We started out with part one of our "Git Gud Guide" with this piece about aim, and today the series will be expanded by this article which will discuss the different ways to train yourself in all movement mechanics.

Movement in CS:GO is not limited to bunny hopping or strafe jumping. A lot of mechanics have to be mastered in order to be a true movement master. We will start out by dissecting what kind of movement mechanics there actually are, we will clarify which mechanics are important for what aspect of your game, and we will take a look on to how you can improve them. Let's get right into it!

The Movement Mechanics

Foot Movement

Counter-strafing/AD-ing

Surfing

Jumping

Crouch jumping/Silent jumping

Strafe jumping/Long jumping

Bunny hopping

We will start with the foot movement mechanics since they are normally easier and not as flashy as the jumping mechanics.

Foot Movement

Counter-Strafing

Counter-strafing refers to the act of pressing the opposite movement key than the way your character is moving in order to come to a halt or to regain your accuracy faster. Example: If you are moving forward and you want to counter-strafe, you can tap the backward key, default "S", and you will come to a halt faster than only letting go of the forward key.

This makes it an important part of handling your guns correctly since a lot are sensitive to movement.

In order to practice this skill, you can enable a dynamic crosshair, which will indicate inaccuracy of your weapons by expanding during movements. This step is not necessary but can help players who have problems figuring counter-strafing out. There is no shame in using a dynamic crosshair as an aid. You will notice that there is a small "delay" of the expansion of the crosshair when moving, which is normal since weapons only become inaccurate after a certain threshold of speed has been breached.

Now you can go onto an offline map containing static bots as a practice option like this one and feel out when your shot is accurate with different guns using counter-strafes. Since the movement speeds of guns are different, you will need to practice with a few guns before you will get a hang of it.

Surfing

While it isn't game-winning most of the time, it is useful to know that you can surf on certain parts of maps to either get somewhere faster or hide in an off-angle. This is a mechanic that is used in the popular "Surf" game mode on community servers, and those are the best place to learn.

To surf, you will need to find a slanted wall/roof that will let you slide down on it. You will need to press the movement key opposite of the direction the wall is slanted at, so if the wall is slanted from upper left to lower right, you will need to press the left key, default "A", in order to slide along the wall, not down it. This is better explained with visual help, as shown by many youtubers (you don't need any commands if you play on surf servers). Here is an example of why surfing could be useful to you in one of your matches. There is a lot of time to be lost that may be better spent elsewhere if you do not care about surf as a game mode, so be aware that it can take days of practice to effectively and reliably surf on slanted surfaces on active duty maps for differences of just 0.14 seconds.

Jumping

Crouch Jumping

Crouch jumping is simply pressing the crouch button before reaching the apex of your jump in order to reach higher places.

(Un-)Crouching during jumps and drops can also be used to mask your movement sounds. Normally, when people jump or drop from a certain elevation in CS:GO they will make a sound when they reach the ground again. If you are in an elevated position and you crouch before dropping from said position, it is possible to release crouch mid-air in order to not to gain as much speed during the drop, since you will not be dropping by the whole height of the object you stood on earlier. The same principle affects jumping from one platform to a different, slightly higher platform.

You can practice this in games, offline on an empty server with different objects on active duty maps, or play KZ on community servers, which is a game mode similar to surf, but with clearing obstacle course-like maps instead of surf maps.

Strafe Jumping

To do a strafe jump, you will need to jump with preferably maximum speed (250 units per second with a knife) and start strafing in mid-air in order to gain speed or change direction. The higher the speed, the further you can jump. This can be used to get out of harm's way faster/easier and will allow you hit certain skill jumps on certain maps (like the Window-Short jump on Mirage).

After jumping, you should strafe left and/or right, which is done by synchronizing your mouse and keyboard movement. It is also possible to jump over bigger gaps just by using one big strafe. At the moment that you move your mouse to the right, you will need to press the right movement key, default "D", and if you move your mouse left you will have to press your left movement key, default "A". This is, again, better understood once you see it. If done correctly, you will gain speed and therefore travel a further distance.

To practice this, you can either download maps specifically for this, like TrilluXe's map he refers to in the video linked above, or this Workshop map and the other maps by the same creator, which allows you to actually practice jumps from active duty maps. You can also go into KZ servers again in order to practice your strafe jumps, which are needed for the majority of KZ maps.

Bunny hopping

Bunny hopping is one of the most iconic movement mechanics in CS. To bunny hop, you will need to jump, and, once you are hitting the ground, jump again. This should carry over the speed you gathered through running and jumping (and hopefully strafing), but be aware that bunny hopping has been sincerely nerfed compared to other iterations of CS, and to chain a few hops together you do not only need to be skilled, but quite lucky, too. Still, by learning this skill you will be able to maximise the chance you have. With bunny hopping, you can make your good spawn an even better one, for example.

You can start out with bunny hopping servers, but most have auto-hop enabled, so sticking to them is not really a good idea. You should try to practice your first set of skills learned in bunny hop servers offline or on KZ servers.

Only when you have mastered the Bunny hopping, will you be too much for zblock!

Precrouching

Some boxes are just high enough to not to be reachable by solely crouch jumping, but by precrouching.

Precrouching is pressing your crouch button, default "CTRL", just a moment before you jump, for example on the Firebox in Mirage, as shown by this video(eng subs).

A lot of the aforementioned mechanics shouldn't be grinded out hours and hours before you start playing at a semi-high Matchmaking rank since they will not help you win the majority of the rounds that you should. Rather than concentrating on movement as your main concern, start with aim and not being lost on maps. Things like bunny hopping are easily acquired over time, for some people even by just playing competitive instead of visiting maps and community servers. These mechanics are giving you the last edge, not a big advantage.

Other Movement Skills

There are different, not so flashy, and mechanic refinement dependent skills that you need to master in order to become a movement master.

One of those is skills is map manoeuvring. Map manoeuvring describes the movement (manoeuvring) around the map you are playing, as in active duty maps. This includes:

Not getting stuck on edges

Not jumping too early or too late

Not jumping when not necessary

Blind manoeuvring around obstacles (flash, backwards etc.)

All of these are also slowly acquired during your competitive games, but you can speed this up by jumping into maps offline, seeking your problem area, and then studying it to figuring out the exact collision boxes on models that annoy you, when to jump exactly, etc. Only later will most of you have to grind it out to become a true movement master.

Alternatively, you could actively concentrate on your movement during games in order to slowly gain knowledge that your subconscious can easily access later on.



Putting it together

Things like peeking, taking advantage of timings, planting just in time, and surviving in the most intense situations are all linked with these mechanics and skills. If you want to become the best, then there is no way around getting good at these mechanics and skills. By using all of the resources at your disposal, like KZ servers, offline active duty maps, Workshop maps and videos, you can spend more time getting good than working it all out during games the hard way.