Clicks Per Minute Click Chronometer Run the test

Technique

Jitter clicking, measured rather than described

Jitter clicking reaches 450 to 700 CPM by tensing the arm until the tremor works the switch. What the per-second profile shows, and what it costs.

A chronometer dial reading 620 clicks per minute

Jitter clicking is the first technique most people find when a plain finger stops being fast enough. The method is simple to state and unpleasant to hold: tense the forearm until it shakes, rest the fingertip on the button, and let the tremor do the pressing.

What it actually produces

A practised jitter run sits between 450 and 700 CPM — 7.5 to 11.7 clicks per second. On the per-second profile it reads as a dense, slightly irregular picket: presses arrive in a near-constant stream, but the gaps between them vary by ten or fifteen milliseconds because a tremor is not a metronome.

That irregularity is the signature. A single-clicked run has wide, even gaps. A butterfly run reads as tight pairs. Jitter reads as noise with a high floor.

The profile is where it fails

Jitter holds its rate for about six seconds. On a ten-second interval the last three or four bars are visibly shorter than the first three, because the muscles producing the tremor are the ones that tire first. On a sixty-second interval it collapses entirely — most people finish below their single-clicking rate.

If you want a jitter number that means something, run the five-second interval. It is the window the technique actually holds.

What it costs

Jitter clicking works by sustaining a static contraction in the forearm, which is precisely the loading pattern associated with repetitive strain. That is not a reason nobody should do it; it is a reason to treat it as a sprint. Three five-second sets with a real rest between them, and stop at the first ache rather than the second.

If the ache arrives during the warm-up rather than at the end of a set, the technique is not the problem — the accumulated load is. Give it a week.

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