Individual Goals
Lots of stuff has happened since the last time I've posted.
Individual Goals
1. New Mindset
I've been practicing a ton. I've been playing pretty much nonstop, from when I wake up until I go to bed, with breaks here and there. I've been working on my mindset, playing matches and trying to stay completely focused, with no emotions. I don't want to be angry when I mess up, I don't want to be frustrated if i get shieldgrabbed, and I don't want to be happy when I get a kill. I want all of my energy and emotions to go into the match. And I've always said I wanted to have that ability, where nothing can shake me, but I've never put time into working on it. I've always just wanted it to naturally develop...
Nope. Not gonna happen. I put so much time into the game, and I have so much pride, whenever I mess up I always have this near irresistable urge to let people know. I've been working on it though. Like I said, I want to get to the point where I'm emotionally void, and purely focused. I've made a lot of progression too.
My main way of developing this mindset is by practicing not saying a word, and trying to suppress all emotions during select matches. For example, when I sit down and play I'll say, for the next 3 hours I will not say anything and whatever I feel when I play, frustration, anger, excitement, I will suppress it, and maintain focus.
I have so much pride and I've put so much time into the game, I feel like I have to let people know when I mess up. So before I started this mental training if that's what you want to call it, I would say things like this:
"That only hit because I didn't dash."
"Wow, shield poke. Cool."
"Get off the platform Marth, wow."
"I can't do anything right now, I'm playing horrible."
During my progress with my mental training, I was really trying not to say anything, but it was hard at first...It still is. I've been making progress because sometimes I don't say anything at all, but sometimes I lose focus. However, when I lose focus and slip up, the things I'm saying aren't nearly as bad. Now I just sigh sometimes, or I'll be like, "Ugh." Or I'll shake my head in disappointment.
I don't even want to do any of that, so I have to continue this practice and don't even let myself say anything.
That's the first major thing that's been happening since I last posted, is me working on my mentality. Now keep in mind, I'm not silent during every single match. If I've played for like 10 hours one day and I'm just playing Falcon and messing around, I'll laugh and say good job to people and stuff. The point is, I want to be able to access this mode whenever I want to.
2. Pushing Marth to His Limits
Ok, so...My marth is pretty fast compared to most. It's pretty precise, I can nail crazy edgeguards, do sick combos, etc. But, I can do all of that stuff better. I can move faster, be more precise and deadly. I'm going to be working on making my Marth as technically perfect as I can. Not overly flashy, but just being able to get anywhere as fast as possible, and being able to execute whatever I need, consistently, and better than what I can do now. So, the second part of my training so far has and is going to be pushing my Marth, as a standalone character, to it's limits. This isn't something I have to practice in isolation either. What I mean by that is, I can be practicing my new mindset and this at the same time, which is good.
Also, in terms of Marth as an individual character, I'm also going to be relearning what I already know a bit deeper. I do a lot of things out of instinct, like edgeguarding and recovering. There's not really anything wrong with that as long as you make it work. Lots of top smashers play like that, PC Chris being the one that comes to my mind first. (When he was in his prime.) But, I want to break everything down into options and cover everything they can possibly do. It can't hurt.
3. Matchup Mastery
This is something I've been putting off for a while. I'm going to go through every matchup, literally every ****ing matchup, and figure out everything. Top tiers, mid tiers, low tiers. I don't want to spend 200 hours practicing vs top tiers only to lose to a Young Link player. I've developed a new way of looking at matchups that I think will really help me master them, and I'm going to be looking at and practicing these matchups based on this new method I have. I don't want to post it just yet, because although I'm confident it will work, I don't want to be giving out false information yet.
The point is, there will never be any surprises. Every situation, with every character, I will know how to come out on top.
It's funny, when I think of this 2 things come to mind. The first was at Rom2 when I lost to Pine, a Doctor Mario player in pools. He beat me pretty solidly. I barely practiced the matchup at all since then, and a few months later I met him in pools at Mass Madness.
He beat me the first match, but the first match I wasn't really trying as hard as possible to win. I mean I was, but I didn't expect to win, since I knew I didn't know that much about the matchup. So, I studied him the first match as much as possible. I studied not only his habits, but what Doctor Mario could do...Not the ins and outs of the character, that's impossible in one match. Just the most effective characters specific things he was doing to me.
In between matches, I took a few seconds pretending to pick a counterpick. I already had my counterpick ready when I lost the first match though, what I was really trying to do was think of ways for Marth to beat what I had noticed in the first match. I thought of some ways, and I went into the second match thinking, "Now it's just a matter of execution."
And, the first few stocks I was trying to execute what I had thought of, but I kept messing up the timing and accuracy, since I'm not used to Doc. It was 2 stocks to 1, both at 0 percent. He had 2 stocks. Finally, I got it down and I made a comeback. It was a great feeling and Pine is a great player.
Although I'm happy I won that set, I think to myself...If I had just known more about the character and practiced just those few small things I had learned during the 1st match, I would have won both matches easily.
After thinking that, I can't help but to think, if I knew his character and the matchup as deeply as possible, it would have been massive ****. I would have been prepared for everything, and I could have spent more energy focusing on other things like reading even more of his habits.
The next thing I think of is when I suffered a crushing defeat in my own region to a Link player named Minh, who is very good and who I respect a lot. (I also taught him a lot.) He beat my Fox in 2 sets on FD with Link.
I was playing absolutely horribly technically, so naturally I was upset. But also, I didn't know the Link matchup as well as I should have. His projectiles were doing very good against me and he was locking me down with jabs. So, although I was playing bad, I could have knew more and beat his strategies better.
Ok, I think I've talked about this enough. You get the point.
Regional Goals
It's about time I start placing good at OOS tournaments. After all, there are phenomenal players on the East Coast that put in just as much work into this game as I do, maybe even more, and they're already better than me.
So, I'm setting some "East Coast Specific" goals that will motivate me when I go OOS. The main goal is to become the best on the East Coast, obviously. That's not going to happen overnight though and I don't expect it to. Might as well set some stepping stones along the way.
I've looked at every region on the East Coast and every one of their players. I have followed their tournament placings, and now I'm going to be watching their videos. I want to see exactly what I'm up against for a few reasons.
First, I can categorize the players into skill groups, and measure where I am. When looking at a region, I can measure like this for example:
" I'm better than these 5 players, but with these 3 it can go either way, and these 2 will beat me for sure. "
Then I'll watch some videos and see how they play, their strats, how they adapt, etc. I'll practice as much as possible to be able stop everything that they do, (I'll explain how I'm going to do that later
) and then I'll feel comfortable vs those players. Then when I meet them in tournament, I'll be able to beat them and I'll know it wasn't a fluke. Boom, I just leveled up as a player. It's a good way to know where I am as a player and what to do next to improve. It's also just generally good to keep tabs on your opponents.
And again, you may be wondering how I'm going to be practicing all this, but just be patient...I'll explain soon.
Everything I've written above are goals personal to me. The next post is about something very serious to me, and something that may be the most important thing in Smash to me since my Smash career.
