As far as I see it, there are 3 areas of this game that must be practised to become good.
Firstly is your knowledge of the game physics and the game environment. To practise this you must simply play the game... even against lvl CPUs you are gaining experience in this area.
Bassically, this is how well you can 'feel' the game... this is learning the knockback of moves for all players, how high your short hop is going to take you... where your vunerable frames are, when to dodge, ect. Just play the game A LOT to learn this skill, your brain is constantly learning while you play the game, its constantly analysing the exact effects of every input into the controller.
The second area of the game that must be learnt is your technical skill and knowledge of the game, this you learn through reading about the game, going to practise mode and experimenting with different moves, saving your replays and analysing where the weaknesses in your game are. Playing against other good players is the best way to improve this skill, finding ways to counter their little tricks and stratergies, finding the best way to DI, learning combos (ok fine... pseodo combos...). To improve in this area I suggest attending EVERY tourny that you can, reading guides about your main(s) on their character specific board, watching videos of professionals playing. It is important to remember that you shouldn't just be building a technical skill for your main(s). You ARE going to eventually come across every charcter on the roster and its important that you know what to expect from other characters... their weaknesses and strengths, try to play against as many good differnt character mains as you can, and try to pick up every charcter, get a feel for them and what they can do... playing A them give you a much better perspective on how to play AGAINST them.
The third and final area of succeeding at this game is the most important... it is not just the best advice u can get for this game... its the best advice you can get for LIFE. This is a very difficult skill to learn and takes a huge amount of dedication.
You have to build the right mindset to play. When you lose how do you feel? bad. When your feeling bad, how do you play? bad. A huge amount of people, when they start losing, will become frustrated or some other negative emotion. This is very bad and untill you concur this, you can NEVER compete at the highest level of this or any game. You must learn to 'emotionally detach' from the game, don't feel what your characters is feeling. The one thought that should always be running through your mind when your playing is that you ARE going to win, that it is a certainty and that there is no force on earth that can prevent that outcome.
When you become frustrated, depressed, angry... or any negative emotion, it is clouding your judgement. You are letting your emotions take over your mind, and what is it that is inputing into the controller? (If you say "your hands"... just leave and don't return) So if your emotions are in control of your mind then they are in control of your playing, you will no longer be able to play cognitively. Your mind won't be available to analyse your opponant, calculate the next best move, react to any situation... Instead your emotions will cause you to play sloppily, they will cause you to play poorly.
I believe the key to succeding in this game is to master these three areas... Hope that helped.
