Stretching for Maplers

Hi everyone!

I. Introduction
A while ago, I saw LeonardoJF discussing something about gaming-related stretches on Discord. I reached out to him if this was something we could turn into an actual forum tread.
As such, this thread was born.
While Maple, particularly v62, is generally not a high-apm game, it definitely is a game that some people like to sink a lot of hours into. Doing so not only puts your body in a position that messes with your posture, it can also stress the muscles, joints, and tendons in your hands and wrists.
While the effects of this might not always be felt in the short term (or otherwise accepted as just being ‘part of being older’), they are neither desirable nor necessary. Additionally, the negative effects can mostly be reduced or avoided altogether by just doing the occasional stretches. So, let’s dive in!
We can imagine a bunch of you don’t feel like actually getting up out of your chair to do these, so we’ve split the stretches into two sections. The first section consists of stretches you can do while seated. The latter section requires you to stand up and move around a little more. Doing stretches from both sections offers more benefits, but just doing the ones in the first section will still be beneficial.

II. Seated Stretches
We can start by taking some of the stress of the tendons in your fingers, hands, and wrists.


First, we’ll start by stretching one arm out straight in front of you, palms pointing away from you and fingers pointing towards the ceiling. Use your other hand to grab your fingers and gently pull them back.Hold this for 10-15 seconds and then relax. Do this for both hands.
Then, we’ll go to the second position. Here you point your fingers dowards (palms towards yourself) and use your other hand to gently push your wrist further in this position. Hold this for 10-15 seconds and then relax. Do this for both hands.



Now we’ll work on the fingers. Iterate through the positions in the above image for 30 seconds per hand.

After you’ve completed the above stretches, shake out your hands and let’s continue to the neck and spine.



Put your hands behind your neck, pointing your elbows forward. While remaining seated, slowly point your elbow towards the ceiling, curving your back backwards. Repeated this 5-10 times.



Next, we’ll do the chin-tuck. Sit up straight, look in front of you and gently use your fingertips to push your chin back as if trying to make a double chin. Hold this for 5 seconds and repeat 5 times.



Lastly, we’ll stretch the sides of the neck.

While seated, grab the side with 1 hand, use the other hand to gently push your head to the side. Hold this for 15 seconds and repeat for both sides.

After you’ve done all the above stretches, shake out your arms and hands a little and you’re good to get back to gaming!

III. Standing stretches
When sitting for extended periods of time, you’re putting a lot of strain on your spine. Additionally, your hamstrings get shorter over time from constantly being in a shortened position. All of these things can start to lead to bad posture, back pain, etc, etc.

Lastly, we’ll also use this time to open up the chest a little, as gamers regularly see forward-pulling shoulders. This both looks bad and leads to pain in various places.


This stretch loosens up the shoulders. With the torso and one of the arms supported, one arm is left loose, this arm is the one we are going to work on, making a circular movement.



A forward fold (it doesn’t matter how far you can go) releases both the hamstrings and your lower back. This can either be done sitting or standing! Pick whichever one is more comfortable for you.



The stretch above opens up your thighs. Just sit down, get comfortable, place the soles of your feet against each other. You can either hold this position statically or slightly wiggle your knees up and down.

IV. Conclusion
We understand that not all of you are going to have the time, energy, or desire to go through all these stretches. It’s perfectly fine to just pick the ones that target a specific area you might be dealing with!

Feel free to reach out to either Leo or me if you have any questions.


Kind regards,

-Leo and Ainz