I had a thought

People have a tendency to make mistakes when they are nervous.  You know, people like me.

I also know that I play much better when I'm relaxed, and sometimes when I'm simultaneously relaxed AND into my match, I go into a very focused state of destruction.

So, it finally occurred to me to ask myself, what is it that makes me nervous?  I typically make smart decisions, but when I start getting antsy, I also begin to just go for blind attacks.  And I often screw them up technically.  Nothing goes right.  What is it that makes me so nervous and tense, even in friendlies?

For some people, it's not wanting to lose.  I know that I hate losing, but it happens a lot so I'm kind of used to it.  I'm also pretty used to the crowd booing against me, but it gets to me the most when I feel like they shouldn't be.

Recently, I went into work thinking "today is going to suck."  But it wasn't exactly a pessimistic "everything is going to go wrong today," kind of thought.  It had a more matter-of-fact spin to it.  I was kind of tired, I had to work a lunch rush in the most hectic position, and I was scheduled with several people I didn't like working with.  It seemed very likely that my day would not be a good one.  That was my logical assessment.

For some reason, that day I didn't get angry about anything.  The normal stuff that bothered me I just kind of took in stride, thinking "yeah, that's pretty much what I expected."  When my workload lightened slightly, I thought "hey, this isn't so bad," and became energized, and actually did my job BETTER than normal.

Most people have told me that I need to have more confidence when I play.  I think... this is kind of true, and kind of not.  I DO need to stop beating myself up about random things that go wrong.  But what I really need to do when I play, if I want to play better and win more, is stop thinking about winning.  I've found that the closer I get to winning, the more nervous I get.  The more I expect myself to win, the more my mistakes bother me, which snowballs into causing more mistakes.

I'm not really that scared of losing, especially not if I think it's likely.  I remember going into my matches against Mango at APEX thinking that I was 99.9% likely to lose; I'd just watched him play Vanity Angel and pull out some pretty ridiculous combos with Falcon, even while hungover, so I was pretty sure that the real Mango was hiding in there somewhere, ready to jump out and yell "ahh, rape."

I went into that match with ZERO confidence and what's weird is that, not only did I win, I did it with almost NO technical errors.  I made a few, sure, and I made judgment mistakes and in the end I only one-stocked his Mario with infinites legal, but then he brought out his Falcon (which had murdered me last time we played) and I three stocked it.  Again, he was hung-over, so that obviously had a lot to do with it.  But at the same time, the things I was doing were coming out right.  No flubbed wavedashes, no botched short-hops.

My match against Silent Wolf was remarkably similar.  I was sure that he was going to slaughter me because I'm just not that great against people who play really fast.  And I was so certain that I would lose that I wasn't really that nervous to play.  And I wound up winning pretty soundly.

I guess in a weird, counterintuitive way, I'm more nervous about winning than I am about losing.  The more I remove victory from my mind, the more I focus on the moment.  And I've been finding lately that--at least while practicing--my skill goes up when I tell myself "you're going to make mistakes."  I stop worrying about them, stop thinking "I have to get this right," because I've already accepted the error in advance.  And I DO screw up still... but now it doesn't bother me.  I just think, "oh right, I was just hitting L too early because my fast fall didn't come out," and the error suddenly goes away.

Will this work in real matches?  Time will tell.  It'd be pretty cool if it did, huh?

PS:  a big thanks to Unintentionally for reminding me of something I actually wrote awhile ago, about accepting the possibility of your loss beforehand while you simultaneously play as hard as you can to win.  It seems I have outsmarted myself, lol.

Frustration

Okay.  I've been here before, in many respects.

Over the years I've improved slowly and painfully, then plateaued, wanted to quit, and forced myself through it.  I broke through those walls and became better, even if it was only a tiny margin at a time.

I want to believe that I can still improve, and that I can finally break down this one barrier that's been eating me alive for so long, which is my technical inconsistency.

I can't seem to communicate to people just HOW BAD this problem is.  I don't really get frustrated when I lose, I get frustrated when I play poorly.  Particularly when I make lots of stupid technical errors that I shouldn't be making after playing for 6 years.

Things like trying to wavedash, and failing, then attempting to fast fall to avoid eating the aerial that I'm now in range of, and double jumping with my joystick.  Or trying to waveland onto the stage, but just standing up; then when I try to wavedash back onto the edge so I can try again--and see if my controller doesn't need resetting or something--then I roll by mistake.  Then I decide "whatever," and try to short hop and get the edge, only to full jump.

Somebody said that I make lots of bad decisions, and it's hard to explain to people that your decisions aren't really your own when your hands don't cooperate.  I'm constantly at odds with my own body to actually communicate my desires to the game.  Some games more than half of my attemped inputs come out as errors.

This is not an exaggeration.  WD d-smash becomes WD f-smash because of a c-stick flub, followed by an attempted roll that turns into a spot dodge or jump because I spaz on the joystick.  My next JC'ed grab is a full jumped f-air to which I then miss the fast fall (and subsequent L-cancel).  Upon landing, I airdodge horizontally, failing to wavedash again.  My next short hop n-air is a dash attack because I miss my jump button.  And so on.

Again, not exaggerations; these are specific examples taken from recent smashfests and friendlies I've played. And when I tell people that I'm frustrated because these mistakes are getting me raped, they say things like "everybody has bad games."  I am trying to explain that this goes beyond most people's definition of a bad game, and it happens with a consistency that people think I'm embellishing.

This would not be as big of an issue if I had some safe baseline to fall back on, some technical elements that I NEVER mess up so I can play safe while I calm down... except I don't.  I cannot handle the controller without some risk of missing buttons or slamming the joystick in some random direction.  Most people find themselves overreaching their tech-skill sometimes and saying "okay okay we'll tone it down."  I cannot tone it down to an error-free level.

Sometimes this is clearly tied to my mental state; when I'm frustrated or agitated I often play worse, and when I'm calm and focused I typically play better.  Durr, obvious I know, but yeah.  However, even when I'm practicing solo in a relatively calm state I will still make these silly mistakes.  When I'm nervous, in high-pressure tourney situations... well, most of you have seen what happens.

I have accepted that I don't really have a talent for this game beyond my obsessive nature.  But this is at an extreme that I don't know how to cope with anymore; the amount of practice I invest does not seem to correlate at ALL to my technical proficiency, and I'm starting to lose hope.  I come up with new systems and ideas to try and rectify it, but nothing's working.  My past month-plus of dedicated practice, of going back to basics and hammering them in with constant repetition, has yielded absolutely nothing.  I still screw up these fundamentals at a rate far beyond what is acceptable for any player trying to legitimately call themselves good at this game.

The worst part is that I can't just give up and call it quits because there's something inside me, a small petulant voice made of spite and ambition and idealism, that refuses to let me.  I'm not going to keep playing if I honestly believe I can't get any better, and apart from this voice, that's what I'm coming to believe the more and more I practice.

tl;dr: bah.  If somebody has any advice on how to fix this nonsense, please send it to me.

Smash Workout

Warning: long post ahead.  It's also rambly.  Beware of "magical philosophizing."

So one of my recent hobbies--being pretty isolated in Texas, with me, Darkrain and DoH all being on completely different work schedules--is working out.  Mostly I do a lot of bodyweight stuff, working my way towards one-armed pullups and pushups, hanging V-raises, one-legged squats, stuff like that.  And, massive nerd that I am, I've thought about it and want to see what I can apply to Smash.

My most recent tournament, TO6, was pretty depressing for me for a couple reasons.  One, I'd just taken 5th at APEX and had 3 1st place finishes in tournaments before that, all of them with pretty stiff competition.  I had high expectations for myself, I took 4 days off work to go, and I wasn't playing as well as I liked.  That and having the entire crowd against me put me in a bad mood.  I lost to Raku, a Sheik player--who was surprisingly good, truthfully, he deserved his win 100%--and thanks to my high expectations that put me in an even worse mood.  I went to loser's and started off by getting stomped by RockCrock, and ended up quitting.  You can call it a rage-quit I guess, but it was a quit meant to pre-empt rage.  I promised myself awhile ago that if I started getting too frustrated during matches I would just forfeit before reaching a point of no-return on my anger.

So after a lot of thought I decided that my main weakness is--and has always been--my technical skill.  I don't make perfect guesses and decisions 100% of the time, but often I still screw up when I do, which is a big part of why I rely on simple chaingrabs and such; I'm incredibly inconsistent across the board, and the grab-game is the easiest for me to execute, so naturally I gravitate to it.  But I've been using it as a crutch for far too long, and I decided that if technical inconsistency is my biggest weakness, I will just have to train my ass off to turn it into my biggest strength.  If I can couple that with my generally smart play, then I'll be a much stronger player as a result.

But how to train?  How can one develop technical skill?  What is it?

For starters, I think technical skill--the kind that really matters--boils down to consistency.  It's not the ability to sprint, but to run a marathon.  To keep a consistent pace the entire match long so that even if you can't take advantage of every tiny opening with blinding flashy speed, you can give nothing away through mistakes.  And, once you can run the marathon, to improve your time.  Or, if we're going to compare it to a weight workout, we're looking at low weight with high reps first.  Master the basics, ingrain them utterly, and then slowly scale up.

When I first started playing competitively, I practiced a lot with Fox and he became my tournament main.  I learned how to do most of his stuff via something I call the "high-score" method, which is pretty simple.  Pick a technique, be it short hopping, wavedashing, whatever, and do it over and over and over again.  Keep track of how many times you can do it in a row before you make a mistake.  That's your high score.

Now, try to beat your high-score.  Keep going, keep beating your high-score.  Get to a really high number, because remember, you're going to be doing these things a LOT in any match.  Can you short hop 100 times in a row with Fox?  You'd better be able to if you're a serious Fox main, because you will be doing THOUSANDS of them in one day at a given tournament, and you can't afford to have an 80% success rate.

High-score method is how I managed to actually learn my tech skill originally, and I improved at it pretty rapidly.  Why did I stop?  Beats me.  But I'm starting again.  But what do you practice?

Here's another thing for weightlifters to consider when they work out: compound lifts versus isolation.  A compound lift is any lift that targets numerous muscle groups and forces them to coordinate to complete the lift.  A squat, for instance, doesn't only use your thighs and glutes, but you have to use your shins and calves to balance, as well as flex your back to lower yourself, then stand.  A squat works a lot of muscles.  In general, compound lifts are more effective for training your coordination, for giving balance in your muscular development, and even for saving you time in your workout.  Unless you're a bodybuilder specifically focusing on sculpting a single muscle group, it's almost always more beneficial to use compound lifts.

But what's interesting is that a "compound exercise" might not be the best idea for Smash practice.  It trains multiple skills at once, but sometimes it can give you the wrong kind of muscle memory.  This is because tech skill in Smash is also very heavily mental!

What do I mean?  Let's talk about inhibition reflexes.  (told you this is long and rambly)

Normal reflexes kick in when, let's say, your computer says "click when the screen turns green" and then hey, it turns green, so you click.  Inhibition reflexes involve making judgments and sometimes NOT taking certain actions.  If your computer says "hit enter when a letter appears, but DON'T hit anything if it's an X," then that tests your inhibition reflexes.  You have to check for a value, then decide on a response, sometimes inhibiting your decision to press Enter.

Smash matches do not follow a script.  The longer and more involved a technique is, the less likely it will be strictly applicable to every scenario.  Practicing short-hop turn-shine waveland fast-fall off the platform into b-air is fun and flashy, but sometimes you don't want to do that.  The more you practice it though, the more ingrained that entire action becomes.  The more of a habit it is to do that, the more you will have to actively prevent yourself from taking that action during a match.

But what if doing that is a great idea?  What if you know you can bait them into jumping out of their shield and you'll clip them with a b-air while they DI badly?  You want to be able to perform the maneuver.  So maybe you can just practice turn shines in one instance (that's kind of isolated), then practice waveland b-air in another (also pretty isolated), and every now and then put them together to make sure you can do it.

Now for another fun psychological experience: attentional blink.  Attentional blink refers to when you shift focus from one piece of information to another; as you can imagine, in Smash you have to do this A LOT.  You have to mentally move to the next step in the match, and sometimes it happens at blinding speed.  Somebody jumps up above you and wavelands on a platform, then falls off with b-air and hits your shield.  It's not enough for you to think, "okay he's going to waveland and b-air me," but then you have to quickly move forward into, "now I think he'll dash-dance away then come at me with a tipped n-air."

One of the things about attentional blink is that it WILL compete with your inhibition reflex for space in your mind.  You cannot consciously process two pieces of information simultaneously.  You can shift rapidly between them, but you can't actually think about them both.  If you have to put attention on on stopping yourself from turn-shine waveland b-airing, you will find it difficult to actually make a new decision.  Because you can't come up with a good decision, you may find your hands flubbing for a response.  And even if you CAN settle on a response, your hands won't be prepared to execute it well.

How does this relate to your smash workout?  Well, here's my theory: if you want to have good tech-skill, and you also want to be able to make good decisions even under pressure, you must have strong isolated skills and quick attentional blinking speed.  You have to separate situations into the smallest pieces possible, and be skilled at executing all of them.

SO, with all that long-winded shit in mind, here's how I'm trying to "work out" with Smash.

Wavedashes:  200 in a "set."  I cannot afford to screw these up because ICs rely on them heavily every game.  I find that by around 200 in a short time, my index finger is too cramped to keep pressing the trigger, so this is where I stop.  If I mess up, I start over.

Short hops: I short hop for a lot of reasons, but it's important not to do the same thing out of your short-hop every time.  Empty short hops, dashing short-hops, dashing into a backwards short-hop, short-hopping all your aerials, short-hopping with and without fastfalls, these all come into play for mix-ups and good decision making.  I start with empty ones, shooting for fifty in a row, then I start short-hopping random aerials (with the most emphasis on my b-air and u-air, because they're the ICs most applicable aerials and the easiest to mess up).

Dash-dances: Joystick control is imperative.  It's very important that ALL players are good at keeping track of the direction they're actually pressing it, for the sake of your air-control, DI, and sweet-spotting.  I pick a spot on a given stage (like the center of the Pokeball in Pokemon Stadium) and dash-dance within that strict distance for as long as I can.  Twenty seconds of rapid dash dancing without a flub is pretty good, and I've found it's already given me much better control with my left thumb.  Can't hurt to shoot for higher though!

L-cancels: These are tricky to train because their timing changes so much depending on your given situation.  If you hit two shields, a light-shield, a taller character, if you're fastfalling out of a short hop, or fastfalling out of an aerial from a different height... these all change the timing.  This is where quick attentional blinking really makes a difference; recognizing how the timing changes, being ready to land your L-cancel based on new information and then quickly move on to the next step of the match.

Well, that's all I've got for now.  Believe it or not, there's going to be a follow up to this!

Hope you didn't think that was too weird or stupid.  Peace.