I am sure, at one point in time, you were or still are unhappy about your skill level at smash. This good be from having bad habits, to input flubs, or just being constantly discouraged when you pick up the game. Fortunately, I’ve made this guide to help you get back into smash and refine your game. With the steps below, you will be put on the right track to be where you want to be in Smash.
Realization
The first step to improvement is realization. You can’t fix something you don’t know. Most of us have realized our weakness, but for those who haven’t, ask yourself a few questions. Why am I losing? Why does my opponent always make it back on stage? How can I get more damage on my opponent? Why do I always mess up this input? Playing other people you will generally get vague critique like “you roll a lot” or “you dropped so many edgeguards”. This feedback may be vague but they already helped you improve by identifying a weakness, and it’s your job to constantly question yourself about this and why it happens. For example, he says I roll a lot but why do I roll, when do I roll, how do I roll, etc. Analyzing your replays is a great way to realize bad habits and the variables that cause that habit to occur.
Accepting your weakness
You can’t improve when in denial. If you know you have a weakness, but think “It’s ok”, “I don’t really need to work on it”, “It’ll fix itself” is a bad mentality to have. Acceptance is dependent on your state of mind. If you are just in a slump in smash, you need to accept the fact that your head is not in the game, and takes steps towards developing your mind to get back into the game. This can simply be just going on a hiatus, or just playing in a more comfortable environment. If you’re in-game wavedash success percentage is 70, you need to accept that it’s something you need to work on. If you simply can’t translate what’s in your head to the game you need to sit down and realize that it’s a weakness you need to overcome. Overall, acceptance is all about keeping your mentality in check and knowing your triggers. If you’re mentally stable you can begin refining your game.
Refinement
Now that you know you have a weakness, and accepted it’s something you need to improve and willing to improve on you need to refine your gameplay. Refinement is also all about your mentality. You need to care to improve in order to take steps to improve. In order to refine something, you need to practice it. In order to maximize your growth, you need to practice effectively. Let’s say your whole game is out of shape. You miss edgeguards, flub inputs constantly, and just go super auto-pilot.
Effectively practicing means:
Your environment sets off the triggers which are your habits in playing the game. You need to realize that you can’t stop auto piloting if that is all you do in tournaments or online. You must put yourself in an environment free of pressure and urgency: where you feel you have time to think and decide. From my experience, it’s all about going into training mode. In training mode, you can really improve twice as fast because not only are practicing stuff, but you are in an environment when you don’t need to think super fast and pressure yourself. Just going into a place where you can focus is best to start improving.
2. One step at a time
When practicing, you need to be sure you are conscious of every input you make. You don’t go to training mode to copy how you play online or in tournament. You go to training mode to change how you play online or in tournament. This means approaching everything you need to work on one by one. If I need to work on dash dancing, I am going to break it down. Practice Full length dashes in one direction until that becomes second nature. Practicing it in the other direction until that becomes second nature. Then combining the two until I can build competence in the technique. Building competence is not about developing second nature doing the technique but developing second nature in what you need to do in order to perform the technique. If you are trying to learn how to do a b-reverse down b, but have trouble doing the down B, you need to work on that first.
3. Day and Night
I think the most important thing to stress about practicing is not it doesn’t happen in a day. You need to work on it consistently for it to become second nature. It’s easy to get discouraged when you have been practicing a technique for 3 days and still can’t get it down, but you need to understand that if you practice consistently and really care about improving you will get better.
Thanks for reading guys. Just wanted to write this because it’s something I am also working on so sharing my knowledge and experience is always good. Please comment anything that you think I should or expand upon!
Realization
The first step to improvement is realization. You can’t fix something you don’t know. Most of us have realized our weakness, but for those who haven’t, ask yourself a few questions. Why am I losing? Why does my opponent always make it back on stage? How can I get more damage on my opponent? Why do I always mess up this input? Playing other people you will generally get vague critique like “you roll a lot” or “you dropped so many edgeguards”. This feedback may be vague but they already helped you improve by identifying a weakness, and it’s your job to constantly question yourself about this and why it happens. For example, he says I roll a lot but why do I roll, when do I roll, how do I roll, etc. Analyzing your replays is a great way to realize bad habits and the variables that cause that habit to occur.
Accepting your weakness
You can’t improve when in denial. If you know you have a weakness, but think “It’s ok”, “I don’t really need to work on it”, “It’ll fix itself” is a bad mentality to have. Acceptance is dependent on your state of mind. If you are just in a slump in smash, you need to accept the fact that your head is not in the game, and takes steps towards developing your mind to get back into the game. This can simply be just going on a hiatus, or just playing in a more comfortable environment. If you’re in-game wavedash success percentage is 70, you need to accept that it’s something you need to work on. If you simply can’t translate what’s in your head to the game you need to sit down and realize that it’s a weakness you need to overcome. Overall, acceptance is all about keeping your mentality in check and knowing your triggers. If you’re mentally stable you can begin refining your game.
Refinement
Now that you know you have a weakness, and accepted it’s something you need to improve and willing to improve on you need to refine your gameplay. Refinement is also all about your mentality. You need to care to improve in order to take steps to improve. In order to refine something, you need to practice it. In order to maximize your growth, you need to practice effectively. Let’s say your whole game is out of shape. You miss edgeguards, flub inputs constantly, and just go super auto-pilot.
Effectively practicing means:
- Changing your environment.
Your environment sets off the triggers which are your habits in playing the game. You need to realize that you can’t stop auto piloting if that is all you do in tournaments or online. You must put yourself in an environment free of pressure and urgency: where you feel you have time to think and decide. From my experience, it’s all about going into training mode. In training mode, you can really improve twice as fast because not only are practicing stuff, but you are in an environment when you don’t need to think super fast and pressure yourself. Just going into a place where you can focus is best to start improving.
2. One step at a time
When practicing, you need to be sure you are conscious of every input you make. You don’t go to training mode to copy how you play online or in tournament. You go to training mode to change how you play online or in tournament. This means approaching everything you need to work on one by one. If I need to work on dash dancing, I am going to break it down. Practice Full length dashes in one direction until that becomes second nature. Practicing it in the other direction until that becomes second nature. Then combining the two until I can build competence in the technique. Building competence is not about developing second nature doing the technique but developing second nature in what you need to do in order to perform the technique. If you are trying to learn how to do a b-reverse down b, but have trouble doing the down B, you need to work on that first.
3. Day and Night
I think the most important thing to stress about practicing is not it doesn’t happen in a day. You need to work on it consistently for it to become second nature. It’s easy to get discouraged when you have been practicing a technique for 3 days and still can’t get it down, but you need to understand that if you practice consistently and really care about improving you will get better.
Thanks for reading guys. Just wanted to write this because it’s something I am also working on so sharing my knowledge and experience is always good. Please comment anything that you think I should or expand upon!
- Applicable Games
- Smash 64, Melee, Brawl, Project M, Smash 3DS, Smash Wii U
