Did you know that taking breaks can actually improve your performance? This applies to many areas of life, including gaming. Gaming breaks are an easy to way to improve your play and maintain your health.
This article will explain how gaming breaks can make you a better player.
What Is a Gaming Break?
A gaming break is a break from playing on your console or computer. These breaks involve getting out of your chair and away from your computer screen (or tabletop). A gaming break can be however long you want it to be, although some experts recommend a 17 minute break.
How Gaming Breaks Can Make You a Better Player
Here are the reasons why gaming breaks can make you a better player. We base some of these reasons on scientific evidence, while qualitative experience backs others.
Maintain Eye Acuity
Eye acuity refers to your ability to discern the shapes and details of things you see. As a gamer, your eye acuity is important, because it plays a large role in having good eye-hand coordination and recognizing important details in game.
Long gaming sessions strain your eyes. Taking gaming breaks will reduce this strain and help you maintain your eye acuity. Other things can help as well; read about how to reduce eye strain while playing video games.
Prevent Muscle Strain
Another factor in having good eye-hand coordination is maintaining healthy muscles. Having healthy muscles will ensure you cultivate good reaction times and quick reflexes. Long gaming sessions strain your muscles, because of repetitive motions with the fingers, hands, and wrists. This can lead to arthritis in extreme cases.
Luckily, the cure for muscle strain is relatively simple. You just need to do some stretches. By preventing muscle strain, you avoid potential injuries or discomforts that would hinder your performance. There is a wealth of stretches for gamers who spend too long playing games.
Minimize Mental Fatigue
Now, in addition to your eyes and your muscles, you must keep your brain sharp if you want to be a skillful player. Games are like mental exercise for your brain, you must think quickly and effectively in order to win. Just like with regular exercise, however, continued exertion will eventually cause fatigue. Mental fatigue is just like physical fatigue, but for your brain.
Mental fatigue can set in around 90 minutes into a gaming session, leaving your brain feeling sluggish and exhausted. Other symptoms include a difficulty concentrating or feeling drained.
Gaming breaks minimize mental fatigue by giving your brain time to rest. Minimizing mental fatigue is important because playing games with mental fatigue means playing with slower reaction times and reduced thinking capacity. Avoiding this can improve your performance in the long run.
Improve Circulation
The thing that ties your eyes, your muscles, and your brain together is your circulation. You need good circulation in order to perform properly, because it affects everything you do. Circulation involves getting blood flow to all of your body, including your brain.
When you sit for long periods of time, your circulation slows down. Your blood settles in your legs and feed, reducing blood flow to your brain. By getting up and moving around, and maybe doing a few stretches, your circulation will pick back up again. This will leave you feeling awake and energized, and improve your play as a result.
Reset Your Tilt Meter
For those who are not aware, being tilted is a synonym for getting frustrated. It happens all the time in gaming, especially when playing challenging or competitive games. For some people, games are synonymous with overcoming challenges. And, therefore, experiencing frustration is a natural part of the process.
The problem is, if a game frustrates you, you are unlikely to play very well, whether solo or with a team. It is important to reset your emotional state when you get tilted. Continuing to play while tilted can worsen your frustration and potentially cause a losing streak. A gaming break gives you the chance to reset your emotional state.
Get Excited to Play Again
Finally, gaming breaks can make you excited to play the game again. Repetition is the key to mastery, but it can also make things stale. It can also lead to burnout, in extreme cases. When a game feels stale, nothing will re-ignite your passion to play again like spending some time away from it.
When you return to a game after a break, it feels new and exciting again. Keeping the experience fresh not only keeps things fun, it also keeps you engaged. This effect is more noticeable when you return to a game after a long break.
When faced with burnout, we recommend a long gaming break. A long gaming break comprises stepping away from a game for several days, weeks, or months. These longer breaks can really reset your feelings towards a game, and are useful if you are experiencing burnout.
How Often Should You Take Gaming Breaks?
The 52-17 rule suggests you should follow 52 minutes of work with a 17 minute break. This rule can to maximize productivity in the workplace, and is like the Pomodoro Method. For gaming, this rule offers a good guideline for how often to take breaks, but you don’t need to follow it too strictly.
After around 60-90 minutes of gaming, mental fatigue will set it. This would be a good time to consider taking a gaming break. Your break could be anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. As long as you get out of your chair, stretch your body, and give your mind a rest, you should notice some of the benefits listed above, regardless of how long your break is.
Gaming Breaks Are Essential
Hopefully, this article has explained to you how essential gaming breaks are. Not only for your health but also for improving your play. Long gaming sessions can hurt your performance because they cause eye and muscle strain, mental fatigue, and poor circulation. They also increase the risk of getting tilted or burned out.
Therefore gaming breaks are incredibly important. They mitigate the health risks to your body and minimize things like mental fatigue, frustration, and burnout. You should experience a noticeable difference when gaming with none of these setbacks. Gaming when healthy provides you a significant gameplay advantage.