Focusing Under Pressure and Autopiloting in Smash  3/16/22 – 3/22/22

This week I only attended one tournament, that tournament being Games Ahoy on Thursday. It was light on attendance which isn’t new but this week it was extra bad because there was an event in Denver that took most of our local talent. I, being poor, didn’t go to Denver and was one of the few PR members at the tournament. I double 3 stocked my round one which is rare for me. The guy wasn’t even bad, I just did stupid Palutena things to his DK round one and then kept up that momentum when he switched to Cloud. I then fought a Ken/Terry. I beat his Ken round 1 but lost to his Terry round 2. Game 3 I was significantly ahead but then SD’ed at 30%, losing the set. I was super upset. The guy turned out to be the former number 1 player in South Dakota with a win on Skittles in his past, so not a horrible loss but I should have had it.  I fought all the way back to him in grand finals, getting a reverse 3 stock in a game 3 on Ninjy on my way there and then lost to him again, 1-3. I played well until grand finals when I lost focus and motivation. I feel like my mentality introspection from last week helped a lot, especially in the game 3 reverse 3 stock against Ninjy, but I lost a lot of energy after that and was unable to perform in grands to my fullest. 

I teased last week that I’d talk about focus and since my loss in grand finals last week was partly because I lost focus, I think the world is telling me to cover it. I feel like I’m not horrible with focusing. I don’t feel like it’s the weakest aspect of my play, but it’s definitely something I can improve on. 

When it comes to focusing, I don’t seem great at it to an outside observer. When I play games at home, I almost always have a video playing on my second monitor. I’ve started to break this habit because I’ve noticed how it directly impacts my ability to focus and I’ve already seen a lot of improvement. I still do it now and then, but if there isn’t anything I particularly want to watch, I will just immerse myself in whatever game I’m playing, Smash or not. When it comes to focusing on Smash tournaments, I feel like I’m decent at it. I’ve never noticed it as a huge hindrance to my play except for a few times, this last week obviously being one of those times. I do notice I process the noises and people around me a lot when I play but I usually don’t feel like it distracts me too badly. Back in Smash 4, I tried to play with headphones on for a few months. I’d listen to music while I played but it never felt like it helped me. I’ve never tried headphones with audio from the game itself and I’ve assumed that would still not really help, but that might be something I look into. 

So, I don’t see any glaring issues with my own focus so I did some research on the topic. I searched “how to focus under pressure” and found a TED talk video and wow, does it just perfectly address the issues I had this last week. 

As the video says, when things matter the most, you are more likely to choke, and that’s what happened in my winners set against Mr. South Dakota. I just had to perform normally and do something I was doing the whole match and have done many times, but I fumbled a simple off-stage scenario and SD’ed. Pressure “can make us over-analyze the task at hand.” Recovering is something I’ve done thousands of times, but in a high-pressure set where I’m trying to outplay an opponent who is very close to me in skill level, I overthought the scenario and died for it. Many things in Smash are like a reflex for me. I’ve been playing for over 10 years and competitively for 7, so things like RAR Bair’s and other inputs are easy for me. They should be. I’ve been doing them for years. You shouldn’t need to put in a lot of effort to execute things like that because your mind should be on different things during a match. Smash feels like a language to me in a way. I can do many things without thinking about them and I’m instead thinking about is how to use those inputs to beat my opponent. If I come across something I can’t input naturally, this is where labbing comes into play for me. 

I’ve been practicing Steve combos because they are extremely hard to execute. I’m telling you, these NIL’s are insanely difficult. It’s is coming along though and I’m able to do some of them while playing people now. Now I need to be able to do them in tournaments under pressure. This will mean continued practice in friendlies and then eventually having the confidence to do them in bracket. If you find something hard to do in Smash, practice it until it feels natural and becomes subconscious. If I had known 10 years ago that RAR bair’s would be as easy as they are for me to input now, I’d be shocked. 

The video says that some people are more susceptible to choking than others. I can’t give you any really amazing advice on this but I’ll just say, if you are afraid of letting anyone down, don’t be. You’re playing for yourself. If you’re afraid of making yourself look foolish, don’t be. We all make mistakes. These thoughts usually aren’t true and if anyone does try to attack you for your mistakes in-game, they’re a jerk and they definitely also think that everyone else is judging them as well, so let them wallow in their self-conscious sadness. Good competitors/friends will build you up, not break you down. These self-conscious thoughts can be a motivator for you to perform well but they can also make you feel horrible when you don’t and I personally don’t think it’s a healthy mindset to have. 

They suggest practicing under pressure to get used to it in the video and I agree. Go to more tournaments! Go as often as you can, or as often as you feel comfortable. The more you do it, the better you will handle the nerves. I always get at least a little nervous in tournament sets, but because I’ve been playing for 7 years it has become very manageable. Those nerves may always be there, and that’s fine, you just need to conquer them. Something I still need to get used to is playing on Stream. I don’t play on stream often and especially when it’s on a stage, I get super nervous. ESF in Denver has a huge stage that stream matches are played on. I’ve been up there multiple times and it’s always very nerve-racking, especially when you hear people cheering for and against you. I think that’s why stream setups always have headphones because it helps take away some of that pressure. I may try to use those next time I’m up there. 

The last bit I’d like to cover from this video is the advice on a “pre-performance routine”. I have an idea to use deep breaths, in from the nose and out through the mouth, to help condition myself into a more relaxed state where I can more easily focus. I think I’ll practice it daily outside of tournaments to help me reinforce the action with the desired goal. I know this is part of meditation and I have done it before, and I think making it something I do more routinely will help. There is something really powerful about this technique and I’ve noticed it helps me in other aspects of my life so why not continue it?

There’s actually a video on this breathing technique. Check it out if you’re not clear on how to do it. 

There’s another really interesting video I came across. It’s by the King of New York himself, Dabuz. It’s all about autopiloting. It really changed my view on the subject.

I have a really embarrassing story about myself and auto-piloting. Back in ol’ Buffalo NY I was playing smash at our spot, GameOn and I was on a couch, in front of a TV. People would occasionally walk in front of the tv if they were getting up from the couch or going to the other couch set up, especially when we were all just playing friendlies and chilling. As someone walked by while I was playing, my buddy Imoderz says “Lamar, you couldn’t see the screen and you were playing exactly the same.” To this day, that shit makes me die laughing because it’s so true. I was an autopilot machine. I feel like that’s changed recently, but after this video, I wonder if it has much. I for sure think more now when I play, but it might be part of my autopiloting as Dabuz described. He said he’ll make adjustments mid-match based on how the opponent is playing and it seems like he does this subconsciously. I definitely do put a decent amount of effort into looking at my opponent’s playstyle, but maybe that is also starting to become more subconscious. At least my autopilot will have to look at the screen now to function at full strength. 

I do think there is a lot of value in this approach. As I mentioned earlier, you should practice things to become subconscious to free up your mind for other things like downloading your opponent, and maybe as you get better at that, it too will become part of your subconscious. I can also see this being exclusive to Dabuz’s playstyle. It’s no secret that Dabuz is one of the more slow-paced players at the top level and that might be because he has this analytical autopilot that is extremely effective at beating players of a certain level. On Tweek Talks, they often mention how a win on Dabuz means you’ve made it, and I now think I know why. Dabuz is the king of autopilot. He plays extremely optimally to the point where you need to bring something extremely new and good to the table against him every time you play him or, you need to ascend your own autopilot to above his level which I feel like a few players have done, but never with the consistency of Dabuz’s own autopilot. This would also explain his consistency. Dabuz rarely gets upset by a lower seed in bracket and that might have to do with how solid his autopilot is. 

It’s food for thought, but a good autopilot is definitely a good tool that will help you focus more if you use it right. Autopilot also really helps once you reach a certain level above other players. If you can autopilot a set, do it. There’s no shame. If they can’t beat it, that’s a good thing, and take the easy win without tiring yourself out. Save that energy for someone you need it for. Here’s another good video by Esam showing off his autopilot and explaining how top players use autopilot. 

So, I’m going to start my focusing routine this week. I hope it works and I hope you can also find a good way to help yourself focus. Let me know if you have any good tips or ways to focus by tweeting at me @ICYoyoDaBlack or commenting on this piece. I hope this can help you, and I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.