Regarding reaction times there is actually a scientific study that tested the reaction time and grip strength of a diverse groupset of gender and age, which had a few outliers that suggest that older people can have fast reaction times and dexterity, and the correlation was that the few older people that had a higher grip strength had just as fast reaction time and precision as the younger participants, and on average the younger participants had a higher gripstrength. No one really does strength exercises for grip strength, so most players are just working out their muscles in game playing nonstop for 14hours a day, and if their passion for grinding the game dies as they get older the muscles in their forearm start atrophying. Also, people disrespect the effect our gear has on reaction time. When I was 21 playing CSGO I had something terrible like 220ms, I actually had RSI and stopped playing CSGO for 2 years around 24yrs old, and after that I upgraded my gear and put conscious effort into strength training/improving ergonomics, and now at 29yrs old my average reaction time is 145ms. Something interesting I learned from upgrading my gear is how my brain operates differently with lower latency gear. Litterally just going from 144hz to 240hz monitor made such a huge difference that on 144hz I was heavily relying on my brain to predict where the enemy would go and aim ahead. On 240hz all of a sudden my aiming got transferred from the active prediction side of my brain into my subconcious. I now aim and shot people automatically, it basically feels like someone else is aiming for me and I am just watching. Its important to not get this confused though. I’m not saying that monitor hertz rate is the key to improving reaction time, latency is a chain and if one point of the chain is weak all the rest feels bad. The only reason I had such a big jump in aimstyle was because the rest of my gear was already low latency, with like 500fps, and a highly optimized operating system with a low number of programs running on startup, to give a sense of how optimized my setup is my ping in Valorant doesn’t fluctuate and sits permanently at 8ms. Also not all high hz monitors are the same, high hz doesn’t guarantee a low latency. The monitor I bought had one of the lowest latencies. Its not good enough to just buy the most expensive gear because my gear is usually somewhere in the mid tier of price, I don’t own a single bleeding edge item, and often times the bleeding edge or most expensive items don’t have the lowest latency. At the end of the day gear is all about becoming comfortable with your mechanical skill at a subconscious level so your brain can focus on other things. Even if you have the best gear you still need to put the time into practice so your subconscious is able to instantly know how to react in all situations.
@@wtssmaller Muscles react faster if you train them, that is just an objective fact. The muscle controlling the tendons to click a button are the same ones used in grip strength. Also you can fuck right off with that testosterone bullshit. Grip strength is one of the few athletic disciplines where age doesn't matter, when trained properly grip strength keeps improving over time. Odd Haugen is living proof of this, at age 73 he is still breaking grip strength world records.
I had the same experience moving from 60 to 144 in apex as an octane movement player. At 60 if I’m schmoovin, players are just blurs of pixels. 240 would be so nice
When i was 21 I had a laptop with 50 fps when they were no smoke or molly and 15 fps when they were a smoke and a molly. Still I went to global elite and because of my apptitude of fragging and winning all my duel and I was a clutchmaster (I had the same feeling you have on 240hz it was like automatic for me). but I wasnt able to lead a game I was more the soldier. Now im 28 bought a really good gaming pc and I can barely do good in "nova" elo but I understand way more thing about the game just im losing most of my duel aha but I can lead now at least or coach young talent. I think its because when i was young it was like I saw a pixel of a color of an enemy I flick toward it instantly and shoot and ask question later. Now im overthinking too much and thats maybe why my reaction time is longer is due to me using conscious brain instead of my unconscious like when i was young but its been 3 years and I didnt manage to fix it. Im at a point im giving up and just gonna play for fun. I dont think it matter of a gear (even if a good gear can help a lil bit) but a matter of your mentality and the warrior inside you. When I was 21 I was at my prime of skill level and I was "young" I wanted to prove to everyone what I was capable and that I was better and I wanted so bad to win that I have my survival instinct in clutch situation. Now I think I grow up so I dont have this mentality anymore and thats might be one of the reason I do everything consciously now instead of inconsciously. When I was kid i wanted so bad to win that sometimes i could see everything in slow motion because i was DEAD FOCUS on the game but relying on my inconscious and automatism. I think mental/motivation is what really matter.
22:00 I'm so glad you mentioned the consistent sensitivity thing, cause you feel so stuck playing on one single sens, sometimes your arms get fatigued and playing a higher sens works better, and vice-versa, and it's nice to change it up, even if slightly
Absolutely great podcast, thank you very much for that. I've made it to the top 2-1% in all of the KovaaKs tasks I play and I still learned alot from this.
@@ddkesports thank you for the content man. I've been binging every single one of your videos during my aim routines for the past week or so lol. Watching the nutrition stuff with Casey atm and I'm loving it
Great interview, thanks ! I would like to provide additional tips, just in case you might read this (I am top 1000 aimlabs ranked and had many top 100 scores on popular scenarios on kovaaks) : - Screen distance and height : in order to find the "perfect" screen distance for your vision, you could try playing a scenario with tiny targets, and alternate by hiding one eye, then the other. You will notice if you see the targets clearly or blured with one eye, and then adjust the screen distance or height in such a way that the blur is gone. Never heard of this tip, but I find it interesting. - Training with one eye : Consecutively to the previous tip, training 10 scenarios with one eye, then switching to the other, might give you some hints and help for eye movement. Once you use both eyes again, you'll be able to appreciate the training, give it a try ;) - Training with very tiny targets : often in aim trainers, you have scenarios which have copies called "mini". Those scenarios are interesting because they will push you more into your limits, I advice you play those. - Nothing was said about arm/elbow/shoulder position in relation to mousepad, some people say it's good to have 90° angle on your elbow and shoulder, but I'm not sure if it's relevant for all. I believe that what you need to check is that you are able to move your mouse easily across the mousepad. - Don't be lazy : if you want to compete at high level, you need to use a sens that is "challenging" in such a way that it requires you to make fast motions. If you plan on becoming really good, having a "lazy aim" like using a very high sens to have minimal movement involved is not going to pay off because you will be much less consistent. - About crosshair color : as it was said, you have to be able to "see" your crosshair in your peripheral vision, and you have to test every color to see which one is more visible to you. Often, green is a good choice, but cyan and red (with yellow target) might be also good options. You have to test and see what's best for your preferences. - FPS limiting : often, specially if you don't have a 20k $ hardware, your hardware can give you FPS up to a certain point. You don't want to push your hardware to this max, because in the middle of fast actions, your FPS will inevitably drop. You have to see on each of the games you play, what is the "minimum FPS in action", and then, limit your FPS to that. This will make it much more consistent for your aim, because you'll be used to aim on any situation with a consistent FPS. - Finding a perfect sens is not possible, unless you play a game which always requires the same kind of movements. In a game like Overwatch, every hero has a different range of motion which makes it impossible to find a "perfect sens" to play them all. So you might very well decide to chose between 3 kinds of sens, a slow one for precise aiming and long distance, a mid one for spray aiming and medium distance, and a fast sens for high mobility heroes which don't require much precision. - Lastly I would like to talk about tracking vs flicking : in games like CS or Valorant, flicking is more important, in games like Overwatch, many heroes profit from tracking skills. You have to train both (and switching as well) in order to improve overall, and not only focus on one type of aiming. You could notice that tracking a fast target or a slow target might be very difficult with your actual sens, even if it works good for flicking, which means that you have to be aware of that, and either pick a different tracking sens, or change your flicking sens accordingly. I was a bit surprised about what was said about muscle memory : I don't see it as a meme. It's really true that if you get used to a given sens by playing it consistently, and even if you encounter tiny differences with humidity on the mousepad and such, you will improve on that sens. It's the same with acceleration, which for me is a proof : if you train and play a lot with acceleration, you'll get used to it, you'll develop "muscle memory" (but it should be called brain memory, right?). So taking my previous tip into consideration, it means you should probably, depending on the game/heroes you play, find 3 senses and train them independently. Hope this helps someone :) PS : I'm 44yo with 20 years XP in FPS games. I've played thousands of hours, and my reaction time is 150ms average ^^
This is a great comment. Thank you so much! I think you make fantastic points here, and I'll have to try out the one-eyed approach specifically. I haven't tried this before. If I do a tips video any time soon I'm be sure to include some of these and to credit you. Thank you again for taking the time!
ive been playing fps games since i was 8, im 22 now. My left eye sees 40% and my right 65% so i have a lazy eye sometimes. i tried with one eye covered and in sixshot ultimate i got averaging 65k score with left eye and 85k with right eye and without cover about 95k and highest 100k. what should i do? train with my right eye covered or nah? in csgo i am at 13k elo and used to be lvl 10 faceit and val im ascendant. All that without any training. Recently i decided to train because im not as good as i used to be years ago(bigger competition)
@@jsav9904 The idea behind hiding one eye after the other is to enable you to notice your ideal screen distance by comparing at which distance your eyes feel the most comfortable. There is nothing better than using both eyes in order to have a good vision, by looking with only one eye you are limiting yourself EVEN if one of your eyes has a poor sight. Don't forget that by using only one eye you are not only blinding some of your peripheral vision but also you are only seeing in "2D". There are ways to improve eye sight, some of them contested, some others "medical" (seeing an eye doctor and getting lenses) so I suggest you do some research on those subjects, specifically "eye training" methods to improve eyesight which might help you.
the part where they're discussing using high or low sens 23:00 onwards to develop different parts of mouse control (finger vs wrist / arm) is very interesting, and made me realize I hardly use my fingers at all to aim. trying out mini's aimlabs workshop stuff for micro corrections and also strafe headshots to get better. for now I bumped my sens up to try and develop more finger control (been on medium sens .32 800 dpi on val for 2 years)
such a good video, i just started aim training consistently a month ago and days ago started looking into voltaic. the timing could not have been better for me haha. i was concerned about how much periphery i typically use, so i'm glad you asked the target vs. crosshair question, nice work from both of you
These are some thing´s that I found out for myself: 1.Whatever works for you works for you no mater what everyone else say´s. 2.Give yourself time to get good. 3.Usually if you focus on what you are weak at you will automaticly get better at everything. 4.Don´t force it let it come towards you. (Give yourself a break from time to time/switch it up)
Rapha never used any of these programs and he's the goat. Simply because clicking on dots won't help you other than with sniping a nonmoving target with a hitscan weapon while camping. But there is much more than this to aiming like positioning and different types of weapons (tracking, projectile or combination of both)...
Thanks for making this, the fps community at large is still slightly stuck in the past when it comes to mechanics practice. Because aim usually isn't the main thing determining the outcome of rounds a lot of players settle on their mechanics being "good enough"
Have been playing CS since age of 15, it was CS1.3 back in the day, then I stopped around CS1.6 I was also playing semi pro. Then I switch playing game like WoW and LoL, then I was invited to try Valorant during the beta and I kind of liked it because of the movement but not all the abilities, then I stick to it, I'm 37 years old and peaked AS3! Brain usage will always overcome reaction time :)
Thank you kindly for this interview. There's a heap of knowledge for free here and people should 100% subscribe and like the video at the very least. Thanks.
For those still looking for a ‘perfect sens’ despite watching this (aka wants sens that works for all games for all aiming scenarios which is virtually impossible), try to find a sens that falls in the range that utilizes hybrid posture. When in this posture, you end up using arms for longer movements and fingertips/wrists for small fine movement For best of both worlds without sacrifice, although it won’t magically change your skill floor, mouse accel offers the greatest skill ceiling
39:58 - That's actually a myth in itself. People presenting it as "Input delay" are misreading the results. They're seeing higher DPI registering movement faster, but it happens because lower DPI ignores very small inputs until the threshold between "dots"/"counts" is crossed. Once the input crosses the threshold, the time it takes to materialize on the monitor is the same. The real benefit of higher DPI stems from high refresh rate monitors. You only fully reap their benefits with sufficient mouse DPI. With them your eye is able to register high DPI movement as more smooth and realistic and this should help your reaction and hand-eye coordination. On 400 DPI you would probably sometimes feel like you're playing on lower refresh rate. That is, during slower mouse movements some frames would pass without a visual change because you haven't crossed the threshold for mouse position to change.
Oddly relatable backstory on the thought process. Want to get better, practice, discover aim trainers, look up guide about kovaks. So flicking. Ty. Also very true about down time and isolating what your trying to improve at.
While you can't apply muscle memory to in-game aiming, you can establish micro-shortcuts in your kinesis that satisfy the requirements of a given aiming scenario, resulting in faster executions.
An example of this is wingman shots in apex. Most good players flick, shoot, then actually move off the target a fixed, practiced distance, and flick back on. This is done on every shot, and it’s so they can see, as the ironsight obstructs the target. But that fixed distance we flick off then back on is so ingrained, if someone is standing still or strafing in one direction at a consistent speed, I could do it with my eyes closed.
Amazing interview, would love to see.you get the aim coach GOD aimer7 on here, his opinions on aim are unbelievably complex whilst being simple to unferstand.
theres no other way anyone could have a 45% HS percentage consistently over multiple games on VCT without them playing valorant like its a methodical aimlab. while everyone else sprays to get multi kills . demon 1 takes his time and only looks for clean 1 taps in every situation and never relies on sprays or body spam shots
Had this on my watch later list for a while, finally came around to watching it. Great interview! It could have been improved, in my opinion, if the video clips were muted: the audio is distracting and makes it hard to understand what minigod was saying
Thanks for the feedback. Looking forward to applying a bunch of improvements for the second convo. We had to delay it a little. But hopefully in January.
When you're on the aim journey and finally learn it's okay to switch your sensitivity, because your practice has made you become so adaptable in mouse control, there's really no better feeling. It's like seeing your abs for the first time lmao.
One of the reasons people are reluctant to pick up aim trainers is the absence of aim trainers' users in the competitive scene. The one's who play AimLab are sponsored by it and you will never see pro player names on the leaderboards. Old veterans are a totally lost cause. They go for strictly in-game practice approach. In Quake/UT they tell you to just play duels, in CS, just play the matches. And yeah, as the reality implies, those veterans have spent insane hours in their respective games to warrant that outlook. Doesn't help their argument that their aim is also not that good when it comes to walking the walk. They do not possess the consistent basic mouse control skill that aim trainers' users develop. Another myth is that talent beats hard work, not the other way around. That good aim is the prerogative of young prodigies. People call themselves old at 18 already. Brings us back to the Rapha episode of the podcast. Hopefully, people realize sooner the ridiculousness of the age argument. But just like any sport, esport and gaming will always be surrounded by destructive, unproductive myths. Gladly podcasts like this take credible statements right out of horse's mouth and bust those myths.
>should I focus on the crosshair or target I am glad this came up. It makes sense as you keep your eye on the ball in general and not look at your hand. I would be interested to see how mini performs without a crosshair..
The funny thing about demon1 is that he played Arena FPS like Unreal Tournament for thousands of hours and was one of the anomalies as a Arena FPS semi-pro switching to valorant
Can attest to focusing on the target instead of the crosshair. Used to play a lot of Battlefield 3, and at some point I started playing a lot of team deathmatch, and forcing myself to only no-scoping/hip-firing bolt action rifles. Got pretty consistent one-shotting headshots at low to medium ranges, all by focusing on the target. I also notice that after a few beers, I hit targets easier in CS, and it is likely due to focusing more on motion than detail.
im not a god aimer by any means but just adding my input, adding mouse grips to my light small mice helped me loosen my grip on the mouse and made it much easier to control
Really nice interview, one question that was missed is the age one , that was asked together with the reaction time , it was interesting question very sad it was missed
That's surprising to hear him say to focus on the player not the crosshair. I've always heard the opposite and find that my aim is the best when I'm more focused on my crosshair. Of course I'm also not in the same universe of skill that he is.
@29:00 This is why I switched to a ceramic mousepad with sapphire/ptfe feet combination. Was tired of wearing out an expensive artisan pads. While it will still change with environment at least it's more consistent.
I used a dot crosshair for several years to force myself to focus on targets instead of my crosshair but I did switch back to a traditional crosshair once I started playing FPS more seriously again
Somehow changing shooting to ctrl made my autistic brain go from missing most of the shots to landing most of the shots. Really shooter games experience change for me, thank you!
Everything discussed in this video is legit!!! As a previous CS v1.3/1.4 player running a 30:3 KD Ratio at the time. I would go onto blank maps and just practice rounding corners to aim in various spots. Although CS maps and gameplay has evolved, this still holds true today. Slow and steady will help to improve. After aiming gets better and quicker, than start moving to better servers and players that are better such as amature, pro's, and veterns. The computers, monitors and mouse were horrible. Started playing armature 3 vs. 3 exhibition matches and went undefeated for 3 weeks straight. Unfortunately, due to the time frame. E-sports was barely starting at the time. So, switched to focus on education over gaming and retired FPS, once in a while I play, but don't have the equipment or time to keep up with the industry today. Fun times were with other friends and various CS mods. Such as: revolutionary scenario and try long shooting as the bullet would drop over distance. You might find some new fun and challenges as the game style is a lot different.
I literally change my sens every round and every game. Eventually I find something good and I end up top fragging most of the time I believe in a situational perfect sens
Knew it, going back to my intuition. Over thinking crap just made me hate gaming. Screw I'm gonna try to breed a couple black hawk choppers in battlebit remastered.
400 and 800 were chosen for a combination of 2 reasons. Firstly it was practical based on the resolutions of monitors at the time, and secondly mice used to have a native resolution to the sensor itself. In the early days this was 400, then later 800 as sensors improved. The mice performed better at their native cpi (many sensor engineers prefer the term counts per inch to the interchangeable dots per inch), and to achieve higher cpis the mouse sensor would sub divide the data recorded, artificially increasing the counts per inch but sacrificing sensor accuracy. This is also the historical reason for cpi settings changing at a factor of 2 (i.e 400, 800, 1600, 3200), rather than being additive (e.g adding 400 at a time for 400, 800, 1200 etc etc). Now that sensors are more advanced and no longer have a native cpi, and major mouse companies no longer artificially achieve higher cpis by sub dividing data, you should be able to have any cpi you want. Although I would note various sensor engineers, including those at Logitech, are of the opinion that 1600cpi is the sweet spot for performance bearing in mind both common monitor resolutions used in esports for comfortable desktop use, while giving more sensor data for more accurate sensor performance.
as someone who skateboarded on and off for 20 years now i do believe in muscle memory. maybe its all a myth i think the points he made about it are true but i believe the muscle memory plays more into the fact that everyone knows how far they need to move their mouse to do a 360, meaning they likely know the distance to do 180 90 60 40 20 and so on. my aim is very average so i really have no idea what im talking about lol
I watched a n0thing stream where he said he did testing with Harvard people about higher DPI being better than lower DPI, that's why I use 1600 DPI with an in-game sensitivity of .25 :)
@@vorkot1 thanks for the long and detailed explaination. I read all of it and what i understood is that muscle memory is thing but its not just one dimensional people think like playing on a single sens and master it overtime, after a certain time you reach the limit for that particular sens and the range of muscle engagment it offers, so we need to change the sens accordingly to engage diff muscles and learn some new muscle memory. So basically he meant that muscle memory rather than being a limiting factor or an excuse, can be used to learn in many other ways, generally people think that if i change my sens i might lose the muscle memory but actually if the player changes the sens he/she might learn some new things and when he/she comes back to their original sens that would have a better time or more control thier mouse.
@@vorkot1 100% agree with you and thx for solving my queries. Just wanted to ask one more thing like using different sens to engage more muscle group is mostly for aim training and becoming a better mechanical aimer right? it is complety fine to keep a single sens in game if it allows and combines all the different sens , muscle memory and muscles groups that you engaged in training...? bcuz i think most of the player get confuse here , changing sens is for learning and traiing, coach's like minigod and others dont mean to say change your sens in game directly.. i think they mean to say that try different sens in training and once you confirm that higher or lower sens is going to help you then you change it..
kay thx @@vorkot1 aim trainer and games are a totally diff realms, ill do experiment and other stuff in traiing while playing game mostly focus on game rather than aim. THX once again :)
So if you ask a pro player to flick onto a target eyes closed then is it muscle memory or hand eye coordination? Is knowing how much of hand movement roughly corresponds to a distance on screen muscle memory or hand eye coordination? If you do the same experiment but you change the sensitivity without the player knowing - which is it then and why will his flick be off? Hypothetical scenario: they hold an angle, enemy appears from another angle that's 60 degrees off, they do the flick without seeing the full path of the crosshair by either closing eyes, have test setup with 1 FPS, etc.
I see you mention demon1 and his aim here and there ddk, and in case you weren't aware from some of his tweets, he's a veteran UT4/2k4 player and regarded as the best player there. His youtube is a goldmine of old montages and trash talk
@@ddkesports The last UT4 duel tournament he played in was shortly before he joined EG. He practiced for a week, then proceeded to dominate, only dropping 2 maps over the 17 he played. It's nice that someone from the small UT community has made it to a big stage, there was a lot of hype for him when EG won VCT. Also cool that Hypoc was casting that final, since he was once the best UT99 player himself.
Regarding reaction times, i sometimes just take one of the basic mouse click test, and on that area my reaction time has not yet degraded over the 7 ish years I been playing on pc, and I am now 41, it have stayed consistent around 170-180ms, playing a shooter game, overall ingame reaction time taken into account, it is probable a little higher🤷♂😆
So if I do voltaic on different sensitivities esp high, how would I find a sens for val if there’s a bunch of muscle groups I’m making? I could be training high and low but I have no idea how I would find a sens for val
My issue with sens is that when I change my sens to a much lower one when going from overwatch to valorant, or doing that in an aim trainer, the higher sensitivity always feels so bad and takes me so long to adjust back to.
Muscle memory is so funny when it’s thrown around, I get called crazy when people In game tell me about muscle memory and I say that shit doesn’t exist 😂
@Daniel Kapadia regardless how hard you wanna deny it muscle memory or the perception of how far do i have to move to reach a certain point on the screen plays a very big role maybe muscle memory is not the best term for it. (but that´s what people actualy mean when they refeer to it) othwise we could just nilly vanilly go through any range of sensitivity and instantly be good at any sensitivity value wich is simply not the case.
![How The Best Aimer In NA Trains - VT Matty [ddk podcast 30]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Rqp3k44qqQI/mqdefault.jpg)
Easily one of the best gaming interviews on the internet. I’ll be referencing this for years to come.
Thank you so much! I hope to build on this a lot on my channel with my own content and also with future interviews :).
If anyone EVER asks me about aim I'll just direct them to this video.
Im playing dota2 sniper, will he be able to teach me?xD
🤓
Minigod so well spoken, thank you for being our spokesperson my goat
I love him
GOAT!!!! MATE YOU GOTTA GET OUTSIDE MORE lmao xD
unfortunate nickname tho
very happy minigod is here being the one representing the aim training community
Regarding reaction times there is actually a scientific study that tested the reaction time and grip strength of a diverse groupset of gender and age, which had a few outliers that suggest that older people can have fast reaction times and dexterity, and the correlation was that the few older people that had a higher grip strength had just as fast reaction time and precision as the younger participants, and on average the younger participants had a higher gripstrength.
No one really does strength exercises for grip strength, so most players are just working out their muscles in game playing nonstop for 14hours a day, and if their passion for grinding the game dies as they get older the muscles in their forearm start atrophying.
Also, people disrespect the effect our gear has on reaction time. When I was 21 playing CSGO I had something terrible like 220ms, I actually had RSI and stopped playing CSGO for 2 years around 24yrs old, and after that I upgraded my gear and put conscious effort into strength training/improving ergonomics, and now at 29yrs old my average reaction time is 145ms.
Something interesting I learned from upgrading my gear is how my brain operates differently with lower latency gear. Litterally just going from 144hz to 240hz monitor made such a huge difference that on 144hz I was heavily relying on my brain to predict where the enemy would go and aim ahead. On 240hz all of a sudden my aiming got transferred from the active prediction side of my brain into my subconcious. I now aim and shot people automatically, it basically feels like someone else is aiming for me and I am just watching.
Its important to not get this confused though. I’m not saying that monitor hertz rate is the key to improving reaction time, latency is a chain and if one point of the chain is weak all the rest feels bad. The only reason I had such a big jump in aimstyle was because the rest of my gear was already low latency, with like 500fps, and a highly optimized operating system with a low number of programs running on startup, to give a sense of how optimized my setup is my ping in Valorant doesn’t fluctuate and sits permanently at 8ms. Also not all high hz monitors are the same, high hz doesn’t guarantee a low latency. The monitor I bought had one of the lowest latencies.
Its not good enough to just buy the most expensive gear because my gear is usually somewhere in the mid tier of price, I don’t own a single bleeding edge item, and often times the bleeding edge or most expensive items don’t have the lowest latency.
At the end of the day gear is all about becoming comfortable with your mechanical skill at a subconscious level so your brain can focus on other things. Even if you have the best gear you still need to put the time into practice so your subconscious is able to instantly know how to react in all situations.
Reassuring to hear this, unsurprisingly I keep getting older every year! but stronger too 😂
@@wtssmaller Muscles react faster if you train them, that is just an objective fact. The muscle controlling the tendons to click a button are the same ones used in grip strength.
Also you can fuck right off with that testosterone bullshit. Grip strength is one of the few athletic disciplines where age doesn't matter, when trained properly grip strength keeps improving over time. Odd Haugen is living proof of this, at age 73 he is still breaking grip strength world records.
I had the same experience moving from 60 to 144 in apex as an octane movement player. At 60 if I’m schmoovin, players are just blurs of pixels. 240 would be so nice
When i was 21 I had a laptop with 50 fps when they were no smoke or molly and 15 fps when they were a smoke and a molly. Still I went to global elite and because of my apptitude of fragging and winning all my duel and I was a clutchmaster (I had the same feeling you have on 240hz it was like automatic for me). but I wasnt able to lead a game I was more the soldier. Now im 28 bought a really good gaming pc and I can barely do good in "nova" elo but I understand way more thing about the game just im losing most of my duel aha but I can lead now at least or coach young talent. I think its because when i was young it was like I saw a pixel of a color of an enemy I flick toward it instantly and shoot and ask question later. Now im overthinking too much and thats maybe why my reaction time is longer is due to me using conscious brain instead of my unconscious like when i was young but its been 3 years and I didnt manage to fix it. Im at a point im giving up and just gonna play for fun. I dont think it matter of a gear (even if a good gear can help a lil bit) but a matter of your mentality and the warrior inside you. When I was 21 I was at my prime of skill level and I was "young" I wanted to prove to everyone what I was capable and that I was better and I wanted so bad to win that I have my survival instinct in clutch situation. Now I think I grow up so I dont have this mentality anymore and thats might be one of the reason I do everything consciously now instead of inconsciously. When I was kid i wanted so bad to win that sometimes i could see everything in slow motion because i was DEAD FOCUS on the game but relying on my inconscious and automatism. I think mental/motivation is what really matter.
Amazing comment, thank you!
22:00 I'm so glad you mentioned the consistent sensitivity thing, cause you feel so stuck playing on one single sens, sometimes your arms get fatigued and playing a higher sens works better, and vice-versa, and it's nice to change it up, even if slightly
Absolutely great podcast, thank you very much for that. I've made it to the top 2-1% in all of the KovaaKs tasks I play and I still learned alot from this.
That's awesome to hear. Thank you so much for the comment!
@@ddkesports thank you for the content man. I've been binging every single one of your videos during my aim routines for the past week or so lol. Watching the nutrition stuff with Casey atm and I'm loving it
Man asked all the right questions... Cheers.
Amazing podcast! It's great to see you bringing aimtraining to the mainstream in such a good informative way.
Keep it up!!
@noavlr Ayyy you're welcome!
This is a certified hood classic
Real trap shit
Real gang shit
Trapaholics
Corny af, nerds
Amazing interview. Thank you so much for this and also Minigod for being such a good guest.
You're welcome. I appreciate the kind words!
I’ve watched this like 3 times and I learn something new everytime
Great interview, thanks !
I would like to provide additional tips, just in case you might read this (I am top 1000 aimlabs ranked and had many top 100 scores on popular scenarios on kovaaks) :
- Screen distance and height : in order to find the "perfect" screen distance for your vision, you could try playing a scenario with tiny targets, and alternate by hiding one eye, then the other. You will notice if you see the targets clearly or blured with one eye, and then adjust the screen distance or height in such a way that the blur is gone. Never heard of this tip, but I find it interesting.
- Training with one eye : Consecutively to the previous tip, training 10 scenarios with one eye, then switching to the other, might give you some hints and help for eye movement. Once you use both eyes again, you'll be able to appreciate the training, give it a try ;)
- Training with very tiny targets : often in aim trainers, you have scenarios which have copies called "mini". Those scenarios are interesting because they will push you more into your limits, I advice you play those.
- Nothing was said about arm/elbow/shoulder position in relation to mousepad, some people say it's good to have 90° angle on your elbow and shoulder, but I'm not sure if it's relevant for all. I believe that what you need to check is that you are able to move your mouse easily across the mousepad.
- Don't be lazy : if you want to compete at high level, you need to use a sens that is "challenging" in such a way that it requires you to make fast motions. If you plan on becoming really good, having a "lazy aim" like using a very high sens to have minimal movement involved is not going to pay off because you will be much less consistent.
- About crosshair color : as it was said, you have to be able to "see" your crosshair in your peripheral vision, and you have to test every color to see which one is more visible to you. Often, green is a good choice, but cyan and red (with yellow target) might be also good options. You have to test and see what's best for your preferences.
- FPS limiting : often, specially if you don't have a 20k $ hardware, your hardware can give you FPS up to a certain point. You don't want to push your hardware to this max, because in the middle of fast actions, your FPS will inevitably drop. You have to see on each of the games you play, what is the "minimum FPS in action", and then, limit your FPS to that. This will make it much more consistent for your aim, because you'll be used to aim on any situation with a consistent FPS.
- Finding a perfect sens is not possible, unless you play a game which always requires the same kind of movements. In a game like Overwatch, every hero has a different range of motion which makes it impossible to find a "perfect sens" to play them all. So you might very well decide to chose between 3 kinds of sens, a slow one for precise aiming and long distance, a mid one for spray aiming and medium distance, and a fast sens for high mobility heroes which don't require much precision.
- Lastly I would like to talk about tracking vs flicking : in games like CS or Valorant, flicking is more important, in games like Overwatch, many heroes profit from tracking skills. You have to train both (and switching as well) in order to improve overall, and not only focus on one type of aiming. You could notice that tracking a fast target or a slow target might be very difficult with your actual sens, even if it works good for flicking, which means that you have to be aware of that, and either pick a different tracking sens, or change your flicking sens accordingly. I was a bit surprised about what was said about muscle memory : I don't see it as a meme. It's really true that if you get used to a given sens by playing it consistently, and even if you encounter tiny differences with humidity on the mousepad and such, you will improve on that sens. It's the same with acceleration, which for me is a proof : if you train and play a lot with acceleration, you'll get used to it, you'll develop "muscle memory" (but it should be called brain memory, right?). So taking my previous tip into consideration, it means you should probably, depending on the game/heroes you play, find 3 senses and train them independently.
Hope this helps someone :)
PS : I'm 44yo with 20 years XP in FPS games. I've played thousands of hours, and my reaction time is 150ms average ^^
This is a great comment. Thank you so much! I think you make fantastic points here, and I'll have to try out the one-eyed approach specifically. I haven't tried this before.
If I do a tips video any time soon I'm be sure to include some of these and to credit you. Thank you again for taking the time!
@@ddkesports Thank you man, I appreciate that you read my tips and that you found them relevant, hope they'll help some other people :)
ive been playing fps games since i was 8, im 22 now. My left eye sees 40% and my right 65% so i have a lazy eye sometimes. i tried with one eye covered and in sixshot ultimate i got averaging 65k score with left eye and 85k with right eye and without cover about 95k and highest 100k. what should i do? train with my right eye covered or nah? in csgo i am at 13k elo and used to be lvl 10 faceit and val im ascendant. All that without any training. Recently i decided to train because im not as good as i used to be years ago(bigger competition)
@@jsav9904 The idea behind hiding one eye after the other is to enable you to notice your ideal screen distance by comparing at which distance your eyes feel the most comfortable.
There is nothing better than using both eyes in order to have a good vision, by looking with only one eye you are limiting yourself EVEN if one of your eyes has a poor sight. Don't forget that by using only one eye you are not only blinding some of your peripheral vision but also you are only seeing in "2D".
There are ways to improve eye sight, some of them contested, some others "medical" (seeing an eye doctor and getting lenses) so I suggest you do some research on those subjects, specifically "eye training" methods to improve eyesight which might help you.
No, it’s muscle memory, you can literally forget how to do it yet your muscles now it. I use muscle memory to remember very long passwords.
I used to watch you years ago casting faceit with James in the old cs days. Great to see you still around and looking forward to seeing more content.
watching yourself play is a good way to identify what you need to improve on
100% for any game
Very informative! Probably one of the best videos related to aiming.
the part where they're discussing using high or low sens 23:00 onwards to develop different parts of mouse control (finger vs wrist / arm) is very interesting, and made me realize I hardly use my fingers at all to aim. trying out mini's aimlabs workshop stuff for micro corrections and also strafe headshots to get better.
for now I bumped my sens up to try and develop more finger control (been on medium sens .32 800 dpi on val for 2 years)
I’ve had to watch this in pieces over a few days. Really good video
Glad you enjoyed it!
Keep these podcasts coming DDK .. Thank you !!
such a good video, i just started aim training consistently a month ago and days ago started looking into voltaic. the timing could not have been better for me haha. i was concerned about how much periphery i typically use, so i'm glad you asked the target vs. crosshair question, nice work from both of you
take care of yourself bro
These are some thing´s that I found out for myself:
1.Whatever works for you works for you no mater what everyone else say´s.
2.Give yourself time to get good.
3.Usually if you focus on what you are weak at you will automaticly get better at everything.
4.Don´t force it let it come towards you. (Give yourself a break from time to time/switch it up)
Rapha never used any of these programs and he's the goat. Simply because clicking on dots won't help you other than with sniping a nonmoving target with a hitscan weapon while camping. But there is much more than this to aiming like positioning and different types of weapons (tracking, projectile or combination of both)...
No1 best banger on this topic.
Thank you.
Love and blessings!
Thanks for making this, the fps community at large is still slightly stuck in the past when it comes to mechanics practice. Because aim usually isn't the main thing determining the outcome of rounds a lot of players settle on their mechanics being "good enough"
That long range missing shot tip was really helpful
Thank you for the most valuable knowledge for sharing without any cost.
Have been playing CS since age of 15, it was CS1.3 back in the day, then I stopped around CS1.6 I was also playing semi pro. Then I switch playing game like WoW and LoL, then I was invited to try Valorant during the beta and I kind of liked it because of the movement but not all the abilities, then I stick to it, I'm 37 years old and peaked AS3! Brain usage will always overcome reaction time :)
Cs1.3 bunnyhopping!
Thank you kindly for this interview. There's a heap of knowledge for free here and people should 100% subscribe and like the video at the very least. Thanks.
Thank you! 🙏
I'm half way through the video and thoroughly enjoying everything about it. Shout out to @ddkesports and @minigodcs all the way from New Zealand.
So many tips and trick, thank you. Learned a lot and will be testing a few things from now to see what improves
wow there is so much information in here that is so helpful thank you guys so much
You're welcome!
For those still looking for a ‘perfect sens’ despite watching this (aka wants sens that works for all games for all aiming scenarios which is virtually impossible), try to find a sens that falls in the range that utilizes hybrid posture. When in this posture, you end up using arms for longer movements and fingertips/wrists for small fine movement
For best of both worlds without sacrifice, although it won’t magically change your skill floor, mouse accel offers the greatest skill ceiling
Phenomenal video, insanely insightful
39:58 - That's actually a myth in itself. People presenting it as "Input delay" are misreading the results. They're seeing higher DPI registering movement faster, but it happens because lower DPI ignores very small inputs until the threshold between "dots"/"counts" is crossed. Once the input crosses the threshold, the time it takes to materialize on the monitor is the same.
The real benefit of higher DPI stems from high refresh rate monitors. You only fully reap their benefits with sufficient mouse DPI. With them your eye is able to register high DPI movement as more smooth and realistic and this should help your reaction and hand-eye coordination. On 400 DPI you would probably sometimes feel like you're playing on lower refresh rate. That is, during slower mouse movements some frames would pass without a visual change because you haven't crossed the threshold for mouse position to change.
Should I stay at 400 dpi or switch to 1600 dpi?
@@madness_valoyou should try 800 dpi
Awesome podcast was literally looking for something like this.
Hard work leads to talent... inherent talent is simply a stepping stone.
This is a certified good classic
The polling rate of mini's brain is just way above what mine will ever be!
Awesome, love this guy. Looking forward to watching this.
Oddly relatable backstory on the thought process. Want to get better, practice, discover aim trainers, look up guide about kovaks. So flicking. Ty. Also very true about down time and isolating what your trying to improve at.
While you can't apply muscle memory to in-game aiming, you can establish micro-shortcuts in your kinesis that satisfy the requirements of a given aiming scenario, resulting in faster executions.
An example of this is wingman shots in apex. Most good players flick, shoot, then actually move off the target a fixed, practiced distance, and flick back on. This is done on every shot, and it’s so they can see, as the ironsight obstructs the target. But that fixed distance we flick off then back on is so ingrained, if someone is standing still or strafing in one direction at a consistent speed, I could do it with my eyes closed.
the s"should you focus on the target or the crosshari" comes back to the good ol saying if you look at it you will hit it
Amazing interview, would love to see.you get the aim coach GOD aimer7 on here, his opinions on aim are unbelievably complex whilst being simple to unferstand.
Amazing interview, I never seen somewhere else on the internet so much knowledge about aiming, in 1 interview.
i was listening to this whilst playing val game and it was super intresting, ive never even thought about this side of things
No pain no gain approach, thats what i always said, do scenario's that sucks so you force yourself into new habits
theres no other way anyone could have a 45% HS percentage consistently over multiple games on VCT without them playing valorant like its a methodical aimlab. while everyone else sprays to get multi kills . demon 1 takes his time and only looks for clean 1 taps in every situation and never relies on sprays or body spam shots
Im at a solid 14% HS XD Gotten to Ascendant 3 tho so Im eager to see how improving my hs% will affect my rank.
Had this on my watch later list for a while, finally came around to watching it. Great interview! It could have been improved, in my opinion, if the video clips were muted: the audio is distracting and makes it hard to understand what minigod was saying
Thanks for the feedback. Looking forward to applying a bunch of improvements for the second convo. We had to delay it a little. But hopefully in January.
43:55 thats actually a spinal reflex (very fast), while in game things will be via the brain (slower)
When you're on the aim journey and finally learn it's okay to switch your sensitivity, because your practice has made you become so adaptable in mouse control, there's really no better feeling. It's like seeing your abs for the first time lmao.
Best gaming interview ive ever watched, i was so lost where to start and have been looking for this advice for years.
Thank you
Thank you!!
listend to that while aimtraining 👍👍
One of the reasons people are reluctant to pick up aim trainers is the absence of aim trainers' users in the competitive scene. The one's who play AimLab are sponsored by it and you will never see pro player names on the leaderboards.
Old veterans are a totally lost cause. They go for strictly in-game practice approach. In Quake/UT they tell you to just play duels, in CS, just play the matches. And yeah, as the reality implies, those veterans have spent insane hours in their respective games to warrant that outlook. Doesn't help their argument that their aim is also not that good when it comes to walking the walk. They do not possess the consistent basic mouse control skill that aim trainers' users develop.
Another myth is that talent beats hard work, not the other way around. That good aim is the prerogative of young prodigies. People call themselves old at 18 already. Brings us back to the Rapha episode of the podcast. Hopefully, people realize sooner the ridiculousness of the age argument.
But just like any sport, esport and gaming will always be surrounded by destructive, unproductive myths. Gladly podcasts like this take credible statements right out of horse's mouth and bust those myths.
>should I focus on the crosshair or target
I am glad this came up. It makes sense as you keep your eye on the ball in general and not look at your hand. I would be interested to see how mini performs without a crosshair..
this was a dope conversation, going to try to implement some of these things for myself, would love more
ty minigod u're a beast
The funny thing about demon1 is that he played Arena FPS like Unreal Tournament for thousands of hours and was one of the anomalies as a Arena FPS semi-pro switching to valorant
The word like was used 1913 times in this podcast
no way u counted
Might've ran the script through a program that counted, but idk.
@@mrmatiti3405 that makes sense
Can attest to focusing on the target instead of the crosshair. Used to play a lot of Battlefield 3, and at some point I started playing a lot of team deathmatch, and forcing myself to only no-scoping/hip-firing bolt action rifles. Got pretty consistent one-shotting headshots at low to medium ranges, all by focusing on the target. I also notice that after a few beers, I hit targets easier in CS, and it is likely due to focusing more on motion than detail.
GREAT JOB
THANK YOU!
im not a god aimer by any means but just adding my input, adding mouse grips to my light small mice helped me loosen my grip on the mouse and made it much easier to control
Really nice interview, one question that was missed is the age one , that was asked together with the reaction time , it was interesting question very sad it was missed
That's surprising to hear him say to focus on the player not the crosshair. I've always heard the opposite and find that my aim is the best when I'm more focused on my crosshair. Of course I'm also not in the same universe of skill that he is.
@29:00 This is why I switched to a ceramic mousepad with sapphire/ptfe feet combination. Was tired of wearing out an expensive artisan pads. While it will still change with environment at least it's more consistent.
W podcast!
I used a dot crosshair for several years to force myself to focus on targets instead of my crosshair but I did switch back to a traditional crosshair once I started playing FPS more seriously again
This is really great 👍
great! thank you
w interview
Somehow changing shooting to ctrl made my autistic brain go from missing most of the shots to landing most of the shots. Really shooter games experience change for me, thank you!
Everything discussed in this video is legit!!! As a previous CS v1.3/1.4 player running a 30:3 KD Ratio at the time. I would go onto blank maps and just practice rounding corners to aim in various spots. Although CS maps and gameplay has evolved, this still holds true today. Slow and steady will help to improve.
After aiming gets better and quicker, than start moving to better servers and players that are better such as amature, pro's, and veterns.
The computers, monitors and mouse were horrible. Started playing armature 3 vs. 3 exhibition matches and went undefeated for 3 weeks straight. Unfortunately, due to the time frame. E-sports was barely starting at the time. So, switched to focus on education over gaming and retired FPS, once in a while I play, but don't have the equipment or time to keep up with the industry today.
Fun times were with other friends and various CS mods. Such as: revolutionary scenario and try long shooting as the bullet would drop over distance. You might find some new fun and challenges as the game style is a lot different.
bro ddk is staring into my soul help
9:06 This Song is called "A Child of Evil" if you wanna look it up, beautifully tragic song (Piano version there, its Japanese in original)
I literally change my sens every round and every game. Eventually I find something good and I end up top fragging most of the time I believe in a situational perfect sens
This guy's aim is crazy clean
Watching this video gave me +10 aim
Knew it, going back to my intuition.
Over thinking crap just made me hate gaming.
Screw I'm gonna try to breed a couple black hawk choppers in battlebit remastered.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding on both sides of what "muscle memory" means
my goat
i love the G303 shroud, i play 1.3.1 claw palm, which is weird. but it works for me
Why not 500 dpi, 600 dpi, 650, etc.? What is this 400 or 800 dogma?
I’m at 3000 dpi
1.8 in game sens
400 and 800 were chosen for a combination of 2 reasons. Firstly it was practical based on the resolutions of monitors at the time, and secondly mice used to have a native resolution to the sensor itself. In the early days this was 400, then later 800 as sensors improved. The mice performed better at their native cpi (many sensor engineers prefer the term counts per inch to the interchangeable dots per inch), and to achieve higher cpis the mouse sensor would sub divide the data recorded, artificially increasing the counts per inch but sacrificing sensor accuracy. This is also the historical reason for cpi settings changing at a factor of 2 (i.e 400, 800, 1600, 3200), rather than being additive (e.g adding 400 at a time for 400, 800, 1200 etc etc).
Now that sensors are more advanced and no longer have a native cpi, and major mouse companies no longer artificially achieve higher cpis by sub dividing data, you should be able to have any cpi you want. Although I would note various sensor engineers, including those at Logitech, are of the opinion that 1600cpi is the sweet spot for performance bearing in mind both common monitor resolutions used in esports for comfortable desktop use, while giving more sensor data for more accurate sensor performance.
I always use minigod's aim training on Aimlabs before a VALORANT match! 😁
I didn't know people considered 30cm fast. I used to play on 6cm and I bumped it to 12cm for cs
as someone who skateboarded on and off for 20 years now i do believe in muscle memory. maybe its all a myth i think the points he made about it are true but i believe the muscle memory plays more into the fact that everyone knows how far they need to move their mouse to do a 360, meaning they likely know the distance to do 180 90 60 40 20 and so on. my aim is very average so i really have no idea what im talking about lol
Awesome
Aim train. Play a match. Negative kd? Aim training again. Play a match. Negative kd again? AIM TRAIN AGAIN!!! Play a match. Rinse and repeat.
I watched a n0thing stream where he said he did testing with Harvard people about higher DPI being better than lower DPI, that's why I use 1600 DPI with an in-game sensitivity of .25 :)
why is minigod audio so soft i have to constantly adjust the volume when ddk and he are speaking lower for ddk and higher for minigod
but i am a little confused... if muscle memory is not a real thing then what are we aim training for and why does aim become better over time?? help.
I have a couple different experts coming on in the future that should be able to speak well on this. Hopefully next week.
@@ddkesports waiting eagerly :)
@@vorkot1 thanks for the long and detailed explaination. I read all of it and what i understood is that muscle memory is thing but its not just one dimensional people think like playing on a single sens and master it overtime, after a certain time you reach the limit for that particular sens and the range of muscle engagment it offers, so we need to change the sens accordingly to engage diff muscles and learn some new muscle memory. So basically he meant that muscle memory rather than being a limiting factor or an excuse, can be used to learn in many other ways, generally people think that if i change my sens i might lose the muscle memory but actually if the player changes the sens he/she might learn some new things and when he/she comes back to their original sens that would have a better time or more control thier mouse.
@@vorkot1 100% agree with you and thx for solving my queries. Just wanted to ask one more thing like using different sens to engage more muscle group is mostly for aim training and becoming a better mechanical aimer right? it is complety fine to keep a single sens in game if it allows and combines all the different sens , muscle memory and muscles groups that you engaged in training...? bcuz i think most of the player get confuse here , changing sens is for learning and traiing, coach's like minigod and others dont mean to say change your sens in game directly.. i think they mean to say that try different sens in training and once you confirm that higher or lower sens is going to help you then you change it..
kay thx @@vorkot1 aim trainer and games are a totally diff realms, ill do experiment and other stuff in traiing while playing game mostly focus on game rather than aim. THX once again :)
Goat
Damn this guy is good at aimlab
Yuuup
So if you ask a pro player to flick onto a target eyes closed then is it muscle memory or hand eye coordination? Is knowing how much of hand movement roughly corresponds to a distance on screen muscle memory or hand eye coordination? If you do the same experiment but you change the sensitivity without the player knowing - which is it then and why will his flick be off?
Hypothetical scenario: they hold an angle, enemy appears from another angle that's 60 degrees off, they do the flick without seeing the full path of the crosshair by either closing eyes, have test setup with 1 FPS, etc.
You forgot to put the ramp warmup link btw great podcast
Fixed! Here's the link for you with a bonus guide from mini on how to best use it. x.com/minigodcs/status/1668706916036407297?s=20
Varmup
I see you mention demon1 and his aim here and there ddk, and in case you weren't aware from some of his tweets, he's a veteran UT4/2k4 player and regarded as the best player there. His youtube is a goldmine of old montages and trash talk
Ohhh I didn't realize that. That's awesome. I need to check that out.
@@ddkesports The last UT4 duel tournament he played in was shortly before he joined EG. He practiced for a week, then proceeded to dominate, only dropping 2 maps over the 17 he played.
It's nice that someone from the small UT community has made it to a big stage, there was a lot of hype for him when EG won VCT. Also cool that Hypoc was casting that final, since he was once the best UT99 player himself.
@@Flikswich holy shit thats so wholesome :')
Regarding reaction times, i sometimes just take one of the basic mouse click test, and on that area my reaction time has not yet degraded over the 7 ish years I been playing on pc, and I am now 41, it have stayed consistent around 170-180ms, playing a shooter game, overall ingame reaction time taken into account, it is probable a little higher🤷♂😆
❤
So if I do voltaic on different sensitivities esp high, how would I find a sens for val if there’s a bunch of muscle groups I’m making? I could be training high and low but I have no idea how I would find a sens for val
gold content
My issue with sens is that when I change my sens to a much lower one when going from overwatch to valorant, or doing that in an aim trainer, the higher sensitivity always feels so bad and takes me so long to adjust back to.
Muscle memory is so funny when it’s thrown around, I get called crazy when people In game tell me about muscle memory and I say that shit doesn’t exist 😂
@Daniel Kapadia
regardless how hard you wanna deny it muscle memory or the perception of how far do i have to move to reach a certain point on the screen plays a very big role
maybe muscle memory is not the best term for it. (but that´s what people actualy mean when they refeer to it)
othwise we could just nilly vanilly go through any range of sensitivity and instantly be good at any sensitivity value wich is simply not the case.
players with good mouse control can use any sensitivity (within a reasonable range) and be very good at said sense almost immediately
More 'hand-eye' coordination
good