about the training mode thing, At least for me I always am able to do tricky things in training mode long before i can do them in matches…but thats all mental, Once you can do it in training mode you can technically do it, Now you just have to try it in matches frequently to develop the confidence to do it with out thinking about it.
I’ve played competitively since about 1999 or 2000. I don’t see how this is even a debate, I naturally have poor execution and reaction time. Explain to me exactly how my reaction time is supposed to get better? 
Stop smoking weed.
I have cus I’m looking for a job right now, but this has been my weakness way before I started.
We spend our lives being who we have become over the years.
Far from being the true character that lies beneath each and everyone of us, we are overlaid with the experiences we have had.
From the very earliest days where we have our parents, wishing us well each and every day, in their own way, they share with us and embody in us all the ways they have become.
It’s not their fault, it’s just the way they are, doing their best and infusing us with who they are. Good and bad. In fact there’s evidence to show that what they share with you, is what their parents sherd with them and for generations before. And you’re the next in the cycle, maybe.
Then you go to school and your teachers lay a few limiting beliefs on you (“You’ll never be any good at math Julia”) and if you hear it enough, like the drip-drip of water torture, you start to believe it and, hey-presto, it happens more!
And finally in the workplace; a partner; so-called friends etc. all start to tell you that you can’t and you believe it. Because your behaviors stack up on each other with what you hear, you really do start to walk your talk. The way you’ve heard it.
And Henry’s words ring true. If you believe you can’t - you’re right! Well done! You get stuck in your rut of low expectation of yourself and hey, you’re right, you can’t! Sometimes even, it’s great to wallow in the ‘I can’t’ syndrome - it’s easier than sticking your head up and taking a bit of a risk (or so you were told!).
So, what if you looked for proof and started to challenge it - most often ‘proof’ is hard to find, if it was ever there at all. What if you asked yourself ‘What might it be like if I could?’, instead of living a lie of ‘I can’t’ any more.
Don’t get me wrong, you can be assured that the drip-feed of limiting your beliefs, laid on you mainly by others and yourself, is a tough one to crack. You get used to hearing it and to believing it. And all those times sink in a little deeper under your skin, until whatever patterns you’ve been told, you really do believe and find hard to challenge.
Believe you CAN, because you can, whatever anyone else said to you. After all, who said they were right anyhow? And moving forward is so rewarding. Like an opening door, once you start, you will find many more opportunities you’ve hidden from, maybe unwittingly, start to open up for you. ‘I can’t’ suddenly sprays out ‘I can’ like you could never, ever have expected.
Remember old Henry’s adage, whatever you believe of yourself will be true, so let go of the bad beliefs and who knows how far you might get. You might surprise everyone, including yourself.
I am a firm believer that execution is the most important skill in fighting games. If you have good execution, you need fewer opportunities to be deadly.
With that said, some people are better than others. I’m not very good at execution, but I can play competently because I was determined to get to the point I’m at. If you want to integrate what you’ve learned in training mode into real matches, I have a few suggestions. Play against the computer a couple times as soon as you feel confident in the move/combo in training mode and try to hit the computer with it. When you are playing people, ignore the “play to win” mentality for a bit and play to land that move/combo against your opponent. Both of those strategies have helped me tremendously with making difficult combos real threats in matches.
Something else you should consider if execution is a big stumbling block is picking a different character. I know to some this might sound extreme, but execution shouldn’t be something you are sweating over in real matches. In my opinion, the less things you are worried about, the more fun the game is, so don’t play a character with difficult execution if you can’t do anything with them.
You need some determination sometimes for learning new combos. It literally took me months to learn Akuma’s jab reset kkz, but now at any given moment I can pull it off. I got there by spending hours and hours drilling it, breaking it into parts, and putting them together. It really sucks getting there, but I’m happy I’m able to do it now.
One last thing I’ll mention when practicing execution is understanding why you aren’t able to do things. Just drilling failed attempts over and over doesn’t necessarily improve your skill and might be instilling bad habits. Make adjustments between each attempt or you might never get it.
…I don’t know how much I can help, but I do have some other advice to add to what everyone else said.
-Play and learn the entire cast. Yeah, you may have one or two mains that you concentrate on, but playing with the other characters gives you an insight that playing against the characters don’t. Also, since they will often have different playstyles then your main(s), you can learn how to adapt that knowledge to your characters if you choose to. At the very least, it breeds new life to the game if you’re sick of training mode.
-Understand the uses of your character’s attacks. I’m a firm believer that each attack has at least two potential uses(like Ryu’s fireball being able to force a reaction from the opponent AND a long range poke, or shorts being a tool for tick throwing AND a hit confirming tool), so try to figure them out and exploit them in various ways.
-Don’t get intimidated when fighting comp or even the CPU. If you’re scared about who a certain person is or what kind of strats they COULD do on you, you will hesitate and your execution will go away. Have confidence in your training, and try to learn something from each win or loss.
I guess most of my advice is for intermediate players, but it should still help you out somewhat…
Only way to get better is to play someone better than you.
- play everyday
- play against experienced players
- practice
- understand the game
if u cant execute and time your moves then you have to practice
Exactly. I’m not sure why you’re even arguing with Airthrow. He’s been playing for a while, and he’s obviously had enough time to recognize and accept he doesn’t have the greatest execution in the world. Who cares? He’s probably developed it to a point where he won’t make any more progress, but it’s good enough to work along with his other non-weaknesses. “Nature vs nuture,” debate. No matter how much you want to believe nuture has everything to do with who you are, nature plays a role nonetheless. It’s called reality. Doesn’t mean you should give up when things get tough. Just realize what you do well and what you don’t do so well and develop yourself as fully as possible while trying to hide and avoid situations/things that attack your weaknesses. So you end up being only average at one thing and great at everything else in a game/competition. Big fucking deal
Weaknesses in execution can be covered up somewhat: a good example is myself on XvSF and Marvel. I’m not very good yet, but my understanding of what I CAN reliably execute means I know my options and can build strategies better than a player who’s inconsistent. I can’t ROM for crap yet, but I know I can’t, and until I’ve got it down in training mode, I’m not going to start doing ROM setups in an actual match. I’m going to look for HK hyper grav setups, big corner chains, air throws, etc.
Best way to get better? Play. Keep playing. Stick around on the forums, watch matches, just stay in the game, and you’ll pick stuff up. I was a sweep-happy scrub when I started, I don’t remember the last time I threw a sweep with Sagat recently (probably some CvS2 match).
My two cents. Peace.
If your execution stinks- try to develop a style that isn’t execution-intensive…
My execution stinks but I can hold my own even in tournies by switching styles and playing a style that relies more on confusion and frustration. You can improve your odds just as much by lowering the other guy’s skill level as you can by raising your own.
Note: this stuff won’t work on legit top players. They’ll play your style and beat you at it. However, you won’t lose as bad that way.
I think execution is the least important skill- that nice combo won’t help you if you can’t land it.
Set up a danger room and practice.
U did not set up t3h danger.
Keits advice:
1.) Try to build a scene. Get people excited about competition, and hold small tournaments for the locals.
2.) Play online using low-lag solutions (Kaillera P2P and GGPO… jesus you can learn a lot playing Alpha 2 on GGPO). Realize that timing will be slightly different offline while you do this, but use the experience to work on fundamentals like positioning, footies, throw mixups, etc.
3.) Travel to tournaments. They may not be majors, but I bet you can find some tournaments withing a 4-6 hour drive of you. Get your friends excited and drive with them to the event. Split into hotel/gas costs and keep it cheap.
4.) Read. Read every bit of info someone more experienced than you is willing to offer. Take it in. Try it. Find what works for you.
5.) Watch. Watch match videos more objectively. Figure out what YOU would do in the player’s shoes. See what is working for them, and more importantly, what isnt.
6.) Lose. I’ve always said you learn 10 times as much from a loss as you do from a win… but what I’m refering to is casual play. This is your time to test what works and, again, most importantly what does not. Its casual play, and a loss to your friend who you KNOW you are better than is fine. Just beat him in the tournament when it matters 
7.) Patience. Patience in game, patience with the learning process. All your ‘execution’ shortcomings are just muscle memory. They will build over time.
Pherai is right, execution is quite crucial. As other people have said, so is watching and learning. However, if you are bored of playing in training mode all the time, try and look for some people that live close to you to play. If that doesn’t help, contact someone that can help you in SRK. Some of us don’t bite.
I’m not great myself, (in fact I suck) but being drawn into the “scene” as many people describe it here has made me quite substantially better than I have been previously.
Don’t think that there is an ending to what you can learn. Even the best need practice and there is always a window of opportunity for improvement. Once one aspect of the game is mastered, then another is present to tackle!
If your friends are not better than you online, don’t worry. You may use this to your advantage and see what you should NOT be doing. If you are playing people that are better than you, this would help you in seeing what moves under what circumstances you may do. You mentioned that you played Q in the beginning of your post, see [media=youtube]7mSZc3e2vhQ"[/media] for a good movie to give insight to bettering your Q moves.
Patience is a virtue, not all times are you going to win, and lose. All I can say is that if you lose a lot, try and figure out what wrong you’re doing against the character your playing. Did you mess up? Did they do something unexpected, did you improperly time something and they punished you? Fighting games are about execution and also psychology. Not just the psychology of faking the other person out, or them sensing the typical combo that the character you play posses, but it also requires the stamina and the ability to be able to commit yourself to the game. However, the game requires no commitment, like a child or your financial needs. A game is merely there to give you enjoyment.
The enjoyment of third strike for me is that I enjoy consistently improving. There is always room for improvement, like I said before. Unless you’re completely perfect and always know what to do when, you’re going to be looking for improvement. (Even the best at Evo improve themselves.) Be aware, understand when to do what moves, and most importantly, enjoy the game, or it’ll seem like a chore. Don’t overplay yourself everyday, play only when you want to play.
You cant get better you will always suck you fail in life
You seriously need to chill yo.:bluu:
BEST TIP: Every time you lose, think about why you lost. Every time you win, think about why you won.
I grew up in a tiny isolated town where there are virtually no other players. I’ve been crazy about fighting games ever since I can remember, but I was a perpetual beginner up until this year. The above advice was the only change I made, and my game immediately started improving very noticeably.
I suddenly started to recognize my own weakesses, and then those of my opponents. All other learning for the game just started falling into place as a natural extention of this and my own re-ignited passion and curiosity. It transformed me overnight into this knowledge sponge, where I’m now absorbing more than I ever imagined was there.
I’m not some killer-awesome player now or anything, I’m still a novice relative to the competitive scene… but for the first time in my life I consistently beat anyone in ST who hasn’t practiced ST, and I’m frickin’ proud of it.
The coolest part is it’s actually enriched the experience of the game for me; I loved it to start with, but now I’m enjoying it more than ever before! I swear on my life, breaking out of the scrub phase is hands down the absolute best nerd-feeling in the whole world. :lovin:
Towards.
Down.
Down-towards.
Punch.
I’m surprised no one suggested him to read Sirlin’s playing to win book it couldn’t hurt.
In any fighting game you should pick a character u are comfortable with and then not use anyone else till u feel u have fully mastered that character. The most important factor to getting good at fighting games is getting real life experience the more u play the better u get simple as that so if u don’t have a local scene then create one and get others into it or do the next best thing and play online though i must warn u playing fighting games online may be a completely different experience then playing offline but at least u get some human interaction. What worked for most ppl on SRK myself included is to play ppl much better then you and after u get raped ask them what u did wrong and what about ur play u should change. IMO execution isn’t the most important thing to know right off the bat, understanding the mechanics and flow of the game AKA knowing what works n what doesn’t is more important and the more u play the better ur execution will get naturally though i still strongly reccommend using training mode to improve execution.
I hope i was of some help and goodluck it’s always nice to have newblood in the community.
I am currently in the process of teaching my GF Arcana Heart and Soul calibur from scratch. The hardest part is the I realized how much shit I picked up slow as fuck over the course of 15 years that she is going to have to learn before she can beat anyone with any kind of skill.
Basically anyone starting out now is in the hole and If you don’t realize how much knowledge other people have and how long it actually took then to get it it can be frustrating,
- finally learning a combo is great but actually landing against someone is a different matter
- understanding mind games takes time and practice against actual people
- Like deadfrog said don’t just look at the result figure out why it happened, why you won, why you lost, why you got hit,
- record yourself playing and watch it afterward and see what you notice about your playing when you aren’t focused on timing and strategy and buttons at the time.
When you practice you should celebrate your achievements, but realize you still have a long way to go.