Over at Tonic, writer Alex Tisdale has a piece on the perils of bad posture while gaming. If you hunch forward in an aggressive posture, or slouch back for hours at a time, you could end up with far worse than a sore back.
Adam Fields is a chiropractor based in Kentucky, and has been an avid gamer since he was six years old. He says the majority of his clientele are gamers like me. "The biggest problem I see is postural syndrome," he says, referring to anyone with rounded shoulders, a hyper-extended neck, and a hunched back. "These are the slouchers. It comes from sitting forward or looking at your phone or TV screen for hours without any kind of exercise to counter that."
Leaning too far forward too much of the time is even worse, and Fields recommends getting up to stretch often and being mindful of your posture, no matter how intense the action is on-screen. He also recommends a series of exercises to get those muscles in peak condition to counter the effects of prolonged sitting.Read the whole piece at Tonic.Fields says the condition is very common among gamers, many of whom visit his clinic up to four times a week for treatment. "If you don't correct the syndrome when you're young, you'll be prone to more of a hunchback as you age, and possibly lots of other issues," he says.