Hello fellow gamers – you are here because at one point in your gaming career you may have felt some low back pain preventing you from enjoying your league, CS:GO, PUBG, Destiny2 and now maybe Fortnite? Games.

Pain in general sucks but most of the time we ignore it and for the most part it can go away. But there is ALWAYS a reason why we have low back pain and it’s because of that reason that it RETURNS . Which sucks 🙁 The good thing is that I’m here Ü and I’ve been working with those in professional esports for the past two years and have been practicing as a Physical Therapist with an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist license for the past three years. Low back pain, ESPECIALLY for gamers, is easy to manage.

It is only when we ignore it for more than half a year that it becomes just a little more complicated. Today, you guys are going to learn a step-by-step approach on how to manage low back pain as a gamer but first…

TREATING THE CAUSE, NOT THE SOURCE

First I want to write about something I feel a lot of gamers do not understand mostly because I see it so much in the community. I get it though, marketing appeals to the quick fixes. Treating many of the pain conditions we suffer as gamers can indeed be quick – but it is generally more than just massaging the muscles or putting tape on our wrist/forearms/back or using a cold-pack at the end of every session. These are solutions which often address the source of the pain (for the low back it is commonly a muscle strain) -> so massage the muscle to allow it to relax.

Yes this will reduce pain, but what have we done to the actual CAUSE of the muscular strain? Nothing. Most of the time the CAUSE of low back pain is us sitting for extended periods of time, with shitty posture.

So we have to be able to step-back and look at the big picture sometimes so we can understand that things like massages, cold-pack, kinesiotape and even exercises may not completely resolve the pain issue. Because we are not addressing the root cause.

We have to improve our posture so the muscle can work optimally, take enough breaks to prevent strain AND also exercise to increase endurance of our muscles and prevent injury. We can utilize massage, ice, kinesiotape to facilitate RECOVERY from the strain of these sessions.

Okay, enough of my little soap box.

What causes low back pain? And what will you feel?

Low back pain is gaming is the second most common pain pattern in gaming and is most commonly the result of MUSCULAR STRAIN . As I mentioned earlier, the main reason for why we develop low back pain as gamer is because we are just sitting for too long (with poor posture).

This causes muscles in our lower back to be either overused or overstretched depending on how we sit (flexed vs. extended posture). Flexed is when our lower back and pelvis are rounded (picture on the right) which is how most of us sit. Extended is when our lower back and pelvis are arched (picture on the left). Some of us sit in this way to be closer to the screen. So again, the muscles of our lower back (paraspinals/erector spinae) are the source of the pain, with prolonged sitting with poor posture being the CAUSE of the pain.

Typically we will feel aching in our lower back which will occur after a couple of hours into our gaming sessions – especially if we are playing for multiple days in a row. You will feel it most commonly in the regions shown below

Three-Step Approach for Low Back Pain in Gaming

Alright – now for management of the low back pain. Our updated approach for management of pain in gaming is the POP approach which stands for… Prevention, Optimal Loading and Pain Management.

1. Prevention of low back pain in gaming

Prevention of low back pain in gaming means considering three things – posture, ergonomics and lifestyle design. It always comes back to these three things we have to take into consideration first.

Posture – putting our lower back in the neutral position. In between flexion and extension. I have written about this many times in a bunch of my articles, but I’ll write it again. Neutral is the position for our joints in which there is the least amount of stress on our supporting tissues. For the lower back and pelvis it means in between the flexed and extended positions. An easy way is to think of your lower back as a bucket of water and intending to keep it balanced.