Myths

Some of the most repeated advice in aim training cites sources that don't say what it claims.

This page collects those claims and states each one the way a player would say it. Then it answers each from the same sources the rest of this wiki cites.

A myth here is a claim someone would state as fact: "lower sensitivity means better aim." That's different from a habit that costs you progress, such as only running the scenarios you already score well in.

Habits like that belong in the Common mistakes section of the page for their subject, not here.

Reps burn a motion into muscle memory¶

Why people believe it. Repeat a flick enough times and the motion is stored. From then on it replays on demand, so anything that disturbs it, a new sensitivity or a new mouse, wipes out the work.

What sources say. Motor-learning research describes skill as moving through stages. Gains come large and inconsistent early, then slow into a stage spent consciously judging and correcting the movement.¹

Research on spacing practice supports this from another angle. Retention comes from shorter sessions spread over time, not from enough reps to fill a store.²

The disturbance half doesn't hold either. Voltaic's muscle-memory piece reports no long-run drop in aim among players who change sensitivity often, from community accounts rather than a study. The next entry covers it in full.³

What to do instead. Judge practice by whether your read of a target and your corrections are getting better. That's what carries across settings.

Read a score as a trend across several benchmark runs, not as the state of a stored motion.

Changing your sensitivity will ruin your aim¶

Why people believe it. Your current sensitivity is what your hand knows. Change it and you start from nothing, so the safe move is to never touch it again.

What sources say. Voltaic's muscle-memory piece concludes, from community accounts, that a change costs short-term readjustment rather than a lasting setback.³

The same piece lists a deliberate sensitivity change as one way to get past a stall. It reasons that an unfamiliar setting puts you back where there's obvious room to improve.³

What to do instead. Change it for a reason, then leave it alone long enough to judge it.

Changing at all is not the problem. Changing constantly is, because every change spends readjustment time. See Progress and Plateaus for when a change is worth making.

Lower sensitivity means better aim¶

Why people believe it. The lower your sensitivity, the more precise your aim. Pros play low, so low is correct, and a high sensitivity is a habit to grow out of.

What sources say. A lower sensitivity spreads a turn over more physical distance. That leaves more room to correct small errors, but demands a larger mousepad and more arm movement.

A higher sensitivity lets you turn with small wrist movements and less desk space. But it magnifies the same small tremor on screen.

Aimlabs publishes typical cm/360 ranges per game. The same article notes the right number depends on your equipment, desk space, posture, and comfort. That makes the ranges a starting reference, not a target.⁴

What to do instead. Pick a sensitivity that reaches every part of your mousepad, while still letting you turn 180 degrees without lifting the mouse. Then leave it alone long enough to judge it fairly.

Sensitivity covers cm/360 and eDPI, the two ways to compare a setting to someone else's.

Arm aiming is strictly better than wrist aiming¶

Why people believe it. Arm aim is the correct technique and wrist aim is a beginner habit. So the fix for inconsistency is to aim from the arm and stop using your wrist.

What sources say. The joints divide the labor. Fingers make small precise adjustments, and the wrist handles moderate movements. The upper arm and shoulder drive large sweeping turns.⁵

Which one leads shifts with sensitivity and target speed. Wrist-led aim suits precision holds where corrections are small. Arm-led aim suits the larger motions a faster game demands.⁵

Most players already blend both without thinking about it.⁵

What to do instead. Ask which joint suits the movement in front of you rather than which one to commit to. How Aim Works covers the same split as it applies to large corrections versus micro-adjustments.

Good tracking means predicting where the target will go¶

Why people believe it. Strong tracking is anticipation. Read the movement pattern, aim where the target is going, and your crosshair is waiting when it arrives.

What sources say. Reactive tracking follows where the target is and responds to each change as it happens. It has a small built-in lag, but can't be juked the same way.⁶

What to do instead. Train the reaction. Scenarios with evasive movement push you toward responding rather than anticipating, because anticipation no longer works there. Tracking covers the category this sits in.

A plateau means you have hit your ceiling¶

Why people believe it. Your score stopped moving, so you have found your limit. Talent set it, and more training will not move it.

What sources say. A flat stretch is common in late-stage motor learning, not evidence that something has broken.⁷

The same literature describes early learning as large, inconsistent jumps, followed by a slower stage of smaller refinements. Shrinking gains are the normal shape of progress.¹

Fatigue is one cause you can act on. Training hard without enough recovery can progress to overreaching. Extreme overreaching plus another stressor can lead to overtraining syndrome, which is extremely rare.⁸

What to do instead. Judge the trend across several benchmark runs spaced weeks apart, rather than any one result. If a flat score comes with feeling generally run down, treat it as fatigue first.

Progress and Plateaus covers the causes and the ways past one.

More hours is more progress¶

Why people believe it. Improvement is volume. Whoever trains the most hours improves the most, so the way to get better faster is to train longer.

What sources say. General motor-learning research finds shorter, more frequent sessions with real rest tend to beat one long session. That holds for retaining a skill, and for how fatigue affects performance while training.²

Sustained training without enough recovery can progress to overreaching. Extreme overreaching plus another stressor can lead to overtraining syndrome, which is extremely rare.⁸

Ericsson's definition of deliberate practice is also narrower than time spent. It requires a qualified teacher, a goal you can hold in mind, immediate feedback on each attempt, and repeated revised attempts at the goal.⁹

What to do instead. Spend the time on your current weakness in sessions short enough to stay sharp, with rest between them. Practice Principles covers the five habits that decide what an hour is worth.

A pro's settings are the correct settings¶

Why people believe it. Copy the sensitivity, DPI and crosshair of a player at the top and you remove a variable, because those settings are the ones that win.

What sources say. Aimlabs publishes the cm/360 ranges players use per game. The same article says the right number depends on your own equipment, desk space, posture, and comfort.⁴

A copied number also doesn't always mean what it appears to. eDPI is comparable only within one game, because games scale the sensitivity multiplier differently. The same eDPI in another title is a different setting.¹⁰

What to do instead. Treat someone else's number as a starting point to adjust from, and compare across games in cm/360 rather than raw sensitivity or eDPI. Sensitivity covers both measures and the converters that move a setting between titles.

References¶