“Are Armrests good?” is a question you never thought you would ask but here we are. Armrests are important and are supposed to make our life a little easy and it does until you face 3 different enemies from three different sides.
So what is it? Are Armrest good for gaming?
Armrests are used to provide extra comfort to the arms and elbows whenever needed. It is not useful in games where aiming is needed. And in fact, Armrest restricts the arm movement which reduces the manoeuvrability of the crosshair.
Actually don’t remove your armrest!
Which brings me to my next topic, don’t throw away your armrest. Armrests were made for better posture to reduce back and neck pains which are two very important points to keep in mind before cutting off your armrest.
The armrest is usually there for lumbar support which basically supports the spine to keep it aligned in its natural position. Since gamers are also humans surprisingly, we also need that support.
And also the wrong angle of your wrist resting on the desk can also cause tingling and numbness in the hand also known as Carpal tunnel
. It is common among gamers and it happens when your desk is either too high or too low which flexes your wrist when you use your mouse.
The best way to tackle this issue is to put your arms on your desk or to combine your armrest with your desk. Raise your armrest to the equal height of your desk and then touch it to your desk. This way you will have a straight platform which will in fact help you with Carpal Tunnel.
A good gaming chair has neck and back support pillow to support our lumbar region so you are good with that past if you have a considerably good gaming chair but removing armrest is still not the effective way.
Gamers game for almost 8 hours but we also do stuff like watching movies or just chilling on discord which will be more comfortable with a pair of armrests.
So, cutting off armrests is not a good idea but resizing is.
Best Armrest position for both wrist and Arm aimers.
The best way is to reduce your armrest height or increase desks height.
Let me explain, Higher desk height means you can get closer to the desk. The armrest can easily go under your desk which will allow you to put your arms on your desk. Whether you aim with your wrist or with your arm, a straight arm is the best suitable position for aiming.
And if you put your arms on the desk you’ll have you lumbar support because you are sitting straight and if your arms are straight on the desk that means no angled wrist hence no Carpal tunnel.
In fact, According to Pros forearms levelled with your table surface is the way because it allows the arm to move freely and do wide adjustments.
If the table is too high then the table edge will hit the forearm hence raising it to an angle reducing arm movements and if the table height was too low then our body will be forced into a bad posture like leaning forward or backwards to keep the forearm levelled with the desk.
What if desk is smaller?
If you cannot free up space on your desk or your desk is not big enough then you can do two things.
First, you need to level your armrest with the desk and rest your forearm on it. This is the recommended way because it will help you play for a few more hours and you will still have the armrest to rest on whenever you feel like being AFK or even when you want to lay back watching movies.
Second, Increase your sensitivity.
Yes, increasing your sensitivity will allow you to do far more in-game movement with way fewer arm movements. If you are a wrist aimer then you are in luck because high sensitivity is suitable for wrist aimers. This will take a lot of muscle memory adjustment and some might not be able to cope up with high sensitivity but you can give it a try before the third step.
The Third thing you can do is remove your armrest. Clearly, armrests are not good for gaming, they were made for ergonomics but will definitely reduce your KD.
I use a mixture of Arm and wrist aiming so sometimes my whole forearm is on the desk sometimes my elbow is in the air but most of the time my hands are on the desk.
I rarely use my armrest but I do use them so the best way would be to upgrade later to a better setup and for now use any one of the methods except the sensitivity one because then you have to change your muscle memory back to low sensitivity if you were not comfortable and the hassle to retrain your self, yeah that’s too much.