Dance Game Ergonomics #4

 After thugging out the 38" bars on SMX at home for long enough, I can confidently say that the strange forearm bone stress/pain feeling I was having when only playing SMX was just having zero muscle developed in my forearms-- playing sessions of Pump and SMX back-to-back with the taller height bars just seemed to really stress out my forearms. Once my forearm muscles developed, I seem to no longer get the forearm pain.

 But the most interesting part is that I don't have any issues with playing DDR! It seems like just playing with SMX and Pump's 38 inch bar makes my arms stronger in general. Whenever I play on the 36 inch bars on an actual DDR machine I don't seem to have any issues with my arms being exhausted etc. My twisting ability feels a lot stronger too, and I feel a lot quicker on DDR after having played a lot of SMX and Pump. I was worried that I would lose muscle strength in specific areas used for DDR, but I guess that fear was unfounded. Just feels like nothing but benefits regularly playing Pump and SMX on stock hardware.

I also noticed that using more of my leg muscles when playing on my toes and making big movements is a lot easier with the higher bars. I think it has to do with being able to better use my hamstrings. At first I thought it was only relevant to heeling, but seems like having a higher bar height relative to my own height helps a lot comfortably toeing off for running-like motions and not tripping over my own legs. The best analogy I feel like I can give it is playing with low sensitivity on a mouse for a first person shooter. Feels like I have a lot more control over my motions at the sacrifice of a little bit of speed, but training muscle memory can compensate for the loss in speed.

 



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