Thank you, it's a lot more cheery than it was before
30 G uniform weighted are not popular in North America, it's indeed the common opinion that they are excessively light, that a slightly lateral stroke of a key will be enough to induce unwanted presses of its neighbor keys, and that if you brush from one key to another you might snag the key in between the two. I tell to people that the first point almost never happen when you're minimally accurate typist, because the keys are not shaped to allow this unless you're obviously pressing some keys largely out of their center. The next point is sadly more true, people often type with their hands too low and often slide their fingers brushing the top of the keys to move around, because lifting them completely requires too much effort with such a typing technique. But it's a stressful and not adequate way of typing, and how secretaries end up with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
The correct way of typing is by hovering both hands in an "uncontracted", not "held in place", but just neutrally above the height of the keyboard. Fingers needs to plunge down on the keys, so they come from above, and not sideways. Once you figured out the techniques and start using all 8 fingers you're not doing lateral movements anymore. Only the principal muscles of your fingers are used, and not to move the fingers around, solely for pressing down the keys. It's a very economical, smooth experience, and you can type for a lot longer, and though gaining speed is more difficult to do with 8 fingers and not brushing the keys, because it takes a lot more coordination. Bad techniques requires you to put much strength to control you fingers, and while you become faster by having this much control, the faster you get the more stress you endure. You can become pretty swift with good technique too, but you need to anchor the technique and that alone take a lot of time. I went from 112 WPM to about 75 when I found out and started "hovering" with my usual six fingers, I climbed in the WPM count, but dropped again when I started to use 8 fingers. Now I'm somewhere between 90-95, and all of this happened in the last 5 months approximately, but I'm a slow learned and one could do the seam in as less as one month.
Now I love my 30 G, I can type virtually forever and my hands becomes sore like they used to. The keys do not feel light anymore, they feel right. When I revert to my Variable (mostly 45 G keys) I find the keys heavy, but it takes less than an hour add those needed 15 G in my typing; and yeah I'm okay with having flimsy but accurate fingers. Japaneses too, they have 30 G Topre models to choose from, unlike us (Elitekeyboards doesn't stock that weighting). Once you have a good technique it's easier to adapt to any switch, it's just matter of getting a feel for the tactile bump in (example) Browns, and slightly increasing the power of your plunges with (example) Blacks; it's doesn't become difficult or strenuous in any way. Right now, I feel like I could tackle the very hard switches like some ALPS, Cherry Clears, or Buckling Springs and become proficient and be less damaging to my fingers than someone with a technique less good, but with stronger fingers.
Ideal, "physician-recommended" technique looks a lot like that, practically:
...though she's very much perfect (this is an extreme example, good typing Qwerty looks more like
this in reality, but you don't get to see his arms or wrists which is why I didn't picked that example)... and typing Japanese characters, so she's using only half of the keys.
Notice the palm lifted up above the keys and how she doesn't do any wrist flexing or move her arms, because her eight fingers have access to all rows of key.
This is the only "worst" example I could find where you could see both the wrists and arms. The more his palms touch the desk the more the wrist and arms has to do the work... this guy is not so bad, but he should start by lifting his arms and palms. It's subtle but you can see his two wrists flex, his arms move, and his hands being lifted.
It's not that clear of a difference, but overall the first typist is a lot smoother, "focused", she gets the gravity to work for her while the second typist constantly fight against it to lift his fingers to the next key. It's a "jumping" motion instead of a "plunge-recover / plunge-recover... " one. His arms, wrists, and even hands plays an active/functional role instead of a neutral/structural one, and the stress and the syndromes comes from the fact that typing requires
pronation of the hands, which is unnatural from the start, so in the long run you gain a lot if your arms "float" instead of twist, reach, flex, etc. Going from 6 to 8 fingers also considerably reduces the distance your fingers needs to do (by many kilometers, if you can believe that).
