All Professional Gamers Should be Using Hand-Eye Coordination Techniques to Give Themselves an Edge


There are thousands of gamers who would regard themselves as professionals, with more than 8,000 in the USA alone. However, rising to the top of the eSports industry and becoming one of the best-paid stars in the business is no easy feat.

As the field of competitive gaming grows more saturated, players need to do everything they can to ensure they have the edge. In these titles, the ability to perform actions quickly is essential. This means you must do everything you can to develop strong hand-eye coordination.

Tips to improve hand-eye coordination.

Why is Hand-Eye Coordination so Important?

Hand-eye coordination is all about processing visual input and then guiding the hand in the correct way based on that. Without it, people would be doomed to dropping things all the time and unable to undertake even the simplest of tasks. In the digital age, it’s more important than ever, though. Every type of game out there requires good hand-eye coordination.

For example, online slots like Rise of the Pharaohs and Irish Riches Extreme reels require players to press buttons to select their stake and spin the reels. This seems simple, but it would be impossible if the eyes and hands weren’t working together towards a shared goal.

In other types of gaming, hand-eye coordination plays an even bigger role. This is certainly true in any game that requires skill. The eSports industry represents the top of competitive gaming. Therefore, anything you may be considering playing as a professional gamer needs you to have solid hand-eye coordination.

Most titles in the eSports scene involve viewing images on a screen and then moving your mouse in the correct manner to control your character within that scenario. It sounds simple, but there are so many things happening at the same time within your brain.

In the world of competitive gaming, there are seriously fine margins between winning and losing a match. Clicking in the right area at the correct time can be so precise it comes down to fractions of milliseconds.

The best in the business can control the mouse with pinpoint accuracy, giving them the edge over lesser eSports athletes. Research from the University of Toronto has proven that people who play eSports professionally have improved visual search skills. This helps them identify key items in an environment and quickly assess situations in games like League of Legends.

If you have been trying to take your eSports game to the next level and you’re not quite sure why you haven’t been able to do so yet, it could be that you need to improve your hand-eye coordination skills.

What Exercises Can You Do to Improve Hand-Eye Coordination?

Hand-eye coordination does improve through regular gaming, as research has already discovered. However, many expert gamers use other techniques outside of gaming to help them stay at the top and have that slight edge over the competition.

To be one of the best, you must do everything possible to replicate these methods. In this section, we’ll dive into some simple yet effective exercises you can do to get your hand-eye coordination on point. Some of these are cool skills to have anyway, so it’s beneficial to learn them.

The first recommended action is to master the art of rolling a coin between your fingers. If you can pull this off, it looks amazing. This is something that can take a long time to master, and it’s worth always keeping a quarter handy, so you can practice whenever you’re sitting around.

The coin moves quickly along your fingers, so you must be precise in your reactions to catch it every time it gets to the next digit.

Another good exercise to improve hand-eye coordination is putting your hands on the table and practicing lifting each finger simultaneously.

Mix up the order and give yourself verbal demands, then try to speed up each time. The next stage could be to get a pen and practice putting it down swiftly between each of your fingers. This is traditionally known as a five-finger fillet, but it’s safest to use a blunt instrument like a pen or the rubber end of a pencil.

What Skills Can Set You Apart from Other Gamers?

Aside from the small exercises such as the ones listed above, there are plenty of other pastimes and hobbies that you can take up to boost your hand-eye coordination and, ultimately, make you a better gamer. The great thing about these skills is that they can be enjoyable and help to add some variety to your life as well.

Learning an instrument may be one of the most difficult exercises you can do to boost your visual processing skills and reactions, but it is also one of the most beneficial. In the early stages of playing the piano or guitar, you need to consciously observe where your fingers are and move them rapidly to hit the next note. It takes a long time and a lot of practice to reach a stage where you can play the instrument without looking.

Tennis drills to improve hand-eye coordination.

There are plenty of popular sports in the real world that you can play to make yourself a better eSports player. For example, throwing darts at a board requires exceptional hand-eye coordination. Playing tennis is another excellent option.

It’s not just visual processing skills that can set you apart from other gamers. You need to have other important attributes, such as high-level strategic thinking. Playing games like chess in your free time can help with this.

You may not have thought about hand-eye coordination before, but it is something that has a great effect on your gaming results. Your skills are probably better than average people already. But, if you want to beat the best eSports gamers in the business, you need to work on ways to improve these attributes.

Nick Sinclair

Nick Sinclair, a gaming aficionado since the Commodore 64 era, studied Creative Computer Games Design in university before founding his own gaming company. Discovering a passion for content creation, Nick now helps gamers squeeze every drop of fun out of their favorite gaming hardware

Recent Posts