One step back, two steps forward

I remember when I started doing my undergrad in Computer Science, I was a sight-typist, and would use only the first two fingers and thumb of each hand. In spite of this, I could bang the keys pretty hard, and hit a fairly respectable WPM rate, even amongst my fellow computer science nerds.

In spite of my typing speed, I eventually decided it was ridiculous that I needed to lock my eyes to the keyboard when I was typing, and that it was time to learn how to type properly. I downloaded Mavis Beacon, and I played that stupid racing game (where your car goes faster the better you type) until my fingers were sore and I was shouting in frustration because I kept hitting the damn semi-colon. I'd been typing the same way since I was about 6. I'd developed a lot of bad habits, and it took a long time to break most of them.

A lot of the time, I would be talking to my friends on MSN, and making a real effort to type correctly. Roughly 70 times a message, I would be tempted to go back to my old way of typing, and blast out the message and the speed I knew I was capable of. But I didn't, because I knew that if I did, I would be cheating the learning curve and would continue to maintain those bad habits.

The real question is: What the hell does this have to do with VF5? A lot it turns out. I started playing the game about three months ago. I read through the forums and moveslist at VFDC, and I saw mention of things like TEG, fuzzy guarding, etc. and mostly ignored them. I'm too much of a beginner to pursue advanced concepts like that. This was a fair approach, I think. You need to learn to walk before you can run. As I progressed though, I never returned to those tutorials, and learned my own bad habits. As I've already mentioned once before, evading is my big crutch.

Learning to properly defend, fuzzy, and apply throw escapes, is analogous to me learning how to type correctly. In the past two days, there have been countless matches where I've wanted to do nothing more than evade. Instead, I attempt to stand my ground, and I either get thrown, or combo'd across the screen. I'm an 8th dan in ranked, which isn't great, but it's not bad either. Last night I was losing to people ranked 1st dan. They weren't playing great, I was just out of my element. I desperately wanted to revert to my old ways and just start evading around the ring and pummeling them so that I could heal my hurt ego. But what's more important? Healing my ego, or learning to play the way I really want to? The answer for me is obvious. Maybe for you it will be different.

The moral here is that as discouraging as it can be to try and learn something new, have patience with yourself, and remind yourself that it's natural that you are going to have to re-learn how to beat the people that in the past you would have defeated with ease. Remind yourself that if it didn't require effort, it probably wouldn't be worth it. More details as I continue to progress (or stagnate indefinitely).