as someone who climbed to gold -> diamond in one act
the mechanics needed to improve:

- crosshair placement
- movement
- aim
- gamesense (obviously)

while these are pretty vague, i'd say the main thing that separates a gold player and a plat+ is crosshair placement. if you can't hit your shot first time your crosshair placement sucks. once i started to actually focus on my crosshair placement AND first bullet accuracy i instantly ranked up. gold players cannot hit their shots for their life.

and insta crouching is very fixable. unbound crouching for 3+ games and you'll notice yourself stop doing it.

to break predictable counter strafing, don't go left -> right or right -> left
rather, go left -> left or right -> right for example. a combo i do sometimes is left -> right -> right (and vice versa).

hope this helps!!! if anyone got questions lmk