This is the first post in a new series coming to Aimlab.gg – The Fundamentals of Aim, a guide written by players with tens of thousands of hours of experience, from all walks of life and gameplay styles, with the intent to condense their experiences and knowledge as effectively as possible, so that other players, new and old, can save the time that they spent trialing everything one could imagine.

Confidence Zones, and the importance of knowing your limits

No matter who you are, no matter how good you are, it’s happened to you. That shot that you had lined up perfectly but still missed. That shot that could have secured the game. That shot that you had.

Everybody, from amateurs to professionals, knows what it’s like to whiff, to potato, or to just flat out screw up. This is the unfortunate reality of competitive gaming. You will miss at a crucial moment. You will fail when you had to succeed, and at the end of the day, you will lose.

But it is not in the nature of a competitive gamer to give up when faced with these realizations. Sure, you will lose, you will fail, but that does not mean that you cannot do your damnedest to avoid it.

We here at Aimlab understand the importance of proper guidance and teaching. And so, it is with this in mind that we present The Fundamentals of Aim – A Monthly blog dedicated to improving the way you game.

Confidence Zones



An Exercise in finding your limits, and helping you to break them



So, by now we’ve all seen, and likely performed one amazing feat of aim or another, but I would wager that half of us could never repeat our best shot again, no matter how hard we try.

For myself, it was a triple deagle headshot on Inferno, back before Infernew came out. It was an absolutely stunning shot, winning the round for our team with a single bullet.

But this shot became more of a curse to me than a blessing. It was a shot that I tried to get at least once every game from that point on. If you asked me to tell you how many shots I had missed because of that one lucky shot, I would not be able to give you a single answer.

It was not until I finally sat down, looked at my gameplay and realized “Why the fresh hell am I doing that?” that I stopped after god only knows how many deaths I could have avoided.

And so, after this, I loaded up Aim Botz and set out to see exactly where my aim was at, for one simple reason – I wanted to make that shot again, and I wanted to know that I had earned it.

Hours upon hours of toiling away on CS brought me to a simple conclusion – I was better at certain points of my screen than others. I labeled this my “Zone of Confidence”, an area of my screen in which, if an enemy was there, I could be very sure that I would hit them with a quick shot or flick.

I experimented with these zones a little, and after a few days, I came up with a little graphic for myself that looked something like this.

As can be seen here, establishing a zone of confidence in a 3d environment will allow you to better control certain areas, as well as understanding where you may be weaker.

Note that these are not all perfect circles, you may be weaker horizontally than you are vertically.

The Green zone was my area of highest confidence, if an enemy was in this area, you could be damn sure that I would hit them.

The Orange zone was my area of lacking confidence, if an enemy was in that area, I hit them more often than not, but not to a standard that I was comfortable or happy with.

And the large Red zone? That was my area of little to no confidence. If an enemy was in this area, I might as well be flicking to them blindfolded for all the good that it would do me.

Taking the time to sit down and analyze this helped me realize – I had to improve. And so, every day, I’d practice within my Green zone for a while, before moving onto my zone of lacking confidence. I’d stay within this zone while practicing every day, and as I improved, that zone got bigger, and what was once the Orange zone became the Green zone, and what was the Red zone became the Orange zone, and- Well, you can see where this is going.

Identifying my weaknesses, knowing my limits and working to address them broke me past the wall I had built up for myself, finally taking me out of Gold Nova and into the realms of DMG and LEM.

It is with this in mind that I put forth a proposal for you, specifically. Hop into your favorite game (Or Aimlab, just saying) and find your zones. Find where you are comfortable, find where you start to waiver and find where you are shooting blind.

Take the time to assess yourself, your speed, your accuracy, your consistency, and decide – “Am I confident here?”

Once you have these zones established, you’ve finished the hardest part. Now comes the tedious part – Test the waters. Practice on the edge of your green zone, flicking to your target until you are comfortable with where you are landing, then go a little bit further out. Then a little further.

Repeat this every couple of days, and soon enough you will start to see your zones expanding, shots hitting that may have otherwise missed, and those whiffed shots remaining at bay.

Don’t expect yourself to be done there, though. We’ve still got an awful lot more to go through.

Be sure to check back every couple of weeks for a new blog, or a new volume of the Fundamentals of Aim.



Next volume –

Sensitivity. Setting up and slowing down