#1: Techskill

#2: Bread-n-Butter Combos

#3: Mindfulness

#4: Most Recent Mistake

#5: Lowest Hanging Fruit

#6: Taking Notes

#7: Ask Questions

Always, always, always practice the tech you use in tournament. Yes, this includes the innovative and interesting shine-grabs and shield-drops, but it also includes the simple and boring stuff like dash-dancing and wave-dashes. It’s pertinent that you keep practicing it all, so you can rely on it all when you play in tournament.Everyone needs to know the one-two combos that they have to hit. These are the stomp-knees, the Ken combos, and the up-throw up-airs. This too can get boring, but if you can’t ftilt->fair a Lvl 1 Fox with Sheik, do you really think you’ll be able to do it against a human opponent that knows how to DI? Armada’s combo game is a testament to how much you can get by practicing combos (on CPUs)This may seem out of place, but it may be the most important thing you can practice. Being mindful is a skill you can hone that will help you be more attentive and aware of what’s going on in your play. Mindfulness gives you the ability to point out problem areas much faster, and a key component for studying matches, observing habits in yourself and your opponent, and pivotal to adaptation. Here’s some stuff to get you started: guided meditations . Consider developing a habit of meditating as often (not as much) as you practice the game.After you’re done with a tournament, try to recall what was the most important mistake you made. It could either be a tech flub or a moment where you didn’t know what to do. Once you pinpoint the mistake, it should be on your practice schedule at least until your next tournament. What this does is make you practice precisely something that had a concrete impact on your play in tournament, and what is more practical than that?!This takes a little bit of work but can help a lot. Observe your play and the play of good players of your character. List off things that they do (well) but you don’t. Out of that list, pick what would be the easiest for you to practice, and implement it into your practice sessions. Keep moving up the list to the more difficult things, and recreate a list when necessary.Having a notes is pertinent to improvement. Put down thoughts, ideas, problems, questions, situations, etc. Bring it everywhere you go, and write in it whenever something pops up. But, most of all, every few weeks (or after study sessions), compile your notes into things that you can work on to improve, and then formulate that into things you can put into your practice sessions.This is one of more important ways you can get feedback on your play, and what you can do to improve. General questions are hard for people to answer, so try to make them as specific as you can. And when you do get answers from people, always be sure to ask them “How can I practice that?” Try to find a group of people willing to improve together or simply that are willing to answer questions, and go the them when you need help.