How To Use THE GUIDE+ Optimally!

In our latest article on analysis and improvement, we talked about how you can analyze your own game and figure out your weaknesses. The next step of course is improving those weaknesses. And what could help better with that than some in-depth THE GUIDE+ tutorials? So today we are going to talk about how you can make best use of our app.

A content library Over the past two seasons we have published hundreds of lessons on pretty much all aspects of the game. While that is a great ressource for anyone trying to improve, it can get a little bit overwhelming at times. Should you watch lessons or entire courses? What should you improve at first? How do you actually improve from watching a video? So let me try and break it down.

Finding lessons on your weaknesses If you haven’t read the article I wrote on analyzing your own game (linked in the intro above), then make sure to give it a read afterwards. Because there is no better way to figure out what you need to work on than reflecting on your own game. You can also apply for our member gameplay analysis and get our feedback on where you’re struggling.

Once you figured this out, the next step is using the search tools in our app to find content that is tailored towards your needs. You are struggling in defense? Alright, you can use the category bar at the top of the feed and select “Defending” to search for lessons on defending. Of course this works for every other category featured there as well.

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But let’s say that is not specific enough. You figured out that you are especially struggling with tackles and never seem to be able to win the ball back. No problem, just use the search bar and type in your keyword “tackle” and a bunch of lessons are going to pop up. Pay attention though: Categories and the search bar work together. If you type “tackle” while you have selected the “Attacking” category, you are not going to find any lessons. To make sure you find all lessons available when searching, simply select the “Recent” category.

If I were struggling with understanding tackles in general, then I would now probably watch the “How to use tackles” lesson or the “Tackling in 1on1 Defending” lesson. You can also use our difficulty tags as an orientation: Basic, Advanced and Expert give you a good orientation if the topic is tailored to your level or not.

In order to get an overview on which lessons you have watched already and which ones are new, make sure to always mark lessons as read. You can do this by either watching the entire video or by manually clicking on the button at the top of each lesson!

Lessons vs. Courses All the filtering techniques I just described above can also be applied to the courses section. Here we have put together multiple lessons into one structured learning plan that will allow you to really dive into a topic on a deeper level. Naturally there are not as many topics covered in a specific course, but we pretty much have one for all the big aspects of the game.

If you have the choice between learning with a lesson and learning with an entire course, I would always recommend the course. A lesson always focuses on one specific aspect while a course can go into detail much more and also gives you a clear starting point and structure.

I would also advise you to not shy away from older content that we made in past seasons. In case you want to improve your defensive pressure for example, the “22’ Pressing Mastery” course is a great ressource. Of course it’s with FIFA 22 gameplay material which might make it a bit unsatisfying to watch but the explained concepts are 100% applicable to FIFA 23.

One more useful thing to know is that in the “Account” section you can find an overview on your completed courses and courses in progress. This way you can quickly find the course again that you started the other day or get an overview on which topics you already worked through extensively.

Do more than watching Now that we figured out what to watch, it’s time to talk about how to watch. Or rather discuss that watching is not all you’re supposed to do. Our memory is not keeping things for long if we don’t apply them right away. If you watch 3 videos in a row, chances are that you already forgot 90% of what was discussed in the first two videos by the time you finish the third. So try to work through the content with intention!

Completing quizzes In order to help you process the information of a video and test what you’ve learned, we set up quizzes at the end of most video lessons! Make sure to always complete those. Even if some of the answers seem too easy for you (it’s not simple finding the right difficulty level for these quizzes!), it will still help with thinking through what you just watched and therefore transferring the knowledge into your long time memory.

Taking notes Taking notes is a great way to further process what you learned from a video. What were the most important tips to you? Which approach surprised you? What would you like to try out the next time you play? Write it down. This way you not only transfer new ideas into memory better but you also have a quick summary to come back to a few days later instead of needing to rewatch the entire video.

Apply tips asap Even better than taking notes is applying tips right away. Let’s say you are trying to learn a new skill move. Have the lesson open on one screen and the game on another. Head into the skill games practice and play around with the mechanics. Find out for yourself how that stepover sprint boost we talk about all the time feels when you do it. Instead of just watching what it looks like.

If you got the time, head into an online match (preferably not rivals or champs) or a match against the AI right after. Same thing, you just focus on using the stepover sprint boost in as many situations as possible.

30 minutes of time and you will have learned and improved more than if you watched 2 hours of lesson material in a row.

So this is pretty much an entire overview on how you can make the best use of THE GUIDE+. Hope it helps you guys out, thank you for all your support and positive feedback and enjoy watching the lessons and improving!

About the author Georg "CruZzAve" Raffelt is creating tutorials since 2013 around which time he also started his competitive journey in the game. He was able to qualify for the Grand Final of the German National Championship "Virtuelle Bundesliga" twice in 2014 and 2015. Online he managed to reach the weekly and monthly Top100 in the Weekend League numerous times.

In case you didn't know: You can also access THE GUIDE+ on your PC with our Web Version and watch the lessons on a bigger screen. Here is the link: www.theguide.gg

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Future Logo Intro" by WinnieTheMoog (https://taigasoundprod.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)