I was just wondering how many people in the o!m community have had any experience with hand strains, carpel tunnel, or any other related hand issue and have come back to the game after recovering. I'm curious about any cases or stories that other folks have had, if there are any.

I've been out of the game for about 2 months now because of a hand injury that I'm finally getting treatment for. I miss the game a lot, even if I'm not very good at it anyways.

So it was early on during my osu!mania career when I was still climbing ranks like madman. This is my rank graph the for the first few years. I go up until December 2014, and then downhill from there. You see, I hit no wall until that time. I thought I was unstoppable and only needed to force myself to overcome the challenge. This mistake still has an imprint in my top played maps. Naturally after so many tries to pass the map my hand would start hurting from all the forcing. Well, to numb the pain I ended up running my hands under some hot water and forcing myself though it for at least 10 more retries. Ended with permanent hand damage on left hand, and the boy in 2015 I felt it.

I had to play lower star maps for some 3 months until the hand started to improve. I couldn't force myself anymore though. I couldn't curl my fingers because then I would feel pain. My fingers would lock up often because of that. A year later, the pain mostly went away. And now I feel it most after playing 7k for extended period of time. I still need to perform specific movement with my hand as I play. Like, I can't attempt at some kind of movements that would make my tendon push against something (or ligament stretch in a certain way?). For example, if you put your hand into this position and then try to bend it back, that is painful for me on my left hand.

I've also had a similar story with hand injuries - it was actually earlier this year. Back in February I was at the peak of my mania career and at around 5.5k in rank. Not unlike abraker above, I also pushed myself way farther than I should've during sessions. Around this time was when I first passed galaxy collapse, and I had been grinding attempts like no one else. Right after that, I was doing attempts on blue zenith and triumph and regret dt. Keep in mind that at this time I wasn't up to the speed that these maps were at (besides blue zenith), so a lot of my trilling and jacks were mostly spam and vibro. I'm pretty sure it was T&R that did it to me, because after passing it finally, my wrists hurt unbearably to rotate or move around. At that point I kinda realized that if I didn't take a break or quit entirely, I'd be dealing with some serious problems down the line - if I haven't already.

I decided to take a full break, in which I didn't play any mania or rhythm games and constantly rested and iced my wrists to try to alleviate the pain. I planned on taking a 3 month break, but I guess I was too addicted and came back after only a month. At that point it still hurt a lot to play, so I mostly played lower star maps and worked on accuracy. Actually around this time I didn't come back to osu, but rather I went and practiced on Etterna instead, because at the time I liked their system better. Now, the pain is almost completely gone, and only comes up if I play for more than an hour and a half or so. Also like abraker, it definitely comes up when playing 7k, but only after a long session.

Moral here is to only play stuff you can actually read/play, and don't force yourself past your limits. Take breaks when you're tired and you won't be in pain.

Mine wasn't as bad so I was able to play after about a week but when you come back do it slowly, you can try doing other things while you heal like learning sv, or acc. Mania isn't all about being able to play the hardest maps, if you miss the game you should find a way to keep playing unless your condition is like really bad of course.

my only encounter with hand pains from rhythm gaming was back when I tried to learn 7k. many people say this keymode is much less rough on your hands than 4k, but relatively early I felt like something was wrong about my left hand (middle and ring finger specifically). these two are normally connected and can't really work independently but my right hand had no issues at all, as if they weren't connected, while it just hurt to use them on my left hand when hitting trills or something tricky for these fingers overall.

As I progressed further in 7k (peak skill was bms insane 1-2 dan for me) my left hand's ring and middle fingers experienced pain more often and I just decided to quit for 4k since I wasn't happy with my improvement rate in 7k anyway. since then, I progressed a lot in 4k and never had any issues really (and I did grind the game a lot and played just any kinds of content, lots of stamina stuff, vibro stuff etc).
but with that said, I tried playing 6k (not the same thing but it uses the fingers that had issues for me) a bit recently with a new playstyle. I played 7k on the bottom row of keys with wrists down, and what I did for 6k is tilting my keyboard a bit and switching to wrist-up. and even though it wasn't perfect, the pain was gone for the most part. long story short, you can fix many kinds of issues by finding a proper playstyle. but be sure to do it not too late, so you won't actually cause damage.

so many

Thank you everyone for all of your stories. I'm glad to see that everyone has recovered and improved, even after their injury.

I guess I'll tell my story so I contribute to the thread.

I really started to take the game seriously around the beginning of 2021. I'm not, and still not, all that good. I'm only able to clear 3.7* and 96% 3.5* depending on the map, but I was making what felt like a lot of progress until May hit. Suddenly, my index and middle fingers began to feel pain that built up the more I played. I typically only played for 2-3 hours a day while also drawing as my job, so I tried to keep in mind that I need to moderate how much and how hard I played. Around mid-May, the game became nearly unplayable. I would always have hand pain within minutes, specifically on my finger joins and on palms, specifically the upper parts.

Since then, I've taken a break, only coming on once in a while to satisfy my needs for the game. I don't only blame this game for this issue. I drew a lot at the same time, which is why the pain is far worse on my right hand. I also quit another game that I played competitively that was extremely technical and pushed my hands physically. I visited a doctor to see what was wrong, and they only told me it was a hand strain, which in the last three months, still hasn't healed oddly enough.

Nowadays, I only play to practice accuracy once in a blue moon, but it hurts a lot to not play. My hands continue to ache a lot, even though I don't touch this game or my PC often anymore.

When I get better, I want to make sure to follow the advice on this thread. I can only suspect my reasons for such intense hand pain is just a matter of my playstyle, as well as a variety of other factors. I can't wait to return to this game and start improving again. I loved it, I had fun, and not many games could match that same sort of experience for me. Once again, thanks everyone for responding to this thread. It gives me hope that I can play again.