Hello! I’m Bernard or ICYoyo. This is my weekly blog focused on improving at Smash Ultimate. Every week I cover a new aspect of the game and explore it in an effort to improve in that area and help others improve at it too. You can view the archive here. You can follow me on Twitter to get updated on new posts and other content @BernardICYoyo.
This week I attended one tournament, the biggest local in Colorado, ESF. I had my worst performance in a while and ended up going 1-2. I’m not feeling confident in Smash right now and I’m not playing nearly as much as I use to. I’m coming to terms that I need to play more and that inspired me to tackle this week’s topic, practice.
Practice can refer to many things regarding Smash. When I hear practice, I think about labbing and friendlies. “Labbing” refers to when you go into training mode and practice combos, movement, or tech, and “friendlies” are the games you play with others outside of a tournament bracket that have no stakes.
I’ve had a weird relationship with labbing. I‘m not good at it because of my attention span. I’ve heard many other people say this as well. Labbing takes a decent amount of focus, and many of us phone-wielding zoomers and millennials find it hard to do. That doesn’t mean I haven’t labbed anything. A lot of tech and combos I do are things I have entered training mode to practice. I rarely go into training mode without a specific thing in mind to practice, but other people will go into training mode trying to discover new options for their character. I play Palutena, a character that is very simple and popular, so there isn’t much new to discover with her if anything at all, but that doesn’t mean we Palutena mains shouldn’t try. Again, my character might be tapped out, but nobody will know for sure unless they keep trying to discover stuff. If you play a more obscure character or a really complicated character, you could very well discover something that will significantly change your character’s meta. That however takes a lot of time and effort that won’t always pay off in tournament play. Many top players aren’t the ones in the lab discovering new tech for their character, they’re just the ones who implement the tech found by others the best. That’s the nice thing about Smash Ultimate. There are people who will do the work of discovering tech for you and they’ll share it either on a character discord or in a youtube video and then you can use it for yourself.
I love friendlies. I can play smash forever because I love the game, and therefore, a lot of my practice is just playing the game. Playing friendlies refreshes your knowledge of the game every time you play. I must warn you that just playing the game constantly can burn you out or make you complacent. I know back when I played Smash 4, I’d play constantly and never really comprehend the game as I played. One of the funniest moments I’ve ever experienced in Smash was when I was playing with a bunch of friends, and someone walked in front of the TV while it was my turn in the rotation. My friend Zander saw this and said “You couldn’t see the screen but you kept playing exactly the same.” This had us all dying laughing and it’s a great example of how much of an autopilot player I was. I think this mindset is easy to fall into. It’s fine if you just like playing Smash, but if you want to improve, you must comprehend the matches you play so you can determine where and what you can change.
There are other ways of practicing that aren’t labbing or playing friendlies. Watching the game can help you improve too. If you don’t watch majors or even locals, you’re depriving yourself of a ton of knowledge. Watch top players of your character to get new ideas. Watch videos of people fighting against characters you struggle against. Sitting down and watching a tournament helps you learn aspects of matchups or options characters have that you might not have known about otherwise, and then you’ll be ready for them if you ever come across them in tournament.
You can also theory craft. This is something I made a ton of use of during my time playing in Colorado before the pandemic. I would go to work the day after a tournament and think about what I can do differently against the people I lost to. For the longest time, that’s how I approached improvement and I saw results from it.
I want to talk about using online to practice. Online is very different from playing in person and people disregard it as a legitimate way to play the game a lot. I kinda hate when people disregard online results. It’s undeniably different from offline, sure, but Spargo was number 1 online during the pandemic and then immediately established himself as a top 3 player once offline came back. Online can help you learn matchups and certain concepts, but it can also promote unhealthy habits. Many interactions will seem safe online that aren’t safe offline. Online also discourages reactive play because it’s hard to react online with the native lag. It took a lot to break that habit myself because of how much online I used to play. Ironically, being busy recently has helped because I now have no time to play online. Silver lining I guess.
Lastly, I want to talk about frequency of practice. We hear a lot about burnout, but we also hear how much the pros need to practice. To learn how much you need to practice, you need to decide what you want from smash and carefully monitor how you react to different amounts of practice. I think I’ve been in a decline because I haven’t been playing that frequently, but I also know how complacent I can get if I play a lot. I think I’ll need to play more than I have recently, but if I do truly want to reach even higher levels, I’ll need to find a way to play the game more without becoming complacent.
I’ve known local players who have made PR level without owning the game, so it’s not necessary to own the game to be a local threat. You don’t even need to own the game to be a worldwide threat. Wadi was ranked 20th in the world in the PGRUv2 and didn’t own the game. He only got a switch and Ultimate when the pandemic hit and thank goodness because he is an amazing streamer/youtuber.
I’ve seen what it takes to become a top-level threat in Smash as a friend of mine went from losing to me at their first tournament to winning Canada cup, an A-tier Major in a year and a half in Smash 4. He also got wins on 3 of the 4 Smash 4 Evo champions. He won the “fastest improved” award at Smash Con 2018 and could easily be considered the fastest improved Smash player of all time. He accomplished so much, but it wasn’t easy. He played the game non-stop. It helped because our scene had 3 days of the week where we would all meet up and play smash just for friendlies, but even after that, he would be in training mode practicing for hours. He treated the game as a job, and it paid off for sure.
In conclusion, practicing needs to be very personalized based on how you respond to different forms of practice as a player and your goals for Smash. If you can “Wadi” your way to the PGRU, more power to you, but don’t expect to do that. Many top players put multiple hours of the day into practicing the game and if you simply can’t commit to that, that’s no big deal, just have realistic expectations set for yourself if you can’t commit that much time.
Next week should be pretty much the same. I’m still busy as all hell, but I’m going to try to fit in some more practice. I want to learn the new GIMR tech, slingshot, so I’ll probably hit the lab for that. I hope to announce some exciting stuff soon regarding my career in eSports, but we’ll see what the future holds. Thanks for reading!
Bernard Lamar Rice 