Cold Hands – Do They Affect Your Game?

As winter approaches, you may start to notice that your hands are colder than usual when you are gaming, especially if the ambient room temperature drops during the colder seasons. What most gamers don’t realize is that cold hands do affect your gaming performance. This is especially good for the cs go cold hands syndrome.

Muscle Temperature & Response Rate

How fast and precise your muscles respond to nervous stimuli is directly related to muscle temperature. Just ask any professional athlete how he performs with cold muscles. The same applies to your fingers, just on a much smaller scale.

In order to be at your best, you must be playing with warm hands.

The main reason that your hands are cold is usually due to a restricted blood flow. This will usually occur for a few reasons…

Cold Hands & Restricted Blood Flow

– First, if your hands are too nervous and clenched up, your blood circulation will be restricted.
– Second, if your body is cold and losing too much heat, your body will redirect the heat to your internal organs to keep them warm because they are more important (Isn’t our body cool?)
– Third, if you have an overall poor circulation, your hands and toes will be affected first. This is the most common case.

Now, we usually play with our arms stretched in front of us for a long period of time. Although this isn’t the worse position, the lack of movement contributes to poor sanguine circulation. The higher your arms are on the desk, the worse it will be.

What To Do Next Time Your Hands Get Cold

Ideally, here’s what you want to do next time you get cold hands:
– A few jumping jacks, this will get your entire body to pump more blood and will warm you up quite rapidly.
– Stretches, often a few simple stretches will fix any circulation issues.
– Take in deep breaths. Deep breathing improves circulation tremendously, you’ll feel more energy and a clearer mind.
– Drink some water / tea
– Get a hand massage. If possible, get a hand massage, not only will it feel GREAT, but it will almost instantly warm up your hands.

All of these things will help you improve circulation, warm up your hands and help you with your aim. I know that we’re getting into smaller details of physical gaming, but they do make a difference.

Another trick suggested by 3ncore is to make your own home gloves:”My hands went from being ice cold and almost hurting to sweating and the entire hand, including finger tips, being very comfortably warm. This little glove mod only cost me $1, including gloves!”

 

Although these won’t help with circulation, they’ll definitely help with keeping your muscles warm during the cold winter months!

Recapping What Cold Hands Can Do When Gaming

Recap:
– Playing with cold hands will make you less accurate.
– When your hands are cold, improve blood circulation to warm them up
– Can use glove mod to help cold hands
– Watch your posture and breathe properly to reduce cold hands.

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About the Author

Eric is the author of Fragging Fundamentals, the ultimate guide to competitive FPS gaming.

Leave a reply 3 comments

J Keith - November 12, 2008 Reply

Suggestions types/prices/vendors on different type of gloves including ones above

Very Cold Hands Middel finger on each hand will actually turn purple and go numb
Test performed: Poor circulation found

Thank You

V3A - March 16, 2009 Reply

Very true, but as I hate having cold fingers I always do something like this without really thinking about it πŸ˜‰ Wristbands (made for that purpose, not sweatbands) warm sweaters etc. will help too.

Glad i stumbled across this!
πŸ™‚

Gabriel - March 25, 2009 Reply

I did my first gaming glowes now, must try it out. Have been eating good and am gonna load up some water. Got all the minerals and omega in my body fibers too. Warm up here i come. Thanks for this site maybe this can be a good hangout for achive perfection and good sportmanchip.

Warm regards / D0dgeThis

PS! FPS is a sport too… i donΒ΄t care what u sportfreaks say.
Death 2 campers πŸ˜‰

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