So normally with most physical training, there's a kinda burning sensation that occurs when your limits are being pushed. I've been practicing the long stream practice maps, and so far I'm at 140 bpm. (I know, slow but I suck at stream endurance) Doing the map over and over, there's a 'burn' for a bit, then a different type of pain as my hands tense up. It's not numb, so definitely not carpal tunnel, just part of my arm hurts and it hurts to even move my arm afterwards. Is that fine like natural muscle soreness, something I can push past? Should I shorten stream practices? Or should I just stop practicing for a couple of days? I don't want to screw myself over, but at the same time, no pain no gain?

Where is the pain? Also, are you stretching your tendons before and during playing?

You shouldnt be feeling pain when improving stamina/speed.
If you continue to feel pain take break for a few days.

Streaming Tips (My Experience):
For me Long stream maps never made me better at streaming! It just showed If I Improved.
If you want to improve stamina play maps with short streams, 3 bursts, 5 bursts and doubles.
(Demetori maps are a good example)
It requires finger control and stamina and you will get less fingerlock.
Doing long stream practice maps with bad stamina will just break your fingers.

Sjongejonge3 wrote:

You shouldnt be feeling pain when improving stamina/speed.
If you continue to feel pain take break for a few days.

Streaming Tips (My Experience):
For me Long stream maps never made me better at streaming! It just showed If I Improved.
If you want to improve stamina play maps with short streams, 3 bursts, 5 bursts and doubles.
(Demetori maps are a good example)
It requires finger control and stamina and you will get less fingerlock.
Doing long stream practice maps with bad stamina will just break your fingers.

Pain at the base of the forearm is good pain though, you don't need to stop when you start to feel the burn, just when it becomes too uncomfortable to play with imo. That's muscle, it is what you want to stress, pain means microtears, and microtears means it will grow stronger. It's the tendons, joints, ligaments, connective tissue in general you want to be careful about.

Be sure to stretch your tendons before an intense session, I like to gently pull my wrist back with a straight arm and twist it at the same time. When pulling the wrist "down", I form a fist, when up I straighten my fingers to maximize flexion in the respective finger controlling tendons, don't use a lot of force of course. If your tendons are already sore I would wait a few days to do this though and just take it easy.

Players with stellar stamina got that stamina by pushing through the burn until they failed, just like power lifters, but of course with poor technique and ignoring the bad kinds of pain you can quickly become one of those players who ruined their hand instead.

Also, when you're recovering, no need to stop playing entirely, just play lightly, no maps that will make you strain and tense up, play stuff you can basically relax your tapping arm while playing. This gets the blood pumping and will build more strength and you will still heal well.

Feylos wrote:

just part of my arm hurts and it hurts to even move my arm afterwards. Is that fine like natural muscle soreness

I don't think this is normal.

Feylos wrote:

Or should I just stop practicing for a couple of days?

Yes.

Also, don't play long stream maps they won't make you better. Play maps with shorter streams and a lot of bursts.

Nourios wrote:

Feylos wrote:

just part of my arm hurts and it hurts to even move my arm afterwards. Is that fine like natural muscle soreness

I don't think this is normal.

Feylos wrote:

Or should I just stop practicing for a couple of days?

Yes.

Also, don't play long stream maps they won't make you better. Play maps with shorter streams and a lot of bursts.

it is normal, and no need to stop playing entirely, light playing i.e non stamina/stream intensive maps that you can tap while your arm is relaxed will actually help. Rest is overrated, keep it moving, keep the blood pumping. More blood flow is conducive to healing and strengthening. Just don't hurt yourself more and you're golden.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

Where is the pain? Also, are you stretching your tendons before and during playing?

Sane kinda pain my aim hand gets after a bit of mania, side of the forearm on the side by my body. I stretch my wrists, but I don't think I've streched my tendons

Nourios wrote:

Also, don't play long stream maps they won't make you better. Play maps with shorter streams and a lot of bursts.

Is that a placebo effect in my case? I feel like I do better at streams as long as my practice doesn't devolve into mashing.

I'll try out a couple of new stretches, and if anything still hurts today I'll stop immediately

[deleted]

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

it is normal, and no need to stop playing entirely, light playing i.e non stamina/stream intensive maps that you can tap while your arm is relaxed will actually help. Rest is overrated, keep it moving, keep the blood pumping. More blood flow is conducive to healing and strengthening. Just don't hurt yourself more and you're golden.

I would say it's better to take at least 1 day a week off for recovery. It's the same as when you play sports or go to the gym, you need to let your body rest.

Almost wrote:

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

it is normal, and no need to stop playing entirely, light playing i.e non stamina/stream intensive maps that you can tap while your arm is relaxed will actually help. Rest is overrated, keep it moving, keep the blood pumping. More blood flow is conducive to healing and strengthening. Just don't hurt yourself more and you're golden.

I would say it's better to take at least 1 day a week off for recovery. It's the same as when you play sports or go to the gym, you need to let your body rest.

the closest sport to osu! i can think of in terms of how it can stress your forearm and the muscles/tendons on both sides of your hands and forearms is arm wrestling and Devon Larratt who you can think of as the Cookiezi of that suggests very light training instead of rest for building up strength and stamina AND recovering in a timely manner at the same time, so that is why I suggest this as well.

It makes a lot of sense as well, we are talking about osu!, not a sport such as football, nor full body weight lifting, it's not just your muscles being stressed in those but you can overwork your nervous system, back, and various other parts of your body from the lymphatic system to your heart by not taking time off at all. You can just ruin yourself. With osu! when it comes to intensive tapping or aiming you only really have to be concerned with everything at and below the elbow up to the fingertips, and keeping those parts moving will increase blood flow which has obvious benefits when you are recovering and trying to build up your stamina.

Very light play after training stamina to the point you are sore should be fine, just maps that don't cause you to tense your arm or hand at all and allow you to tap gently; particularly if you use a good heavy switch like blacks to de-load your extensors even more. Just make sure you are getting good amounts of sleep and are eating properly.

Personally, I would just play jump maps within my finger movement only singletappable bpm in the meantime instead of resting, as well as low bpm stream maps too but some people have to tense up in order to acc those for some reason (I don't understand it personally, sometimes i dont even bottom out during low bpm streams) so that's going to be by a case by case basis.

You could also practice not bottoming out to go even easier. Tap like a butterfly, recover like a champ.

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

Almost wrote:

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

it is normal, and no need to stop playing entirely, light playing i.e non stamina/stream intensive maps that you can tap while your arm is relaxed will actually help. Rest is overrated, keep it moving, keep the blood pumping. More blood flow is conducive to healing and strengthening. Just don't hurt yourself more and you're golden.

I would say it's better to take at least 1 day a week off for recovery. It's the same as when you play sports or go to the gym, you need to let your body rest.

the closest sport to osu! i can think of in terms of how it can stress your forearm and the muscles/tendons on both sides of your hands and forearms is arm wrestling and Devon Larratt who you can think of as the Cookiezi of that suggests very light training instead of rest for building up strength and stamina AND recovering in a timely manner at the same time, so that is why I suggest this as well.

It makes a lot of sense as well, we are talking about osu!, not a sport such as football, nor full body weight lifting, it's not just your muscles being stressed in those but you can overwork your nervous system, back, and various other parts of your body from the lymphatic system to your heart by not taking time off at all. You can just ruin yourself. With osu! when it comes to intensive tapping or aiming you only really have to be concerned with everything at and below the elbow up to the fingertips, and keeping those parts moving will increase blood flow which has obvious benefits when you are recovering and trying to build up your stamina.

Very light play after training stamina to the point you are sore should be fine, just maps that don't cause you to tense your arm or hand at all and allow you to tap gently; particularly if you use a good heavy switch like blacks to de-load your extensors even more. Just make sure you are getting good amounts of sleep and are eating properly.

Personally, I would just play jump maps within my finger movement only singletappable bpm in the meantime instead of resting, as well as low bpm stream maps too but some people have to tense up in order to acc those for some reason (I don't understand it personally, sometimes i dont even bottom out during low bpm streams) so that's going to be by a case by case basis.

You could also practice not bottoming out to go even easier. Tap like a butterfly, recover like a champ.

That's a fair point but I would point out that arm wrestling and osu! aren't really comparable as both are incredibly different. They both use different muscles within the forearm and the type of training done in both is vastly different. Training for arm wrestling doesn't involve using the exact same muscles repetitively without much break for hours on end. Plus, unlike in arm wrestling, osu! has plenty of mental fatigue as well and taking a day off every now and then can help reduce burnout as well as help your muscles recover.

I should add that I think depending on how much one plays each day would determine whether one should take a day off or not. Longer and more intense sessions would require more rest compared to shorter and more relaxing sessions.

Almost wrote:

Training for arm wrestling doesn't involve using the exact same muscles repetitively without much break for hours on end.

Eh, tell that to Devon who puts in like 8 hours a day just working his arms
every day
especially the rollover muscle in the forearm that thing is gigantic

alot of the same muscles are actually used, fighting for grip and pinning works the extensors, and the flexors are of course stressed a lot. So much of arm wrestling takes place at the wrist and fingers.

but well if the pain is in the tendons like back of the hand then yeah I guess stop for now
you said it was in your forearm though im guessing the base

Vuelo Eluko wrote:

Almost wrote:

Training for arm wrestling doesn't involve using the exact same muscles repetitively without much break for hours on end.

Eh, tell that to Devon who puts in like 8 hours a day just working his arms
every day
especially the rollover muscle in the forearm that thing is gigantic

alot of the same muscles are actually used, fighting for grip and pinning works the extensors, and the flexors are of course stressed a lot. So much of arm wrestling takes place at the wrist and fingers.

I couldn't really find any information regarding how long he trains everyday so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. But, the type of training involved is still vastly different. osu! is all about stamina and no strength training is needed at all which contrasts arm wrestling quite a bit (which has a greater focus on strength). I don't know the exact training regime Devon uses but he is definitely not doing 1000+ reps of the same exercise with little to no break (I did some estimations just now and you can easily get 10,000+ reps per finger per hour if full alternating and worse for an individual finger if single tapping). RSI is a more concerning injury in osu! compared to arm wrestling because of the sheer number of repetitions needed.

With regards to all the same muscles in osu! being used in arm wrestling, yes you are correct. However, again, the muscles are not being used in the exact same way. Fighting for grip and pinning uses more strength as well as they are being used differently to how they are being used in osu! (more static in arm wrestling vs dynamic in osu!). Therefore, the muscles develops in a different way.

stamina is still a pretty big deal in arm wrestling to be fair, being able to outlast your opponent and not be exhausted first, and go from opponent to opponent without gassing is very good. Most matches are fast true but a lot of them come down to trying to wear down the other person before you get tired. Anyway this isn't really relevant to g&r

I think a lot of people are under the misconception that getting good at streaming in osu! requires you to train your "finger muscles", and that stronger muscles = faster streaming. That's just incorrect. All the muscles you need for osu! are to press key switches down. The activation force of the keyboard may sometimes feel high when you are in a middle of a deathstream, but I certainly hope that you don't need any "training" to press a single key down. Practicing for osu! is different from other activities, such as sports, and training with the goal to just strengthen muscles on you fingers can lead to consequences that may even cause finger injury.

The most similar activity I can think of that compares to osu! streaming is playing the piano. Playing the piano at a high level requires speed, accuracy, and stamina, just like osu!. Likewise, training to play the piano is different than other activities. Professional pianists don't exercise their fingers as professional athletes do with their bodies.

I think almost every pianist knows the story of Robert Schumann. He was a famous classical piano player and composer. Wanting to improve quicker he designed a contraption that made it so that pressing the keys on the piano required more force, hoping that he could strengthen his fingers while also allowing them to be faster. It was like the an upside down bench press for his fingers. Schumann ended up injuring his hands and was forced to end his piano career prematurely .

Now then, how do normal pianists train? They repeat hand and finger movements. And they repeat them A LOT. Professional pianists spend hours each day to practice these movements, all to develop a muscle memory that allows them to play quickly and to allow them to have more stamina. The more you play, the better you get (hey, that sounds familiar).

Finally, how does all this relate with osu? Simple. Playing long stream maps just aren't effective at training speed and stamina. Streaming is mostly muscle memory, which is tied with the brain, not your muscles. I'm not saying that those maps are useless though, as they can still help your finger control, but there are better ways to practice streaming. The way I see it, stream practice maps are only used for more for confirming your streaming capability, rather than improving it. Playing fast, awkward, burst-heavy maps around with bpm a bit higher than what you are comfortable with are the key to getting better streaming. Playing those maps builds muscle memory that will be immensely more helpful than any long stream map, and of course, playing more helps as well.

But that's just my opinion. Oh and sorry for the long post.

training the muscle physically is how you build it up, you aren't building strength, but the amount of blood flow and mitochondria in your muscles increase when you fatigue them over and over, they don't just become stronger and bigger. These mitochondria translate to better stamina. It's not all gained via technique and muscle memory, how long you can aerobically exert your muscles matters for very long streams. osu! is very intensive even compared to piano because you only get 2 fingers to work with, that's a lot of work to focus on a relatively small set of muscles. Even if osu! allowed you to use 3 fingers instead of 2 that would make the game significantly less straining with the current maps we have.

It's more endurance training than strength training right? I'm sure most of us can do triples at a huge range of bpms, but as soon as that 3 or 5 note burst is any longer, the difficulty of maintaining that stream with good accuracy is usually beyond me, if its anything 190+.

RamenBucket wrote:

Now then, how do normal pianists train? They repeat hand and finger movements. And they repeat them A LOT. Professional pianists spend hours each day to practice these movements, all to develop a muscle memory that allows them to play quickly and to allow them to have more stamina. The more you play, the better you get (hey, that sounds familiar).

Much like practicing a scale over and over until you can do it fast, isn't it the same thing for stream training maps? Your "scale" is from one key to the next, and you do it over and over again until you have consistency at a bpm range, before turning the metronome up a few clicks. I don't think I'm pulling a Schumann, because the keys always take the same effort. Burst maps are probably better overall because you actually have to aim, and there would be more rhythmic complexity, but you'd have to play a lot of those before you come close to expending the same energy as a long stream practice map. I'm more so asking, wouldn't that be faster if you exclusively want to work on streams?

Feylos wrote:

It's more endurance training than strength training right? I'm sure most of us can do triples at a huge range of bpms, but as soon as that 3 or 5 note burst is any longer, the difficulty of maintaining that stream with good accuracy is usually beyond me, if its anything 190+.

Just to be clear, you don't do any (nor need any) strength training for osu!.

Feylos wrote:

RamenBucket wrote:

Now then, how do normal pianists train? They repeat hand and finger movements. And they repeat them A LOT. Professional pianists spend hours each day to practice these movements, all to develop a muscle memory that allows them to play quickly and to allow them to have more stamina. The more you play, the better you get (hey, that sounds familiar).

Much like practicing a scale over and over until you can do it fast, isn't it the same thing for stream training maps? Your "scale" is from one key to the next, and you do it over and over again until you have consistency at a bpm range, before turning the metronome up a few clicks. I don't think I'm pulling a Schumann, because the keys always take the same effort. Burst maps are probably better overall because you actually have to aim, and there would be more rhythmic complexity, but you'd have to play a lot of those before you come close to expending the same energy as a long stream practice map. I'm more so asking, wouldn't that be faster if you exclusively want to work on streams?

Not exactly. There is a muscle memory component but you also need to develop the stamina separately. Unlike what RamenBucket suggests, you do actually need to play longer streams to get the stamina to be able to play longer streams. What you find when playing extremely long deathstreams (like in the practice maps) is more a physical limitation from your muscles being tired rather then your coordination going to crap (though your coordination does end up going to crap due to said tiredness). Basically what Vuelo Eluko mentioned. Playing burst streams is a better strategy when wanting to improve stream speed though (granted the bursts are fast enough for you).

RSI is painful.