I just watched the movie Waiting For Bobby Fischer, and it made me think about a few things regarding winning, losing, what competitive games do to you, and what we do to them.
Let me start by saying this: the more you add to a game, the more you take away from it. Not the game itself, but the event, the playing. Say you add sponsorships, crowds, tickets, merchandise. You add titles. You add a crowd. You add hype. You add rivalries and spectators. You add ego.
Adding these--not always, but often--subtracts from focusing on the game itself. The reason most people play a game, and devote themselves to its rules and intricacies and advancement, is for a single reason; they like the game. Sometimes the initial interest turns into a passion, an obsession. These people can't quit no matter how bad they think they want to. You think you quit, you'll be minding your own business, and then somehow somebody reminds you that the game exists and you are drawn back into it. You can't resist it. The only way to leave is if the fire dies down on its own. It's a trick candle of the heart.
Because to you, thanks to whatever weird genetic/cultural combination that crafted you, the game is just beautiful. Some games are fast paced, some are slow. Some require twitch reflexes and some require snail-paced planning. Some are intuitive and some are analytical, though just about all are really a mixture of both. Different games call to different people, and most of the time we can't help ourselves. We're weak to those games.
And it's kind of stupid, even. You started off playing for fun, and then you'll go off by yourself to practice for hours and you won't have even a smidgeon of fun, just so you can be a little bit better the next time you play. And sometimes the game drives you up the damn wall for whatever reason, and you can't help it. It's a habit. An addiction to play, because something in there is just too beautiful for you to let go of it.
Most of us want to be better for no reason beyond a simple inexplicable want. At least, initially.
This is where it gets weird and a little sad to me. You have the game, and you have the players, and it's pretty awesome all in all. But the moment you add things like hype, spectators, tournaments, championships, and titles, something both amazing and terrible happens. The spectators develop a sense of entitlement. They make demands on the players. They start dictating the shoulds and shouldn'ts of the game for the people who are actually playing it. They add foreign elements of pride and ego and territory into these events that, as far as the game is concerned, don't exist.
Players begin to worry about who is watching, and by the mere act of observation, the game is changed. Players act more aggressive or defensive. They become afraid to lose, in some cases afraid to win, or even to play at all. And then people start telling the players what to do. You have to play man. You have to win. Show them what you're made of, you're the best, prove it. No, don't play like that, give us what we want to see. You have to.
Says who? Who says anybody has to do a damn thing? The passion didn't start with somebody saying "you have to be amazing at this." It came from within. That passion is what got you up there, and then somebody else just encroaches on it. Who the hell are they to tell you what the game is about, and what you have to do when you play it?
But truthfully, I can't hate on the crowd because when you love the game, both playing *and* watching, then you can enjoy it no matter what you're doing. I love watching high-level play of most competitive events just because it's kind of awesome to see craft at its finest. To share the experience with other people who feel the same, to have somebody to talk about it with, just amplifies the experience of seeing players who are good and amazing weave magic with their chosen game.
And being good, being amazing, that really was kind of the root of the game at first, wasn't it? You loved the game and you wanted to understand it, and with understanding came more skill and with more skill came a new way to appreciate an old pastime. And some people just want to watch and enjoy it and sometimes it's not any kind of act of malice or spite or bias but it simply *happens* that the game changes.
But let's say you add a title. Suddenly you aren't thinking about the game anymore. You aren't playing for the sake of the game or yourself but because somebody put something else on the line. And while some people are immune to these kinds of pressures, most aren't.
You really can't account for how these things affect everybody. Some people like winning just because it makes them feel superior. Some people just want to be flashy, or some people just want to relax and have a good time. And the best part is that the game doesn't care what your intention is, so there is room for you to play how you want and for the reason that you want. And some people only play their best with those external pressures egging them on. Sometimes the game can only advance because people, in the desire to win and be better, use those pressures to push themselves to the next level. So who even knows.
What's the point of all this? Well, I tricked you, because you read all this way only to realize there really isn't one. I like crowds and hype and spectators and tournaments and championships and big games where everybody says "this is for all the cookies," and everybody screams and it comes down to the wire and the crowd is going nuts and you end up telling the story five times to the same person who doesn't even give a shit because you can't get it out of your head, it was that amazing.
But in some ways I also kind of lament it. Because there's something utterly fantastic about playing without a purpose or a target or a title or a crowd, where we aren't inflicting needless expectations on the players of the game. Where you can just explore the gamespace and go crazy playing how you want to play, constantly chasing that element of the game that set you on fire in the first place. And the irony is that when you combine the first and the second, when the players up on the big stage forget about the crowd and play like nobody's there, is usually when everybody in the room ends up winning.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Happy New Year, everybody!
I'm not really good at doing the whole ball-drop timing thing. But happy new years to the people who still read this thing (:
Also, I was thinking about maybe doing vlog stuff in addition to this so you can all laugh at my silly face while I say things. And I can emphasize my points and posts with meaningless hand gestures. We could do Q&A type stuff, I could just rant, and I would save this writing section for more analytical stuff.
Anyhow, to reiterate:
Happy New Year!
Also, I was thinking about maybe doing vlog stuff in addition to this so you can all laugh at my silly face while I say things. And I can emphasize my points and posts with meaningless hand gestures. We could do Q&A type stuff, I could just rant, and I would save this writing section for more analytical stuff.
Anyhow, to reiterate:
Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Two thoughts in a row!
Cons of living in Dallas, TX:
Only two people to smash with on a regular basis.
Pros:
Those two players are DoH and Darkrain.
So I spent the evening practicing with Darkrain, and I've come to a few conclusions. The first is that I'm not very good with Sheik.
The second is that the moment I start wanting to really win, I start playing awfully. And unfortunately, my strategy of trying to convince myself that "I'm going to lose, I will make mistakes, it's inevitable" and using that to keep my nerves down, doesn't work. I still get way too upset over my errors and my mistakes.
I think I was in a much better place years ago when my focus was exclusively on maintaining the right attitude while I play. I had a string of matches tonight where I was completely in the zone, and except for the occasional chuckle or "wtf was that" when something weird happened, I pretty much felt... blank. It was kind of nice. There was a moment where I thought, "I'm not really angry or happy," even though during those matches I was actually playing unbelievably well. I just KNEW the right thing to do in--it seemed like--90% of the situations. After about four or five games of this, I started thinking, "wow I've got it I'm doing really good heck yeah" and then it promptly faded and I went back to air-dodging off the level like normal.
I guess I'm going to try and stop thinking about anything except being calm and empty. Before I even play, work myself into a state of as little emotion as possible, and focus on staying in that place.
Only two people to smash with on a regular basis.
Pros:
Those two players are DoH and Darkrain.
So I spent the evening practicing with Darkrain, and I've come to a few conclusions. The first is that I'm not very good with Sheik.
The second is that the moment I start wanting to really win, I start playing awfully. And unfortunately, my strategy of trying to convince myself that "I'm going to lose, I will make mistakes, it's inevitable" and using that to keep my nerves down, doesn't work. I still get way too upset over my errors and my mistakes.
I think I was in a much better place years ago when my focus was exclusively on maintaining the right attitude while I play. I had a string of matches tonight where I was completely in the zone, and except for the occasional chuckle or "wtf was that" when something weird happened, I pretty much felt... blank. It was kind of nice. There was a moment where I thought, "I'm not really angry or happy," even though during those matches I was actually playing unbelievably well. I just KNEW the right thing to do in--it seemed like--90% of the situations. After about four or five games of this, I started thinking, "wow I've got it I'm doing really good heck yeah" and then it promptly faded and I went back to air-dodging off the level like normal.
I guess I'm going to try and stop thinking about anything except being calm and empty. Before I even play, work myself into a state of as little emotion as possible, and focus on staying in that place.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, October 11, 2010
It's about time you started losing.
"I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -- Michael Jordan
I don't like making mistakes. Anybody who plays with me on a regular basis will tell you that. I miss a short hop or an L-cancel, I have to go into mental damage control mode.
I'm a perfectionist. I hate screwing up. I hate losing. I hate the thought that people watching me will think I'm anything but a great player. This applies in friendlies, money-matches, and tournament. I've mellowed out a lot over time, but this is still very much true of me, regardless of what I'm doing, regardless of whether I've even done it before.
Have you ever worked a dish-washing shift in a restaurant? I hadn't, until about a week ago, when they stuck me in front of a sink during lunch rush and said "go get 'em tiger." I panicked. I could spray shit with water, but that was about it. I didn't know where things went, or which detergents to use on which type of dishes. What I can just rinse off, and what has to go in the industrial torrential bacteria annihilator we call a dishwasher. And every time I got something wrong or fell behind or put something in the wrong place or someone corrected me, I got irritated. Over something I had NO REASON to expect myself to do well at. Ridiculous? Yeah, I'd say so.
You can tell where I'm going with this. Losing a friendly kind of sucks, but who cares? What matters is that you learn from it. The example I give to people is this: you and a friend play 100 matches. 98 of them are friendlies, and you lose all of them. You spend them trying new stuff, practicing new techniques, figuring out what works, what doesn't, and your friend just plays the same the entire time. The other two are tournament matches, and you 2-0 him. That's 1 in 50 wins, but you advance in the bracket. Which matches matter more? Which matches do people care about?
"Oh, but I beat him in friendlies." People say it all the time, friendlies don't matter. Or rather, they do matter, but only because of what they teach you. People remember the tournament results. They remember who took first.
Here's an interesting flip side; people get mad about other people camping in friendlies, even though it's a strategy that you should learn to deal with if you want to be a top player. Friendlies are the optimal environment for testing new strategies and counter-strategies, but people don't want to practice against camping. Why? It's boring. You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies, etc.
Yet the very reason that those people are pissed off about camping is because they are losing to it! "You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies! Let ME win instead!"
Here's the point: friendlies are for practicing and trying new things, not for keeping score. You try to win them, but not because winning the friendly matters. It's because honing a skill properly so that it becomes a winning technique matters. And if you have to lose a lot so that you can actually win when it counts, so be it.
I don't like making mistakes. Anybody who plays with me on a regular basis will tell you that. I miss a short hop or an L-cancel, I have to go into mental damage control mode.
I'm a perfectionist. I hate screwing up. I hate losing. I hate the thought that people watching me will think I'm anything but a great player. This applies in friendlies, money-matches, and tournament. I've mellowed out a lot over time, but this is still very much true of me, regardless of what I'm doing, regardless of whether I've even done it before.
Have you ever worked a dish-washing shift in a restaurant? I hadn't, until about a week ago, when they stuck me in front of a sink during lunch rush and said "go get 'em tiger." I panicked. I could spray shit with water, but that was about it. I didn't know where things went, or which detergents to use on which type of dishes. What I can just rinse off, and what has to go in the industrial torrential bacteria annihilator we call a dishwasher. And every time I got something wrong or fell behind or put something in the wrong place or someone corrected me, I got irritated. Over something I had NO REASON to expect myself to do well at. Ridiculous? Yeah, I'd say so.
You can tell where I'm going with this. Losing a friendly kind of sucks, but who cares? What matters is that you learn from it. The example I give to people is this: you and a friend play 100 matches. 98 of them are friendlies, and you lose all of them. You spend them trying new stuff, practicing new techniques, figuring out what works, what doesn't, and your friend just plays the same the entire time. The other two are tournament matches, and you 2-0 him. That's 1 in 50 wins, but you advance in the bracket. Which matches matter more? Which matches do people care about?
"Oh, but I beat him in friendlies." People say it all the time, friendlies don't matter. Or rather, they do matter, but only because of what they teach you. People remember the tournament results. They remember who took first.
Here's an interesting flip side; people get mad about other people camping in friendlies, even though it's a strategy that you should learn to deal with if you want to be a top player. Friendlies are the optimal environment for testing new strategies and counter-strategies, but people don't want to practice against camping. Why? It's boring. You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies, etc.
Yet the very reason that those people are pissed off about camping is because they are losing to it! "You shouldn't try so hard to win in friendlies! Let ME win instead!"
Here's the point: friendlies are for practicing and trying new things, not for keeping score. You try to win them, but not because winning the friendly matters. It's because honing a skill properly so that it becomes a winning technique matters. And if you have to lose a lot so that you can actually win when it counts, so be it.
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