Nice.

Okay, so let's start with mistake number one.

Now to demonstrate this, let's compare the hand cameras of two different pro Call of Duty players.

Now aside from the fact that one of them uses a claw grip style, you can see that both of these players have significantly different thumb positions on their analog sticks.

Shotzi's thumb rests more downwards, kind of like this, while Octane's thumb is placed more to the side, like this.

So which thumb position is better for your aim?

Well, in Call of Duty, tracking an opponent left to right as they strafe and move around is one of the top skills that you need to get more kills.

And when you move your thumb up, it's more in line with the directions that you're tracking.

Now, I'm not a medical professional, so this is not medical advice, but for me, adjusting the angle of my thumb makes it feel like I'm using the muscles and joints of my hand and wrist differently.

And if I take it a step further and add more bend into my knuckle, this once again changes the feel of my aim and how I'm using the muscles in my hand.

In addition to that, the contact area between my thumb and the analog stick changes and gets a little bit smaller.

Arguably one of the best Call of Duty players in history has quite a lot of bend in his knuckle when he holds his controller, so obviously this thumb position works very well for him.

And what we can learn from all of this is that there doesn't appear to be a correct way to hold your thumb on the controller.

You just have to find the angle, the bend, and the contact point that works best for you.

Everyone has different hand sizes and uses different styles of controllers, so what works for one person might not work for everyone else.

Over the years, I've tried using control freaks, different styles of controllers, and I've experimented with different grips, and eventually I figured out that a PS5 controller with stock analog sticks and a thumb position about right here works best for me.

And the only way I was able to figure all these things out was not being afraid to change things up.

Now, I know some of you might be saying, well, I don't want to change anything because it'll mess up my aim.

And you're probably right.

When you make changes, you're likely going to get worse in the short term.

But that's when you have to ask yourself, what are your plans for gaming?

Do you plan to game in six months, in one year, in five years?

When you start looking at this in a long-term perspective, going through the pain of learning something new for a couple of weeks seems pretty insignificant.

Especially when you consider that your thumb is the most important thing when it comes to your aim because it literally connects you to the game.

Now, I'm not saying you have to go make any changes.

If your aim is great, awesome, don't adjust anything.

But if it's feeling inconsistent, it might be because you're making the mistake of ignoring your thumb position.

Oh, and by the way, for those of you who don't know, I'm not streaming on Twitch and YouTube.

So make sure to drop by and catch me playing live if you're interested.

Okay, mistake number two is what I call the silent killer for your aim.

A few years ago, when I first started playing Call of Duty again during COVID, I was playing on a TV on my Xbox.

My aim wasn't very good and I wanted to improve it.

So I watched a lot of YouTube videos and I started to practice, but something was off.

I would constantly overshoot targets and just couldn't get my aim under control.

And it took me a long time to realize that my setup was holding me back.

When you hit a button on your controller, it takes time for this information to be displayed on your screen because every button click has to be processed by each component in your system.

And it's really important for this time delay or input lag to be as low as possible because we need to be able to react quickly and accurately in the game.

Aiming is all about your hand-eye coordination, which means we have to synchronize the visual cues that we get on the screen with the motor skills in our hand.

And this becomes easier and easier as the input delay goes down.

But the scary thing is around 30 milliseconds is when it starts to become noticeable.

But even a delay of 20 milliseconds can be a problem for a lot of games.

And it's very easy to reach this amount of lag in your system.

For instance, if you're playing on a TV that's not in game mode like I was, you can have over 100 milliseconds of input lag just from the TV alone, which is going to make it nearly impossible to consistently hit your shots.

Now, input delay is a very complicated topic and it heavily depends on the hardware that you're using.

But the most important thing is this.

You should be playing on a gaming monitor if possible because these devices are designed with low latency in mind.

A very useful website to check your monitor's input delay is ratings.com.

I use an Alienware 2721D display.

So if I just type this into the search bar and then click on inputs, I can see my monitor has three milliseconds of input lag.

This website is great when you're in the market for a new monitor and you want to compare the technical details.

But if you do have to play on a TV, just make sure you do switch it over to game mode because this will significantly reduce the input delay and make it easier for you to aim.

Okay, aside from that, I would also recommend using a wired connection from your controller to your PC or console to get the most consistent data transfer between the devices.

And if you're on PC, there's a number of other things you can do to reduce your input delay even further, like overclocking your controller, overclocking your PC to get more frames, and adjusting various window settings.

Now, honestly, I'm not an expert in PCs and I won't pretend to know how to adjust CPU voltages and fine-tune window settings.

And you can actually get yourself into quite a bit of trouble adjusting these things without knowing what you're doing because you can pretty easily make your PC unstable and cause a lot of crashes in the game.

So for those of you who would rather leave this up to the professionals, I've recently partnered with FPS Hub, and they specialize in optimizing PC performance for gaming by helping you get the most out of your equipment.

My gaming PC is over three years old and my frame rate has been steadily declining, which has made Warzone not as enjoyable to play because the game sometimes feels choppy and laggy.

And that's even after I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos trying to get my PC to run better.

So I had it optimized by Kibs at FPS Hub, and he increased my average frame rate, which has made the game feel quite a bit smoother.

He also significantly lowered my input latency by changing various window settings and overclocking my controller, which has been very noticeable in gunfights, and my aim feels better now than probably ever.

Every optimization at FPS Hub has a two-week warranty, and their commitment to quality is why I'm happy to partner with them.

So if you're interested in getting more performance out of your PC, you can check out the link in the description and use code DreamStrike for $15 off your order.

Okay, so moving on to mistake number three.

Have you ever heard the advice that to improve your aim on controller, all you need to do is shoot a lot of bots in multiplayer and eventually you'll get better?

So you go and do that and you start to feel pretty good about your aim, but then as soon as you get into a warzone match, everything falls apart and it seems like that training didn't really help at all?

Well, a big reason for this could be that you're not practicing your vertical aim.

Now, there's nothing wrong with shooting bots in multiplayer, and it's still great advice and something you should do, but there's a big difference between the warzone maps and the small 6v6 multiplayer maps.

If we look at Urzikstan or Vondel, there's way more verticality than you'll find on any multiplayer map, which means in a lot of your gunfights, there's gonna be a height difference between you and your opponents.

So you have to be comfortable quickly moving your aim from fighting someone on the ground to aiming at someone flying in or someone sitting on a roof.

But a lot of people don't really develop this skill because they spend the majority of their time practicing aiming left to right on their analog stick and they never really practice aiming up and down.

And this is a huge mistake because these aiming motions are very different.

So to work on improving your vertical aim, there are a couple of things I recommend you can do.

First, if you have multiplayer, don't practice on the small maps.

Load into a bigger map like Quarry with the max number of bots and practice shooting them from the top of the hills around the map.

I specifically like this spot because with the way the bots typically spawn, I can get a lot of practice snapping my aim from the ground to this window.

This drill here is actually one of the warmups I do almost every day before I play solo quads on Vondel because it's pretty similar to standing on the rooftops and shooting down on enemies below.

I also will sometimes reverse the drill and stand at the bottom of the hill and I'll practice looking to the side and then flicking my aim upwards to the bots as they reach the top of the hill next to me.

What's important here is you wanna be able to quickly go from aiming at a neutral position to your character to aiming up or down at a target.

But if you don't have multiplayer, there's still a couple other ways to work on your vertical aim.

First, the lockdown mode on Vondel is great because you spawn with your loadout and most people typically play the objective which is to occupy zones around the map to rack up points.

And what this means is that if you land away from these zones, you can usually get a lot of target practice in without too many people shooting at you.

I think this is actually the best way to practice shooting people as they parachute into the map.

But this mode isn't always available so the other way to practice will work in any playlist.

How many times have you played a match and found yourself bored in the middle of the game when there's not really much going on and you can't find anyone to fight?

Well, this is a perfect time to practice.

If you're sitting on a building, look out straight in front of you and then practice snapping your aim to the targets below.

Or if you're rotating through the map with your squad, practice quickly looking up to the rooftops.

You don't always have to practice drills outside of a game to get better.

There's oftentimes a lot of boring moments in battle royale games so just make the most of them and use your time efficiently.

Moving on to mistake number four.

Have you ever been in a clutch moment in a game?

Then all of a sudden your hands start sweating profusely making it almost impossible to grip your controller?

Or have you ever been in your first game of the day and gotten blessed with the ultimate bot lobby but your hands are cold and not warmed up so you end up throwing the game?

Well, I've had both of these things happen to me and it's a pretty horrible feeling.

Now, once again, I'm no medical expert but for the longest time I just suffered through having sweaty hands on some days and then cold hands on other days and I never really addressed these problems.

And this was a huge mistake because it can have a significant impact on your aim.

But fortunately, over the years I've found a couple of solutions that work for me whether my hands are hot or cold and hopefully these will work for you too.

So on days when my hands are really sweaty I like to set up a small USB fan on my desk right next to where I play and I simply turn it on and off between games depending on how hot my hands are getting.

I got this recommendation from Iceman Isaac in one of his videos so definitely shout out to him because this completely fixed this issue and I no longer have to worry about having sweaty hands.

I've left a link in the description to the fan that I'm using.

And then on days where my hands are cold I actually use a hair dryer to warm them up.

I typically only have to do this when I first start playing but I'll also use it in between games based on how my hands are feeling.

I've tried using those USB hand warmers but they take forever to warm up my hands and I think a hair dryer is the fastest method.

But you do have to be careful not to burn your hands because it can get really hot.

Okay, mistake number five is a big one.

It's so big that it could be the reason why you're dying a lot in the game.

Have you ever been driving to school or to work on a route that you've taken a million times and suddenly you've completely lost track of time and you can't remember the last few minutes of the drive?

Well, that was your brain on autopilot mode.

Research has shown that when we're completing routine tasks or activities our brain can shift into a default mode where we aren't actually focused on what we're doing.

We might be looking at the road but we're thinking about what's for dinner.

And believe it or not a similar thing can happen while we're gaming because after playing the same map with the same weapons for many, many hours our brains can get a little bit bored even if we don't realize it.

And this could be an absolute disaster for our aim because aiming at a high level requires a lot of mental effort and focus.

There's a major difference between focusing on a target and looking at it.

StruthGaming has an excellent guide on his channel that brought my attention to this topic.

So shout out to him.

But whenever my aim feels off it's usually because I'm not focused or locked in on my aim.

Sometimes I'm tired and my brain is in autopilot mode and other times I'm just not properly shifting my focus in the game because unfortunately for our aim gaming requires a lot of multitasking.

You have to look at the mini-map for information.

You have to communicate with your squad.

You have to loot items on the ground and there's a whole lot more.

And all of these things take your focus away from your aim.

Our brains are actually really bad at multitasking.

It's really hard for us to shift our focus from one thing to another.

So sometimes I find that when I look at the mini-map and then I go back to looking at the game I'm no longer locked in.

I have to constantly remind myself to focus up to prevent my brain from going into autopilot mode.

And if you aren't sure what focusing up feels like there's a cool website called blinkcamp.com where you can practice tracking and moving a ball around with your eyes.

You can adjust settings like speed, size and the movement routine.

And what you should notice is that it takes quite a lot of effort to really focus on the moving target.

And this focus should be similar to how it feels when you're locked into a game.

Once again, there's a major difference between tracking the target with your eyes and just looking at your screen.

I know this mistake of not focusing on your targets seems really basic but I honestly think it's a bigger issue than most people realize.

And it can be the difference between hitting one or two critical bullets in a gunfight which can affect the entire outcome of your game.