Hey everyone, Coach Twix here with a needlessly lengthy post once again.

I'm going to keep this as brief as I can and perhaps create a follow-up post that explains the topic in more detail if enough people are interested enough / perplexed enough by it.

Simply put, there has been a vast misconception regarding how muscle memory works that stems back to early professional CS days. At the time being, people were not too educated in terms of the factors that go into aim mechanics, or the science behind fine motor skills and related aspects of our physiology. The rule of thumb at the time, was that you should stick to a large heavy mouse, play on an extremely low sensitivity (usually around 50-70 cm/360), a low DPI (usually 400) and mainly rely on using full arm motions to aim. The epitome of all these common misconceptions was the fact that you should stick to one sensitivity and never change it, as that will "damage" your muscle memory and be detrimental to your progress.

There are multiple reasons as to why this why these myths or misconceptions arose, and also as to why these "rules" aren't optimal in regards to performance, here's why:

Heavy mice:

This doesn't need to much of an explanation, as I believe the majority of players nowadays are very well aware that lighter mice usually allow for better control and precision. In fact, the irony of the matter is that the current mass opinion has shifted to a hyper-obsession with mice being light over anything else, this, is also not the right train of thought IMO. For one, there is a point of diminishing return where if a mouse is too light you lose stability (example: Zaunkoenig MK2) which is highly important in tac FPS games. Furthermore, a lot of people nowadays tend to prioritise mouse weight over everything else while in reality shape is by far the most important factor.

Low sens is the only way:

This is something that mainly stemmed from the fact that at the time being the meta was large and heavy mice. Playing on a high sensitivity on a mouse that fills your entire hand out in a palm-grip fashion, isn't exactlyh ideal. Usually players that tend to play on lighter mice grip them using either the fingertip grip style, or the claw grip style. Tac FPS games like Valorant mainly rely on low FOV horizontal click-timing mechanically speaking, and are very crosshair-placement reliant, these factors make stability crucial to efficacy, meaning a lower sensitivity allows for a lower margin of error. However, in cases of players that are considered "top aimers" you'll notice they usually play on sensitivities significantly higher than average, e.g. Asuna, Tenz, ScreaM, Hiko, Sayaplayer (arguably one of the top aimers in the world).

Low DPI:

This one is quit straight-forward. At the time being, the sensors on gaming mice weren't highly developed and therefore were unable to perform properly past a certain DPI range. If you were to use a decade old gaming mouse and try playing on 1600 DPI, chances are there would be significant smoothness and input lag introduced at that range. The interesting thing that most players don't seem to know about current mice as they simply look at the fact that most pros still use ~800 DPI, is that the higher the DPI you use, the more precise your mouse's tracking will be. As long as your mouse can handle higher DPI, there is 0 detriment to it, in fact, as you can see in the visualisation below, the precision is increased:

You should be using "arm-aiming" and "palm-gripping":

This is something I see perpetuated to this day by players of all sorts of skill levels. First off, if you aren't aware of the different grip styles in existence, refer to the first section of my post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/iuoohj/picking_the_right_mouse_for_valorant/

Let me start off by saying that palm gripping is objectively the worst grip style for anyone to possibly use, this might sound controversial but anyone involved in aim-communities will tell you the exact same. The reasoning behind this is very simple, people tend to gravitate towards the palm grip for two reasons:

1. As mentioned earlier, the meta used to be large / heavy mice, when you're using a mouse that weighs 100g and is at the size range of say, a Zowie EC-A, you won't be able to comfortably claw / finger-tip grip it especially if you don't have very large hands.
2. Palm gripping provides a ton of stability which in due turn lowers the margin of error significantly when it comes to making large motions.

The latter point may sound good, however, the draw-backs of palm gripping are far larger. The issues with palm-gripping and arm-aiming go hand-in-hand, palm gripping vastly limits your range of motion as you can barely move your wrist while utilising it, and lose basically all range of motion in your fingers, thus only allowing you to aim using your arm for 99% of motions made. Inversely so, the draw-back of finger-tip gripping isless stability, but you also have the largest freedom/range of motion while utilising this grip-style.

Ideally, your aim shouldn't be a matter of "wrist aim" or "arm aim" or "fingertip aim" it should be a mixture of all these individual elements. If you watch most good aimers play, you'll quickly notice through their hand cam that they're using their arm for larger adjustments, their wrist for mid-level adjustments, and then their fingers for micro-adjustments, as opposed to only using one of three.

You should stick to one sensitivity forever:

This is the largest misconception I see spread around to this day, mainly by CS and Valorant players, as the myth itself is rooted in the tac FPS genre. The misconception in this case arose when old CS professionals were preaching the fact that the way muscle memory works, means that if you're constantly changing sens you're "damaging" your muscle memory, leading to inconsistencies in your aim. The truth however, strays far from that.

If you look at the top raw aimers in the world in any game, (in my opinion the top raw aimers are quake pros like vF_Serious, Clawz etc.) but even just Valorant (think of the aforementioned Asuna, Hiko, TenZ, Scream, Sayaplayer, etc.) you'll come to realise that they change their sensitivities quite often, TenZ especially is notorious for doing this. Keep in mind TenZ accidentally played his first pro game on SEN on double his intended DPI and didn't even really notice, he ended up out-fragging everyone by a large margin. The reasoning behind this is that not only does muscle memory objectively not function in a way where changing sensitivities will somehow "damage" it (muscle memory is a scientific concept, and the data simply doesn't align with this notion) but in fact, variation of your sensitivity will further promote reconsolidation leading to more rapid fine motor skill development.

Here is an article to directly support these claims through data. Keep in mind that the two test groups within this study were exposed to a testing scenario very reminiscent of in-game aiming. They were both instructed to click on a variety of shapes, one group maintained the same "sensitivity" while the other's was "randomized", you can look at the results here:

Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation

Thanks for wasting your time reading through my reddit long-posting, if you're interested in contacting me further or engaging with my community (it's pretty dead) feel free to join my discord server:

https://discord.gg/FfZD8Fc

Have a great day!

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