Consistency in Smash Ultimate 4/6/22 – 4/12/22

I’m so upset. I’m frustrated with myself. I performed to a standard I’m not happy with. At GamesAhoy I didn’t lose to anyone new, but my losses aren’t what I was upset about. I’m upset with how I played. Yesterday was CSU and I did lose to people I’m not super happy about, but again, I was much more upset with how I was playing. This week was really upsetting after 3 weeks where I felt some real genuine improvement. I was super frustrated right after CSU but I took a walk and calmed down enough to go back in and play some friendlies. I want to work through this and I want to keep improving, and that brought me to this week’s topic. Consistency. 

The first thing I want to do is define how I view consistency. Consistency is your median performance level. There are two aspects of consistency that I value. I’ll call the one I value most “internal consistency”. This is influenced by how you play. Even if you feel like you’re playing worse than normal, that performance is influencing your median skill level. People can have bad days and good days, but wherever your median performance lands, that is your internal consistency. You should have a rough idea of your level based on how you’re feeling about your play. You must be honest with yourself and try to avoid self-deprecation or egotistical notions to truly have an idea of where you are. It helps to base your internal consistency on the other form of consistency I value, we’ll call it “external consistency”. This is your raw data. Placements, head-to-head history, and PR rankings. This is all data that should be used when trying to make a power ranking (PR). Raw data can help us understand internal consistency, but it’s truly only a reflection of internal consistency and shouldn’t be valued as much. If you feel like you’re above or below someone in level and a PR shows otherwise, that’s your internal consistency not being in alignment with external consistency and that’s fine. You could theoretically go 0-2 at a tournament and be the third strongest player there if you lose to first and second. Raw data isn’t always a great representation of what’s really going on, but it’s the only thing we can reliably base our rankings around. 

It’s not ideal to look at specific results to judge your consistency when what you want is true improvement. You shouldn’t be focused on results. While results can indicate your level of play, it’s a slippery slope to an unhealthy mentality. I see many people with a “protagonist mentality”. They might not say it, but they think they should always beat certain people and never lose to others. They think that other players are at a static level and incapable of improving themselves. Almost everyone is looking to improve, and every week is another chance for someone to out-perform their last performance. If you lose to someone you never have lost to before, they simply could be getting better themselves, but a lot of people will see it as a sign of their own decline. That can be the case, but I don’t think that’s a healthy thing to assume. Instead, look at your internal consistency and determine if you were playing worse or if they simply were playing better. I think that’s why I was so upset after GamesAhoy last Thursday. I lost to people I’ve lost to before, but I felt like I wasn’t playing at the level I was at a week earlier. 

So what makes me feel like I was playing worse than I was a week ago? Well first, my drive and focus were much higher. I also forgot elements of my gameplay this week. I was very comfortable with my game plan with Palutena before this week, but my confidence seems to have been shaken for some reason. I think I was forgetting key parts of my play that along with my lack of focus or drive led to me playing very poorly. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this feeling of forgetfulness. In fact, I feel like it’s consistent in my career at Smash and in other parts of my life, but it sucks after I feel I made some great breakthroughs. It seems so silly, but I always forget key aspects of my gameplay over and over and I haven’t found the reason why this happens, but it might have something to do with how busy I’ve been recently and my susceptibility to becoming very overwhelmed.

Recently I’ve started a new job and have been super busy with writing. I’m also trying to learn video editing and photoshop. I’m balancing work things with a social life as well and just typing about all this is making me overwhelmed. While I don’t want to stop doing any of the things I’m working on, I might need to let a few things fall to the side, but I really don’t want smash to be one of them. I want to figure out how I can improve my consistency under these circumstances. 

Something I’ve been pondering is how I respond to repetition with smash. I know burnout is a real possibility. 2 weeks ago when I played with Milo for four hours and then went to play with some other friends I felt smashed out. After that though, I didn’t play much smash at all. There weren’t any tournaments I could attend last week, so I barely played. The little I did play, I felt good, but I can’t help but wonder if that break where I didn’t play much made it hard for me to remember and apply all that I had been learning for the last few weeks. I don’t know if that’s really the cause, and I have examples of breaks being good and bad for my performance, so I have no clue what to believe. 

I tried to find some information to help me with these problems, but nothing tackled the topic in a way I felt helped me. I’ve seen advice for this type of problem before, but I can’t find a nice video or article on the topic that fully explains the way to combat these problems, so here are the few things I’m theory crafting or have heard as advice in the past.

1. Have a list of things to go over before every tournament. This can just be a small list to remind yourself of basic things you need to do every match. Dabuz is the best example of this because he use to make his tag a specific word relating to what he wants to remind himself of. 
2. Re-read some of my later entries in the improvement blog. I’ve tackled Mentality and Focus before and I feel like both helped me tremendously, so I’ll revisit that specific advice to refresh my knowledge. 
3. Find out what my limits are with smash. If I need to practice more, I will. Anther’s Ladder is an amazing website that acts as a matchmaking service for Smash. Here’s the link  https://www.smashladder.com/.They have a ranking system and the players on there are really good. If I need to avoid burnout, I’ll take a break. It might help to just step away from tourneys for a week to help re-center my mind and drive. 
4. Take care of myself. I’ve been running every morning trying to be healthier. My food intake isn’t as good as it use to be, but I should probably try to keep that up as well. I also need to continue to avoid caffeine. I was nearly half a year with no caffeine but I broke recently. I can’t help but wonder if that hurt my performance even though it was one fountain Coke. I have bad anxiety, and I know caffeine affects anxiety. I should stay away from it because even if it didn’t directly impact my play, it made me feel shitty. 

Those are the 4 things I’ll try, and hopefully, I’ll see some improvement. In the case of #3, I will try to practice more, but if I see signs of burnout, I might take a break until ESF two Fridays from now. There is no ESF this week because of Genesis! Shout-out to all of my friends going. I hope you all kick some ass! Thanks for reading!