The primary purpose of this is to show what aim coaches are, which services are available, how it can help, how it doesn’t, and what makes a good coach and what makes a lousy coach. As I have talked and ranted about plenty of times on my Twitter about the amount of misinformation so I have decided to share how people can know how some coaches will help you and how some may be scams and a waste of money and time. Also, help future coaches create a valuable service to help people that might use it. This isn’t for telling about what a coach is but rather what aim coaches are if you’re going to learn about that read all about it in RESPRiT’s what is a coach document which is a good read before continuing. One thing that I have tried to do in this document is to remove as much bias and to give information without many opinions so that you can make your own decisions.
Common misconceptions with aim coaches
Aim coaches will not always be the most efficient path to improvement for the price that some coaches may charge (see How to choose an aim coach)
All aim coaches are the same quality/ experience and will have the same effect on my aim
- This is just not the case as aim training is relatively new
- there is no one standardised way of coaching and to maintain the same quality of coaches themselves
- make sure to check their experience (also see How to choose an aim coach), and many are at different skill levels
More expensive coaching means that the coach gives better advice
- This is just even more, not the same.
- Same as above and there have been some instances where some coaches would scam their clients by saying it’s a personalised routine when it was the same thing distributed between every one of their clients. Do your research!
Types of coaches
While there are many coaches in the community, they usually fall into one or a combination of these categories; this is also a simplified list of different coaching types so it may miss significant differences:
Routine Coaches/ Routine Providers :
These are very talked-about coaches within the community for their sometimes controversial actions. Still, they are coaches that give a method of training through a routine of times/ numbers of runs to play through with specific scenarios in Kovaaks or Aim Lab to train overall mouse control or specific personalised routine to improve your weaknesses. While this can be good when you start training is my personal opinion. However, there are plenty of free routines around plus many more which you can use as a perfect base to then adapt to focus on your weaknesses. But one downside of this kind of coaching is that it does not improve or detect bad habits or specific mistakes that you might be having during your training.
General Advisors for Aiming :
These are the coaches that advise on simple stuff like single scenario reviews, sensitivity theory, mouse, mousepads, etc. the kind of people in the Voltaic’s Advice channel. While the advice isn’t always regulated or always the best information, it can be good advice for small topics or small bad habits or strategies. Always take this advice with a grain of salt if they are not well respected as a coach or have lots of advice/ game experience. This is also normally free of charge.
The difference between Voltaic mentors and analysis/ coaches:
“In short, mentoring is a less in-depth FREE variant of coaching. Mentors can help players of all levels and adjust the brevity of their help based on player-skill. For example, a bronze player will not need as much attention as a platinum-level player. Just like coaches, mentors can have different styles; some mentors will be more in-depth, while others are briefer. You can compare mentoring to a school setting where you get a tutor from a higher class appointed to help you with learning.”
Examples being: the Voltaic’s advice channel, Revosect’s advice channel
VOD Review Coaches :
These coaches are the most common at the moment where they look through your VODs and give you insight into your issues and give advice and tips to improve on them. This is often combined with a routine to work on the weaknesses. These typically look at a couple of your avg runs and write a document or by talking through it in a voice channel or voice recording. This method of coaching is a pretty good start for people who are confused or for people in a plateau/ wall of improvement.
Live Review Coaches :
These types of coaches are very similar to the Vod Review Coaches, but they provide feedback on your mistakes and give advice while in a voice chat and the client sharing the screen of them playing the game/aim trainer. This type of coach can be perfect for people who don’t want to read a long document. This type of coaching can also be more natural for people to absorb, and they can also guide scenarios to play to find issues better and give advice.
Game-Specific Coaches :
This is a hybrid of one of the other types of coaches where they use game VODs to suggest a routine or to point out issues that you can train for in-game aim improvement they don’t always have to be exclusive aim coaches.
Other Coaches :
There are not many other coaches, but there may be some in the future like mentality helpers: can help advise to remain composed and to give advice on the mental side of aim training and performing. Diet helper: to help check your current diet and help you plan a diet that is healthy and be beneficial to the best improvement and exercise helpers. This coaching type should be more available but it’s to help with creating an exercise plan. As well to help make sure that you get exercise which often lacks from gamers.
How can aim coaching help
Aim coaching can be beneficial to speed up your progress and efficiency in your progression to gain mouse control and game-specific skills, but Aim Coaching isn’t always the fastest way, but it can be, and the type of aim coach might also influence. So you should do your research and see if you think you can benefit from a VOD review coach, for example, can be helpful when you reach a point of initial mouse control like Voltaic gold/ plat and have reached a plateau of improvement(where you don’t seem to be improving over some time). Still, it also might be useful if you want to talk and ask questions more openly with the coach so that live coaching might be a better way. I have to point out here that routine services might be useful to start. But with all of this, if you are thinking about aim coaching, you have to weigh the price to how much you might improve from it. At the same time, most of this information can be obtained like every coaching that exists IRL a coach is a convenient way to learn and gain knowledge faster. Aim coaching might help with more applied advice for games and specific types of aiming that a general guide or document can’t always help.
How to choose an aim coach
If you understand the types of coaches that are out there, it is a good thing to see what coaches are available then check the prices for their services. Then you should see their experience and maybe even a sample of their work if they have one available and then you can roughly choose the type and style of coach that you think would benefit you the best. I can’t tell you who will be the best for you and it might take you some time to choose a coach for you, but the results may be better in the end. Just because a coach is popular doesn’t mean they are credible or helpful do your checks.
Example (from my comment):
- Do a background check on the coach.
- This can help you understand if they are legit.
- Check out their work (if applicable)
- This can give you a good idea of whether you want to be coached or not.
- Decide what type of coaching you want.
- You can compare this with the services of the coach to pick one that suits you best.
- Compare their price to a similar coach with the same type.
- Then contact the coach through their preferred platform.
- Done
How to check for scammers
While I don’t think there are many direct scammers in the community, there are some people that are a bit dodgy with their business practices. So make sure that you are getting what you want and that the coach is credible and with experience. This is an essential point if a coach requires you to sign an NDA, then they might be a scam or just not a high-quality coach. One thing to point out here I do not think that Routine Coaches are scammers. Still, there has been evidence that when they say personalised routine that they have been giving back a generic routine that has been given to many clients, so that is a thing to consider if you are going that route. And use common sense in these situations if they are charging a lot of money for an unknown amount of review or a strange routine they might be trying to rip you off. Make sure to ask or check if they have a sample of their work to check what you might be getting scammed or at least something that you might not expect.
Let’s make a simple checklist that you can follow.
- See if there are any reviews for this coach from people inside the community to see if there is any controversy.
- Compare the value of the price to service against other similar coaches and see if it’s way above other coaches might be overpriced or if far under might be too good to be true.
- Check and see samples of their work; a lot of coaches may already provide them and see if the quality is worth the value of the service.
- While common sense is hard to use for a lot but use it don’t be stupid, stupid
Where to find coaches
There are plenty of places to find a coach your needs main places but not limited to are:
- Playerbase - Which is a service provided by Aim Lab to help you find a paid coaches from many coaches from some of the top aim groups and more
- Twitter - With people like Aimer7 and the other vF coaches as well as many independent coaches
- Voltaic’s Discord - Place to find and communicate with Volatic’s mentors and paid coaches that are not on playerbase
Thanks for reading this. I hope this can help you find a coach or make your decision more accessible if you want to get better. This is an option that should be explored if you want the best. If you have any issues or feedback, feel free to DM me as this is a document for you, so I want only the highest quality. I love this format to get information out so I will most likely be making more documents/ guides in the future. Also, if you have ideas for documents/ guides that I should make then just dm me.
Also, thanks to Sini for helping me with editing and giving feedback on the updated document.