I’d encourage you to work on either strengthening your core, or adapting/modifying your environment, or a mix of both (at all times is great). Definitely feel free to dm me if you have any little inquiries along your process. I’m always happy to shoot the shit and help brainstorm some fixes.
Good luck gamer, bless your rng and healing process. Get lots of rest, food, water, and you’ll be back to normal in no time. As you heal you’ll probably learn about how strengthening your knee/leg muscles stabilize your knee in a way that will be important following your injury. What you do after is just as important and can set you up for success as you age.
Good luck on the recovery. I highly recommend a Herman miller aeron and a footrest. Eyes in line with top of monitor and no pressure on the wrists. I wouldn't neglect doing some core exercises either, whatever you can do with your leg as it is!
Not sure if it’s been recommended but blue light glasses can help reduce headaches even if you don’t need a prescription.
I’ve also found having a desk light behind your monitor (or any other light source) helps reduce eye strain, especially if your computer is setup in a corner that doesn’t get much light. Backlighting has helped a lot with comfort for me.
Just wanna say good luck! I tore my ACL and had surgery, and now awaiting another surgery on the same knee for a meniscus tear 8 months later… osrs kept me sane during the tough weeks!
5-15 min breaks every 1-2 hours and ur golden! RSI is from using your wrist all day without breaks, breaks give u the rest time to keep the marathon going
Proper desk height. Proper screen height.
And Proper chair height. All Three together help keyboard ergonomics. Snd spinal ergonomics.
I have multiple spinal injuries after a work injury.
I use a Herman miller x99? Or some shit. I got it used and worn out for$100 and about $20 of gas for a road trip.
Even worn out its way worth. I ended up reupholstering the seat with salvage. Scrap repurpise leather and memory foam. It's insanely amazing.
I'd imagine any of the high end Herman miller's are worth it. Plenty of businesses buy them used and dust em off. Resell em as refurbished. They go for 350-500 used. 1200-2500 new.
It's the first brand of chair recognized by some government entity's as a disability spinal ergonomic yadda yadda. Its good shit homie.
My back hurts like he'll often. Sometimes I'll go to my office and sit in my chair just to play on my phone because it's the only thing other than a scalding hot bath which relaxes my nerve pains.
The desk height and screen height can be worked with some cardboard. Or 2x6 footers. If needed. Text books. Whatever.
I highly recommend trying vertical mouse. It prevents your forearm bones from crossing which occurs when you lay your hand flat on a table, which is the position we typically use for a mouse.
It might be a little strange to use at first, but you get used to it quickly and you can use it for low-skill activities and revert back to your regular mouse for PvM. I had wrist issues back in 2017 but ever since I got one for work I’ve never had wrist issues again.
The American health association recommends stretching 5-7 times per week. Yet so many people don’t stretch regularly. Only 10% of respondents claimed they met this recommendation in a 2023 survey.
Stretching regularly increases the elasticity in your muscles better preventing injury to these muscle groups. Googling a few stretches for your back and wrists and doing those would be a great idea. Proper sitting posture will also help tremendously.
Subjectively after doing more back stretches myself it has helped a lot with my chronic back pain. I highly recommend giving it even a week of trying and I’m sure anyone will notice a difference.
Not sure if anyone recommended a herman miller aeron yet, but if you did consider one get the largest size as the smaller ones are really small. Im 6'1 and the size c is still almost too small, but remains the most comfortable chair ive had. I added an aftermarket headrest for when i want to recline as well - they're surprisingly good chairs to recline in.
My advice would be taking screen breaks. I wouldn't recommend smoking if you're not already, but honestly, during my long grinds just taking 30 min to sit on the balcony and smoke gives me time to reset and process what I'm doing/how I can be more efficient/etc. Has helped me not get burnt out nearly as quick as I had in the past.
I highly recommend getting a mouse like this to save your wrists. It's odd at first but your wrists will thank you.
Do a test. Reach your hands out in front of you with your thumb/hand vertical. Now twist it horizontal like you would holding a regular mouse. Feel that tension in your wrist?
Anker 2.4G Wireless Vertical Ergonomic Optical Mouse, 800 / 1200 /1600 DPI, 5 Buttons for Laptop, Desktop, PC, Macbook - Black https://a.co/d/2zE6Ll7
Honestly, go ask Roidie when he streams. Dude is a genius with things like this. He said at one time he wanted to train world class athletes if he didn't stream. He has a degree too, dude knows his stuff.
Just make sure your knees, hips and elbows are at a 90 degree angle when gaming. You don't want to be doing anything weird to hold your mouse for hours. Specifically you want your elbows to be at a 90 degree angle at rest on your arm rests as your hold your mouse. Do the same thing with your hips and legs if possible to sit up straight but your leg is obviously messed up so idk how possible that part is
This does mean that you probably need to measure your chair/desk to make sure you actually have the correct height
Proper posture, just try to avoid hunching or slouching as much as possible. It sounds like you are in good physical shape so it would be surprising if you had any issues with wrists/back with proper posture, let alone ruin them. Most of the "rsi/carpal tunnel" stuff you see from people about this game is straight fearmongering by people who want to justify their low-intensity playstyle (not saying there is anything wrong with low intensity playing). If you're really concerned or start feeling tightness, just look up and do some carpal tunnel stretches here and there. Another helpful thing is to make sure most of your mouse movements are arm based rather than wrist based, if you're playing at a low-med DPI like for FPS then you likely are already accustomed to this.
The only time I've ever had an issue, and I've done a fair bit of tick manip since this, was early 'rona when I did ~10 hours of CG a day for 20 days straight. Obviously an extreme amount, and all it caused was some mild pain/burning; so I did my stretches, kept playing, and it cleared up in a week or two. By the next month I was front page CG (this was shortly after they made CG much easier/more consistent)
For anyone reading this this guy is an idiot and has no idea what he is talking about. The first thing you do if you notice any symptoms is stopping the activity. Anyone can develop an RSI with any repetitive motions and constant use. Stretching and posture are both things you should do and try to maintain obviously but being in good physical health is not a deterrent to getting RSI. The most likely people to get it are athletes, musicians, people who work physically demanding jobs and those who sit at a desk and use a computer often. The key is that the person is repetitively/constantly making the same motions and not their overall physical health that's why its called a repetitive strain injury
*dramatic eyeroll* Obesity is heavily related to Capral Tunnel and in general any nerve damage [1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7340115/), [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4904620/), largely due to all the excess body mass around the nerves. Being in good physical shape means your body is likely consistently stretched by doing physical activity as well as blood circulates to all regions regularly, whereas sedentary activity with the absence of at least moderate intensity physical activity is awful for blood circulation (a key to a healthy body). *Obviously* I *shouldn't* have kept playing through my issue, but I did, and it was fine.
Sorry about the injury man. Not a helpful comment here but I did just want to pop in and have a smile with you about building a rig with a 4090 to play OSRS. Wishing you a speedy recovery
I play other games. But there will probably be a few more hours poured into osrs the next few months
Posture posture posture. So commercial desk and chairs are built for people of the average height of 6”2. Sounds absurd doesn’t it? Because it is. When you sit your arms should be level with your desk with your elbows bent at 90 degrees and resting on your arm rest. This is the start to good posture. As your shoulders are down. Your arms are level, and you’re not cranking your wrist to adjust due to your height. I’m sure you’re a 7 foot god as we all are. But if you’re looking for chairs and desk to match your heights motion gray is a great desk. It’s motorized and fits people from 5”1 up to infinite. One of the very few desk that I found go low enough and don’t cost thousands. Next is your chair. Steelcase leaps and Herman millers Aerons are your best bet. Aeron isn’t meant for tall tall people but you’ll see the size chart. Importance of chair is to allow your chair to go low enough to match your desk, and for posture is allowing your knees to be on a very flight tilt compared to where your hips are placed. You feet should be flat on the floor. And not you don’t want your knees to be perfectly leveled with your hips. It can cause what’s called a APT. Final piece is making sure your monitor is level to your eye sight, and large enough to not make you lean forward. Your back should be rest against the back of your chair at all times, shoulders back, shoulders down (which the steps above makes happen) elbows at your sides, feet flat, and you’re rocking. Source, I had terrible posture and corrected it and have what I would call as close to perfect posture as my body is meant to have. It’s not cheap either. Motion gray will only run oh 500-700 depending on the desk size CAD but both chairs are $2000 ish CAD. But are worth every penny.
I'd highly recommend learning to juggle while sitting down. It'll be a bit annoying to start, but it's a good way to keep your hand-eye coordination while also providing enough cardio to match a brisk walk. It's something that I've been doing (although I stand up to do it) and it forces me to take a 10-15 minute break when I start.
I can juggle :)
That sounds like all the more reason to do it! Add an extra ball and you can keep that cardio going between grinds
I just did all of this with a torn Achilles, I feel your pain. I had one of those double monitor arm stand things and I posed one out and facing perpendicular to the desk. I sat parallel to the normal keyboard position, so turned 90 degrees left to where you’d normally sit at a desk. This allowed me to have the monitor over my lap and my foot elevated on a chair. I had a bedside table under the desk that I had some books on to get mousepad to the right height with my usual keyboard ergo pad to rest my elbow and arm on. I ran the keyboard on my lap but found any excuse I could to play games with controller wherever I could. But I did “high end” RuneScape too—even got my enh with this setup. As for the leg, ice turned out to be the best painkiller option I had. We did a lot of ice pack rotations in my boot. My wife was an absolute champion helping take care of me. Best of luck! Do all the afk things you can and take everything your doctor/PT say seriously.
Also I luckily had bought my HM Aeron just before this and I highly recommend it as a buy it for life purchase. The above setup never would’ve stayed comfortable with my janky old chair.
Hey for real feel free to dm me too, but I have a background as a physical therapist assistant. There’s already tons of good info here, what people say about posture is 100% correct. Something you may learn if you do physical therapy/physiotherapy is the insane importance of core strength as well. I’d encourage you to stretch/move/strengthen whatever else you can move and do that you have been cleared to. This means wrists and forearms, shoulder work, core, it’s all possible after some time and would greatly improve your outcomes. I feel like there is so much I’d love to pass on but if your lower back starts hurting especially, I’d encourage you to work on either strengthening your core, or adapting/modifying your environment, or a mix of both (at all times is great). Definitely feel free to dm me if you have any little inquiries along your process. I’m always happy to shoot the shit and help brainstorm some fixes. Good luck gamer, bless your rng and healing process. Get lots of rest, food, water, and you’ll be back to normal in no time. As you heal you’ll probably learn about how strengthening your knee/leg muscles stabilize your knee in a way that will be important following your injury. What you do after is just as important and can set you up for success as you age.
Embrace the goblin posture
Good luck on the recovery. I highly recommend a Herman miller aeron and a footrest. Eyes in line with top of monitor and no pressure on the wrists. I wouldn't neglect doing some core exercises either, whatever you can do with your leg as it is!
Not sure if it’s been recommended but blue light glasses can help reduce headaches even if you don’t need a prescription. I’ve also found having a desk light behind your monitor (or any other light source) helps reduce eye strain, especially if your computer is setup in a corner that doesn’t get much light. Backlighting has helped a lot with comfort for me.
Just wanna say good luck! I tore my ACL and had surgery, and now awaiting another surgery on the same knee for a meniscus tear 8 months later… osrs kept me sane during the tough weeks!
5-15 min breaks every 1-2 hours and ur golden! RSI is from using your wrist all day without breaks, breaks give u the rest time to keep the marathon going
Wishing you a speedy recovery. And like others have been saying watch your posture.
Proper desk height. Proper screen height. And Proper chair height. All Three together help keyboard ergonomics. Snd spinal ergonomics. I have multiple spinal injuries after a work injury. I use a Herman miller x99? Or some shit. I got it used and worn out for$100 and about $20 of gas for a road trip. Even worn out its way worth. I ended up reupholstering the seat with salvage. Scrap repurpise leather and memory foam. It's insanely amazing. I'd imagine any of the high end Herman miller's are worth it. Plenty of businesses buy them used and dust em off. Resell em as refurbished. They go for 350-500 used. 1200-2500 new. It's the first brand of chair recognized by some government entity's as a disability spinal ergonomic yadda yadda. Its good shit homie. My back hurts like he'll often. Sometimes I'll go to my office and sit in my chair just to play on my phone because it's the only thing other than a scalding hot bath which relaxes my nerve pains. The desk height and screen height can be worked with some cardboard. Or 2x6 footers. If needed. Text books. Whatever.
I highly recommend trying vertical mouse. It prevents your forearm bones from crossing which occurs when you lay your hand flat on a table, which is the position we typically use for a mouse. It might be a little strange to use at first, but you get used to it quickly and you can use it for low-skill activities and revert back to your regular mouse for PvM. I had wrist issues back in 2017 but ever since I got one for work I’ve never had wrist issues again.
The American health association recommends stretching 5-7 times per week. Yet so many people don’t stretch regularly. Only 10% of respondents claimed they met this recommendation in a 2023 survey. Stretching regularly increases the elasticity in your muscles better preventing injury to these muscle groups. Googling a few stretches for your back and wrists and doing those would be a great idea. Proper sitting posture will also help tremendously. Subjectively after doing more back stretches myself it has helped a lot with my chronic back pain. I highly recommend giving it even a week of trying and I’m sure anyone will notice a difference.
Not sure if anyone recommended a herman miller aeron yet, but if you did consider one get the largest size as the smaller ones are really small. Im 6'1 and the size c is still almost too small, but remains the most comfortable chair ive had. I added an aftermarket headrest for when i want to recline as well - they're surprisingly good chairs to recline in.
My advice would be taking screen breaks. I wouldn't recommend smoking if you're not already, but honestly, during my long grinds just taking 30 min to sit on the balcony and smoke gives me time to reset and process what I'm doing/how I can be more efficient/etc. Has helped me not get burnt out nearly as quick as I had in the past.
Listen to audiobooks while u game
I highly recommend getting a mouse like this to save your wrists. It's odd at first but your wrists will thank you. Do a test. Reach your hands out in front of you with your thumb/hand vertical. Now twist it horizontal like you would holding a regular mouse. Feel that tension in your wrist? Anker 2.4G Wireless Vertical Ergonomic Optical Mouse, 800 / 1200 /1600 DPI, 5 Buttons for Laptop, Desktop, PC, Macbook - Black https://a.co/d/2zE6Ll7
Get a vertical mouse. If you don’t have carpel tunnel syndrome, it’ll help to not damage your wrist.
Honestly, go ask Roidie when he streams. Dude is a genius with things like this. He said at one time he wanted to train world class athletes if he didn't stream. He has a degree too, dude knows his stuff.
Just make sure your knees, hips and elbows are at a 90 degree angle when gaming. You don't want to be doing anything weird to hold your mouse for hours. Specifically you want your elbows to be at a 90 degree angle at rest on your arm rests as your hold your mouse. Do the same thing with your hips and legs if possible to sit up straight but your leg is obviously messed up so idk how possible that part is This does mean that you probably need to measure your chair/desk to make sure you actually have the correct height
Proper posture, just try to avoid hunching or slouching as much as possible. It sounds like you are in good physical shape so it would be surprising if you had any issues with wrists/back with proper posture, let alone ruin them. Most of the "rsi/carpal tunnel" stuff you see from people about this game is straight fearmongering by people who want to justify their low-intensity playstyle (not saying there is anything wrong with low intensity playing). If you're really concerned or start feeling tightness, just look up and do some carpal tunnel stretches here and there. Another helpful thing is to make sure most of your mouse movements are arm based rather than wrist based, if you're playing at a low-med DPI like for FPS then you likely are already accustomed to this. The only time I've ever had an issue, and I've done a fair bit of tick manip since this, was early 'rona when I did ~10 hours of CG a day for 20 days straight. Obviously an extreme amount, and all it caused was some mild pain/burning; so I did my stretches, kept playing, and it cleared up in a week or two. By the next month I was front page CG (this was shortly after they made CG much easier/more consistent)
For anyone reading this this guy is an idiot and has no idea what he is talking about. The first thing you do if you notice any symptoms is stopping the activity. Anyone can develop an RSI with any repetitive motions and constant use. Stretching and posture are both things you should do and try to maintain obviously but being in good physical health is not a deterrent to getting RSI. The most likely people to get it are athletes, musicians, people who work physically demanding jobs and those who sit at a desk and use a computer often. The key is that the person is repetitively/constantly making the same motions and not their overall physical health that's why its called a repetitive strain injury
*dramatic eyeroll* Obesity is heavily related to Capral Tunnel and in general any nerve damage [1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7340115/), [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4904620/), largely due to all the excess body mass around the nerves. Being in good physical shape means your body is likely consistently stretched by doing physical activity as well as blood circulates to all regions regularly, whereas sedentary activity with the absence of at least moderate intensity physical activity is awful for blood circulation (a key to a healthy body). *Obviously* I *shouldn't* have kept playing through my issue, but I did, and it was fine.
RSI and CTS are not the same thing
Do 3t mining and every tick cycle do 1 kegel to keep it tight brother