Sometimes it can feel like whatever you do, you're just doing the same things over and over and you aren't improving. Don't worry, even the best feel like this from time to time! Of course, some people are better at getting themselves out of such a slump with a good mentality than others, however, this guide will definitely hit the right spot for both groups of people, those already coming out of such a slump and those still in it, struggling to get out.

In this article, I'll present to you six ideas in total, three for (solo) players and three for entire teams, trying to get you out of the hole we all enter from time to time. We'll start off with the idea for (solo) players.

Three Ideas for Players

1. Switch Your Playstyle Around

Once you get the basics down of moving around the map and fragging enemies, you'll automatically start to develop a playstyle that is influenced by what you see, what you learned and what gave you success in the past. This is a natural and essential process in every complex game and CS:GO is no exception. However, it is not uncommon to start and keep doing what you've done for the past 2000 hours in CS:GO without realising that it isn't working anymore. For example, if you started to just run out into the faces of the enemies at Master Guardian Elite, the same won't necessarily work in Global Elite.

To counter yourself not actively thinking about what you're doing in a game and to break all of your habits easily is just to play the opposite way. Think about how you play, if you need to you can watch two or three demos of yourself and then think about what the opposite would look like.

Are you out first often? Start to move slower and stay behind your teammates. Are you the one holding flanks? Try to move to the front of the bombsite take. Are you always alone on one side of the map? Start to walk around with your teammates every round, every game for a few games.

You will lose. A lot. However, the intention of this isn't to make you a good player as soon as you switch your playstyle. Instead, it is an exercise that will challenge you to look at the game in an active effort to find out what works and what doesn't. You'll get a better idea of when you can be how aggressive or passive, of when you can and can't bait your teammates.

2. Calibrate Your Aim

This may sound like hocus-pocus at first but it does make sense the further you dive into this concept, of which the idea is to switch up, and switch back to, your sensitivity in training sessions or before a game to make your brain put more focus into aiming precisely. To do this, play for a few minutes with your normal sensitivity. After a few minutes, take a small break and change your sensitivity by around 0.2 in the console before resuming training in a game mode like Deathmatch. Your aim will feel weird at first and you'll have to put extra effort into aiming at the enemy's head, for example. After twenty to thirty minutes, it's time to take another small break and change the sensitivity back to your original one and keep going with the training.

These types of exercises are not only done by some high-tier players, but they also have a scientific background, as a study found out that changing things up for your brain provides extra focus, as the brain won't be "bored" (we're simplifying here) by the fourth or fifth day of consecutively doing the same thing - practising aim.

3. Get Moving

The positive effects of exercise and sport activity on motor skills and in general on human beings are greatly documented and these are just examples: 1, 2.

To get you started, I'd suggest you build a protocol of exercising a bit every time you're in between games. A great way to do this is to take ten or fifteen minutes after every game to do one of the following suggested exercises:

• Squads
• Push-Ups
• Jogging/Running

Doing all of these until you are out of breath without overdoing it until the point that you can't recover in the next few minutes should be a great way to start out. To maximise the effectiveness of the small workouts, it may be a good idea to stretch your arms a bit to ensure that you also won't injure yourself when playing!

Three Ideas for Teams

1. Write Down Calls for Your Next Scrim

It is easy to run out of ideas or to stick with the two ideas that work. This is OK, however, when you're experiencing a lack of success, it may be time to force new ideas for your team and IGL. To do this, I'd suggest sitting down with the entire team and write down around fifteen calls on the T-Side that you aren't using in your games yet. Be aware, not every one of them may seem good in advance, but the idea of this exercise is to free up the IGL to see how things work out and how things go as he calls one of the fifteen calls every round on T-Side, a different one every time.

Not just will this give you fresh ideas that you may adopt in the future, but it also gives you more resources to focus on how your team is playing, what every player does wrong in what kind of execute or round and so on. You'll feel much better prepared after a few ones of these scrims!

2. Keep Reminders on Notes Around Your Monitor

Although everyone makes mistakes, it is necessary to eliminate as many as possible to be as good as possible. One way to do this is to write down things you want to change in your playstyle, and this one is especially great for IGLs.

Almost every IGL struggles either with idea-less-ness mid-game or bad habits like calling the economy too aggressively or too passively. Writing down what you want to do the next few games will remind you without taking too much attention away from leading the team.

3. Count How Many Times Players Die Without a Trade

Dying without a trade is poison to every team. It causes a loss of advantageous rounds and can turn neutral rounds into rounds where you have to play from a disadvantage and essentially any team would do good by just counting how many times who of the players dies without giving his team the ability to trade. With this information, you can pinpoint when and why players stray away from the buddy system and you can work to fix that issue specifically and effectively by talking to your team. Most players don't even realize they're out of position, so showing them when they are will greatly benefit the team!

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