A good warm up in CS:GO has always been a bit of an art form. We aren’t talking about the minuscule warm up before a real game starts, we’re talking about a real warm up that you make the choice to complete!

It’s extremely important to warm up in Counter Strike before you head into your Competitive matches for many reasons, such as practising your spray patterns, grenade throws, communication and tactics.

There is one more thing that warming up can prepare you for, the dreaded high ping. If you head into a public server in CSGO and find out you have high ping, you’ve just dramatically increased your chances of loosing a game. Heading into a warm-up will allow you to ensure your ping is at a suitable level for gaming.

Below, I have listed my opinion of the 5 best ways of warming up in CSGO before heading into those gruelling competitive games. These are my opinion only and you may disagree with some. However I hope this list guides you and possibly teaches you something new.

Bunny Hopping/KZ

Bunny Hopping and KZ are great for warming up. Both these server types have always been referred to as a CS:GO past time. Personally I have always found that playing these servers are the best way to help you feel comfortable with your mouse and get rid of those early morning shakes. It’s a pretty fun way warm up in CSGO.

If you have never played a Bunny Hop or KZ Map before in Counter Strike, I’d highly recommend it. It brings a whole new world to CS:GO, it’s like it’s own little parkour game! You can take part in community events, choose next maps, earn points, unlock character skins, name tags and even see how you compare to other players by checking online scoreboards.

1v1 Arena

1v1 arena is a fairly new practice to me, however I have found it massively important since I first entered this amazing game mode. I have since made it one of my primary CSGO warm up routines. As you’d guess, the server will place you on a miniature sized map with a single opponent, and you both battle it out to get the kill.

These servers will help you practice your one taps (head-shots), peeking round corners and general movement in a heated situation. It also allows you to play against players of varying skill and play styles so that you are ready to head into those competitive matches and get those wins!

Offline practice

Playing offline in CSGO is something that is severely underrated and definitely not used enough. First of all, this is a great way work on your smoke and grenade throws. You can pick your favourite map, input the ‘grenade_trajectory’ command and throw away.

You’ll have instant control over your weapon choice, and get yourself more accustomed to the current active duty maps. I’d suggest also adding bots of a relatively high difficulty to aid you in your warm up.

Aim_botz

This simple but essential map created by uLLeticaL has revolutionised the way players warm up since it’s release back in 2014. Aim_Botz places the player in a box, surrounded by bots on the outer side of the walls that don’t move. All you must do is choose a weapon and start shooting the bots.

You may have seen this map before, as it appears in many clips from professional players, such as ScreaM. Spending 15-30 minutes on this map before you want to start playing competitive games can ensure your aim is as crisp as possible and you can download it here.

Deathmatch

Finally, deathmatch; this is the real CSGO classic. This should be your bread and butter if you want to help round out your game. Games are short and sweet, so it never feels like your wasting any time.

Try and spend at least 15 minutes practising your shooting, aim & head shots before heading into a competitive match. I recommend you either just connect to the official deathmatch servers, or perhaps try some community ones that are available in the server browser.