Aim! Aim! Aim! That's all you ever hear from people telling you how to improve in Counter-Strike. Stop listening to them for a second and listen to me. Aim isn't everything in this game, you also need to practice aspects like awareness, communication, movement and more. Getting a kill doesn't necessarily mean you aim better, it can also mean that you were in a better position or made it harder to get hit. Both of these require movement and that's what we'll help you improve in this article.

A great example of good movement to get frags is from Jesper 'JW' Wecksell who is the AWPer for Team Fnatic. In this clip he used the strafe based movement known as 'Bunny hopping', or bhopping in short.

As you can see from the clip, he got up to 'Short' on Dust II and then proceeded down onto 'Cat.' As he hit the stairs he managed to start a sideways bhop gaining speed faster than walking normally and gets a frag onto a player on T spawn. If it wasn't for his speed he wouldn't have been able to get that frag because they didn't expect him to get there so fast.

So the basics of Movement. It's quite simple really. Learning to strafe and bhop is possibly the hardest thing you can learn because it takes practice and many hours to get it down. Even people who have been trying to bhop for hundreds of hours still don't have it perfectly and you probably never will bhop perfectly mainly because of the surfaces on the ground. Look for a flat surface an example is on 'Nuke.' Yard is an excellent place to bhop because the floor is so flat and easier to gain speed. Another good place is on 'Inferno' if you start a bhop down 'Banana' from 'Car' you will be able to get a lot of speed mainly because it's downhill.

The first thing you should want to do though, is make sure your mousewheel is bound to jump (type in console: bind mwheelup "jump", bind mwheeldown "jump"), when you scroll it will make you jump. This is a lot easier for bhopping because it makes sure that your jump is perfectly timed whereas with the spacebar it's harder to time jumps.

An older clip of me Bhopping

In order to Bhop you need to jump, strafe and the keep jumping and strafing while hitting almost perfect timings with the ground. It's quite hard to explain through text how to do it. So instead I recommend going onto a bhopping server that has specialised maps for bhopping. On these maps it will have set jumps that you need to complete and get to the next part of the map. Most of these servers have a plugin called 'autobhop.' What this plugin essentially does is make bhopping instant. All you need to do is hold spacebar and just strafe. You should get the hang of the strafe technique pretty soon, so once you do disable the plugin through the in-game menu and get to try and hopping by yourself.

Another thing that's very useful is playing a game-mode called 'KZ.' The game-mode involves hard jumps and different obstacles that the player has to traverse. KZ will teach you how to strafe, long jump and bhop. Most people use this to challenge themselves on how fast they can complete the map. But if it's your first time playing the map, take it easy, learn all of the obstacles and then go for the high score. It's safer to stay on the easier maps. These are set into 'Tiers.' Start off in Tier 1 and work your way up once you're finding the lower tiers easy. KZ will help improve every aspect of movement based play and will help you to become a player that can outmaneuver their enemies to gain the advantage. Below is a video of a World Record on a KZ map. If you're watching that and think it's amazing to watch then hopefully you can set your mind on becoming like that at other maps.

Last but not least comes surfing. This game-mode is probably my favourite. There are different ramps in a row that you 'surf' down and transfer from ramp to ramp gaining speed and dodging obstacles that are in your way. People who play this like to find different speed boosts, shortcuts and of course want to get the lowest time. Again this uses a tier system, start at the lower tier and work your way up. It's a very fun game-mode and easy to get used to and once you have the basics you'll be hooked. Surfing will help increase your strafe abilities as you have to strafe from ramp to ramp and around difficult corners. Once you have the strafe down however it's easy sailing to becoming a master at movement. Below is a video that will explain to you the basics of learning to surf as it is quite difficult to explain in text form.

So there you have it, the basics of movement. Hopefully this will help you become awesome at movement and improve your game for the better. Always remember to never give up at a map, if it's difficult it'll mean you improve and if it's too easy then you're not learning anything.

Useful Tips:

When looking for a server, go to the server browser and in the 'Keyword' section type in either Surf, KZ or bhop and servers will start to appear. Pick a server that says Beginner or Tier 1-2. These maps will get you started off.

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