I got sorted into Silver 2 and ranked up to MGE in a month.
Here is my story: Mainly played WoW (200 days /played) and Dota (2k+ games on SIG WC3 DotA and 3.5k hours on Dota2) for the last years. A few hours of cod and BF3. Like 10 hours of CSS, no 1.6 at all, a bit more of 1.5 but that was over 10 years ago.
Background: Sorted into Silver2 in January, after playing CS randomly bc a WoW streamer played it on his stream and it looked fun to try some comp games. Stopped playing after ~15 wins again. Started in Feb after being put into low prio q in Dota2 for 16 games (fuck that) and decided to get good.
The Silvers: Watched dozens of WarOwl stuff, learned Mirage and Cache literally from scratch (never played them, to this day not queueing for cbble, season, overpass bc I dont know them at all), learned callouts for other maps. Started playing DM with tapshooting heads and played training map Friberg style (he has a vid on YT). Literally had 180 hours in last 2 weeks clocked after first 2 weeks (some menutime though). Took me a while to go from SEM to GN1 but definitely not over 40 wins in total from S2 to GN1.
The Novas (not much different than Silvers tbh): Even though my aim improved a shitload I still felt it was always worse than other people my rank, it improved steadily slower than my rank. Breeeeezed through the Novas very fast to get stuck at GNM for a little bit. Didnt change my training routine, maybe 20-30 min trainmap and ~30min-1hour per day Valve-DM. Aim still improved, but very slowly. Watched a lot of my demos to spot mistakes when I felt like I shouldve killed someone and noticed that I was moving a LOT while shooting when I saw an enemy (still do it sometimes) because I was afraid of dieing. Trained myself to stop doing that by SLAMMING the anti-strafe key in DM before shooting. Still dont know how to correctly stop after WD or WA strafe though.
The MGs (reality check): Then I hit MG1 and realized I had to change things. Had few lucky wins getting carried and faced MG2 players and my aim was so atrociously bad compared to them I literally felt like I was still a Nova 2 aimwise, which I probably was. I could not get by on gamesense and being smart about my decisions anymore, I got outaimed that hard. I bought a new mouse and mousepad (was using like 5 year old Razer Naga which was a bit broken and an equally old and dirty Goliathus pad). Bought Deathadder Chroma and SS Qvc-something pad - huge improvement for my aim-consistency, especially in training, i could FEEL the sensor and the pad being flatout better and more precise and smooth.
The changes and MGE: Started playing FragShack FFA DM and doing these drills here (SO GOOD!!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su462oItUdk . Literally been doing drill No.1 every day for at least 15 minutes straight 1st thing when starting CS, often even 30min+ without a break, just standing there and shooting the targets in a straight, controlled line. Slooooowly worked my way up to recently 1.25 duration after ~8 days of this. This has improved my muscle memory and accuracy so much that I feel all the training Ive done before was a gigantic waste of my time. After doing Drill-1 and Drill-3 (spraycontrol, at least 10 minutes - in the beginning I could do this for an hour until I was satisfied) always and sometimes 2 and 5 as well. Then I would go into FragShack FFA and just get as many kills in the shortest amount possible. I did NOT care about dieing in the sense that I would camp a spot, but I DO care about strafing and checking corners/peeking correctly. Basically I emulate a real game of comp as a super aggressive player, definitely NOT trying to slowly tap heads or some shit, thats what I have the aim map for.
I saw improvements INSTANTLY. After a few days I felt on par with most MG1 players aimwise, but still worse than many MG2s or MGEs. Still doing this routine and not gonna change it anytime soon.
This change was exactly 8 days ago and I'm now solidly on MGE for ~30 wins and feel like im on par with most people in the aiming department, but getting better every day. Watching adreN YT and n0thing stream now to learn more habits and thought processes of good players (like n0thing on peeking and spraying, or adreNs defaults for maps and all of his YT basically).
Recently changed my m_yaw or something back to default after changing it to be lower when I switched to 4:3 because the AWP felt soooo weird when aiming, I think the multiplier on the scope messes up the ratio between yaw and pitch even further when scoped in. Noticed that when I decided I wanted to learn the AWP (im trash with it still).
TL;DR: Seriously, watch this guys videos on DM and Drills https://www.youtube.com/user/FFF7987/videos and just practice before playing comp games and be dedicated and try to win every round. I went from Silver2 to MGE in literally a month and I earned it through practice and dedication. I view it as a sport quite literally.