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Seth Killian's "Mental Toughness" at Tournaments

STORMS

STORMS

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You traveled countless miles. You've trained hard and got your game close to where you want it. You're thinking about your bad match-ups and your strategies. You're waiting to play your first game while you're getting thirsty and a bit hungry... do you win or lose and what was "behind" it? Ponder at Shoryuken.com has written an article that every tournament player should read and while it is based off of Street Fighter talk... there are many parts to note when you're "there" at a tournament... this could help you get that much closer.

Winning a tournament requires more than just strategy and execution. It requires being able to look past all the distractions. It's requires being able to grit your teeth and come back from what looks like an insurmountable lead. It's being able to consistently stay on top of your game, and face down the best players in the country. And that takes mental toughness. In analyzing what tournaments (rather than just "winning") require, this is almost invariably overlooked by scrubs- its not something that you can "see" on a video, and it's often the missing ingredient that keeps otherwise excellent players from having any real shot at winning where it counts. Maintaining your focus is essential. Here are a few of the most common pitfalls:

That "not so fresh" feeling:
Tournaments (if youre not planning on losing early, and retiring to the fabulous snack bar) are almost tailor-made to sap your strength. Youre in an arcade. Youre tense. Everyone else there is tense. The music is loud. The lights are annoying. People smell. And youre there for between 10-15 hours straight, usually eating highly crappy food (or none at all), subsisting on sugarwater.

Every hardcore player has, at some point, felt that deep sense of burn-out you get from playing a little (or a lot) too long. Its the Street Fighter equivalent of futilely reading the same sentence over and over again after studying too much. You slip into a minor coma, unable to do anything but the same stupid, ineffective thing you did two seconds before ("I know! Ill throw another fireball!" ... (eats vicious super as opponent reads him like a large-print book for the elderly)). This is actually a non-minor problem for a lot of intermediate players- when you miss a certain move (especially fireballs), you're seized by the urge to "prove" (to yourself? to anyone watching? god knows...) that you CAN do the move (as if anyone really doubted it), and you jump at the first opportunity to do it. Its like youve got some ridiculous "rep" that you have to "defend" (your rep as a player so good, hes actually able to do the fireball motion *on command*!). So you go for a FB, and get a standing fierce or whatever- you'd be AMAZED at how many otherwise smart, competent players will IMMEDIATELY try ANOTHER fb. Its as though theyve deviated from the mental script they had of how the match was supposed to look, and cant proceed until they get that part "right" (the part where they were supposed to throw a FB). I can't tell you how many free jump-in combos just looking for this has netted me over the years. If you thought about it for even half a second, you'd realize this was a dumb play, but that's exactly what you *don't* do when you're burned out.

This may sound stupid to the uninitiated, but over the course of a tournament, not having been forced to think about your early-round wins can... Continue reading!
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Skkra

Skkra

PSN: Skkra
This reminds me of long, loooong days at University Pinball, subsisting entirely on candy I'd win from the claw machine. 25 cents, play til you win!
 
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