Ideal warm ups and workouts designed for GAMERS is absolutely necessary to improve performance, and increase career longevity.
This biggest problem with all of the warm ups for GAMERS I’ve seen online is none of the warm ups or workouts address the REAL issue for improving physical performance, and preventing injury.
That’s why I designed the Gamer Workout Program.
Every gamer would ideally need a customized loadout for their warm up routine, but I wanted to provide an example that I think would help a lot of people out.
This warm up targets:
Fingers and hands- Elbows
- Shoulders and neck
- Back
- Eye Positions
Here is a break down of each of the exercises:
1. High Sitting Back Expansion Breathing
- Goal: Learn to “reach with your ribs” during a longer than usual exhale
- Set up: Sit with your hips higher than your knees/ elbows resting on surface/ hands in line or just outside of the elbow
- Feels like: Shoulders are tired/ pull down between the shoulder blades/ back lower ribs and space between shoulder blades expand on the inhale.
2. Rockback Lazy Bear Breathing
- Goal: Make the exhale and “reach with your ribs and elbows” a little more difficult
- Set Up: Make sure elbows are like train tracks with your knees/ DO NOT let the elbows roll out
- Feels like: Shoulders are a little tired just getting into position/ The exhale and reach gets the shoulders working and feeling a pull between the shoulder blades
- What does this do?: This is actually the 1st step to getting rid of forward shoulders, NOT pulling them back (I know the internet and authorities have told you otherwise)
3. Hands and Knees (aka Quadruped) Breathing
- Goal: Get the shoulders in the fastest position to game in (creates the most space for blood flow and decompress the nerves coming down from your neck into your hands)
- Set Up: Knees under hips/ Hands under shoulders/ Feel the palm of your hand on the pinky side, and the 1st knuckle of your pointer finger.
- Feels like: Less pull between shoulder blades, but should feel expansion on the INHALE in the chest, and stretch in the hands
- P.S. These actually create long term changes to the flexibility in your hands and wrists rather than just pulling on them.
4. Low Oblique Sit with Push Away
- Goal: Get the elbows, ribs, and eyes ready to assume the gaming position for a long time. Helps the shape of the body and eyes to move faster with LESS EFFORT.
- Set Up: Whatever side you are on, try to get the palm on the pinky side of your hand down, the inside of your elbow, your hip and the outside of the knee. Have a dot on the wall about 20 feet away from you to look up at.
- Feels like: Shoulder and forearm get tired/ When sagging into the floor ribs on bottom side expand on inhale, and opposite side when pushing away.
5. Egg Rolls
- Goal: Gets the back and shoulders loosened up, plus helps to quickly locate targets with the eyes.
- Set Up: Sit on the ground with your knees bent and holding your shins
- Feels like: Your rocking on the ground.
- P.S. Make sure the dot is still in the distance. Every time you come back up to sitting try and locate the the dot to bring it into focus before you go back down again.
6. Heels Elevated Assisted Squat Holds
- Goal: Get the body used to the stress of the sitting position without compensating and settling into a slower and more compressed posture while gaming.
- Set Up: Make sure your entire foot is on a ramp surface/ Hands using a sturdy kitchen sink to lean back on the heels
- Feels like: Start on your heels, as your shin go forward don’t let the heels lift at all, but the weight will be evenly distributed between the ball of your feet and the inside of your heels.
7. Hear Hold Breathing
- Goal: Get the shoulders, neck, elbows, hands ready to endure the high stress of Esports.
- Set Up: Same starting position as the quadruped breathing, now just lifting the knees off the ground.
- All the feels from quadruped breathing, just more intense in the abs (but NO CRUNCHING)
The examples above for meant to be for educational purposes only. It is in no way meant to be medical or professional advice.
The truth about nearly every piece of Gamer warm up content on the internet coming out of the United States at this time are only considering the location of pain as the SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM.
The Gamer Workout Program and Gaming Workout 1 on 1 Rehab are applying principles from the highest level traditional sports training and bringing it to Gamers.
I know teams are winning world championships with less than ideal training and rehab, but I want to see players have career lengths similar to European soccer players resulting in gaming dynasty’s.
If your someone who is struggling to feel better despite having already tried going to the Doctor, PTs, Chiro’s, then consider giving me a call or email because more than likely you haven’t done anything similar to what I will put you through.
My Email: cameron@ptherapyinstitute.com