[D] Practice Myths and Methods - Page 7

Coming from a background in music (playing drums since 10 years), phyiscal activities such as dancing and martial arts (~5 years) and coaching things like speaking in front of 100+ audiances, tradional softskills etc. I'd like to add a few cents to this whole discussion.

Some posts here showed a pretty weak understanding of how learning and/or practicing in general works. =P



1) "The goal of music is to play at a set tempo while the goal of Starcraft is to play as fast as possible"

False. Every single physical activity (from martial arts and boxing to swimming, from running all the way to speaking in front of people, playing music and starcraft) has a rhythm.

Ryhthm is everywhere. At the lowest stages of a strong martial arts training you practice every step at once, you practice the timing of your actions. Boxers don't hit as fast as they can, they first memorize the correct technique of how to hit - which will then slowly be practised more till it becomes muscle-memory.

Starcraft is in fact a very rhythmic game. If you try to execute everything as fast as you can, you will end up learning mistakes. You will memorize wrong behavior. It is VERY easy to hit a punching bag quickly for a beginner - however if he works on hitting it quickly he will never achieve the speed of e.g. a WT practicioner who practiced chain hits starting with a very slow speed and perfect technique.

Steps like Check Minerals / Gas -> Check supply -> build workers -> build units -> build buildings scout -> move units -> Check Minerals / Gas -> etc. are a ryhthm.

Someone who checks Minerals/Gas, then builds workers, then scouts, then builds units then checks his minerals/gas, then builds buildings would be the example of an inefficient rhythm.


To achieve maximum speed in a game like starcraft you have to develop the most effective pattern to spend your time. - You learn such a pattern by consciously (!!) going through it step by step, again and again until it becomes second nature.

The simple fact that there is no "common knowledge" on how to "correctly" do stuff like this, or even how to simple as **** things like 1a2a3a4a (e.g. 1a3a2a4a is slightly faster because of less finger movement involved. Is it a tiny amount of time? Yes. Do people use it? No. Apparently small edges like this aren't needed.) shows us that Starcraft (and e-sports in general) are not developed enough yet to have working standards in certain aspects. - This is also why I would take habits "professionals" show us in their practice with a grain of salt.

tl;dr: Ryhthm > speed. Speed is the result of a well-practiced rhythm, not the starting point.



2) "Practice in a low-stress environment will fail you in a high-stress environment"

Wrong. Practice in a low-stress environment gives you all the skills needed to succeed in a high-stress environment.

Let's take public speaking for an example. If I want to teach someone who's rather shy but suddenly in a public position how to speak in front of 300 people I would not (costs aside) put him infront of 1000 people and let him "just speak" there. He would simply crack down under pressure and will have more stage-fright than before.

Instead, I'd take him to a group of people with a similar interest (same fears and thoughtprocesses) and let him speak in front of those 10 people. Then we would work on his way of speaking and then, once I'm fine with him, we'd record the thing and show him the video. Taddaaa, his skill and self-confidence is increased and he'll be way more comfortable in front of e.g. 100 people than before.

Another example would be the martial artist who practices first under a very controlled environment, once he got the basics down people will do stress-exercises with him - then he'll be ready for "real" self-defense.

Oh, wait, stress-exercise? - Yup, you read correctly. The ability to do well under pressure is a skill on its own. (Dingdingding!)

If you do great in 1n1's and on the ladder, you won't automatically beat the same people in a tournament setting (hi Infernal <3). Practicing how you do under pressure and high-stress is a skill that has to be learned individually (or by failing enough tournaments), how to do that would be too much for this short thingy though.



3) "But.. but... Koreans massgame, too!"

No. Not that way. You're comparing apples and oranges. (Or rice and potatoes, huehue)

Person A massgames in a controlled environment. He has someone watching him who ensures that he follows set patterns (see #1) which they worked out together beforehand. If there are certain weaknesses in his build, timing or micro you grab another dude from your team who has a similar issue and then let them clash heads until they can do the thing they sucked at better than before.

Person B plays 30 games per day.

Person A is your average Korean Progamer, Person B is the average western dude who asked "How should I improve my game?" and got the answer "Go play mass games!"

Whatever skill you're working on in life, simply doing it over and over again without a real plan or reflection will lead to failure. (Yes, that's something I learned in both Starcraft and picking up women. =D)



4) "But..but... you don't practice decision making that way!"

Strong decisionmaking is, once again, a result, not a point to start off.

Let's say you played 1-2 laddergames, you weren't happy with those games at all. Your build should work in theory our ryhthm sucked, your timing sucked and you made horribly decisions.

Let's say you...
...refined your build and stole it directly from a top korean pro of your choice.
...worked on your larvae injections/macro/mules/whatever till they are FUCKING BOSS.
...stutterstepped on micro maps till you could beat everyone with 2 marines in 2011.

NOW IS THE POINT TO ACTIVELY WORK ON YOUR DECISION MAKING.

Would you have won games earlier with a better decisionmaking? Yes.
Would you have (attention plz!!) won games where you had correct decision making, but shitty mechanics? No.

There is no fucking point in a great plan if you can't execute it. Unless you're a coach. Then you get that privilege.

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After this wall of text I'd like to add that I fully endorse the OP, I feel that a discussion like this is long overdue. Way too many "young" activities rely on people claming that "just doing a lot of it" is the holy grail - while that statement is pretty far from the truth.

Feel free to shout out any questions concerning the points I made, I'll keep checking this thread for a while. =)



Edit: What I meant by "working standards" in #1, refers to things like there is no "commonly accepted" way of which finger should hit which hotkey in which order for maximum efficiency. A thing like this would be not acceptable at all when it comes to typing or playing the piano. --> starcraft and e-sports aren't refined yet.