Why you lose more as you get better 

I must be getting REALLY good then

Another useful tip: GIVE UP AND GO TO SLEEP. Seriously. There’s real science behind this. Your brain consolidates, organizes, and settles in the memories you’ve made and connections you’ve attempted to form throughout the day when you rest. This especially happens during sleep, but it even happens when you take a break from the task and move on to something else. If you’ve ever spent all day practicing a combo that just wasn’t clicking, then tried again the next morning and suddenly you’re magically nailing it consistently, that’s exactly what happened; your brain consolidated all of those repetitions and saved it into your muscle memory while you were sleeping. So if you’re getting frustrated, take a break and give your brain the space it needs to settle in that muscle memory you’ve been beating into it. Your brain is still training after the fact, even when you’ve stopped :)

Me on launch: "I should have DI that DI instead of block" Me yesterday: "I should have DI that DI instead of block"

Lesson: No matter how good you get, you have to give yourself permission to suck if you're going to continue to improve. It's true with everything.

There's also a bit of this that applies to any skill endeavor. The more you learn, the more you realize that the thing that was "good" when you're a beginner is no longer good. Now to improve you have to "level up" and try new things against stronger competition. Of course you lose more when you try and adjust your old habits. Part of the process of getting better. Great video Brian.

there is a concept in education called scaffolding where you gotta make sure you have the basics of something down before you move on to the next step and learning things from youtube videos you kind of find a zillion cool concepts and want to learn them all at the same time

idk man, I will keep blaming ken players tbh

Brian just said "here's what makes improving difficult, and here's how you'll feel, and here's why you'll feel that way, and here's exactly how you'll mess up, and here's what you'll tell yourself when you mess up, and here's how you overcome that, and here's the difficulty you'll face overcoming that, and here's how you'll slowly keep improving, and here's..." and he lists every single thought that goes through my head as I play as if he knows me personally (he does not). He explains the entire improvement process in plain English and with psychic accuracy, and he does it all in a single 20 minute video. Guy's killing it. I can't help but like all of these videos. Very informative and helpful!

Your video lessons over the years helped me go from bronze in SFV to high diamond in SF6. Thank you.

Embracing losing is something no one ever does. If anything, people begin to look and discover if any unwritten rules can rectify their losses. It is good that videos like this exist.

I was steadily going up and hit Platinum 5 with Cammy. I immediately went on a losing streak that lasted WEEKS and I dipped all the way back to Gold 5 eventually. I've never been great at fighting games, but this year i've really put in the effort to analyze and improve my gameplay. Going from a 58% win streak down to 33% is just demoralizing so at that point I just accepted that I am terrible at fighting games and took a long possibly indefinite break. With that said, this video is EXACTLY what I needed to get my head back into the right mindset.

I'm fairly new to FGC but been doing other games (some competitively) since the 90s. And I've always told others based on my own experiences that the best way to learn a new technique, keymapping, or skill is you need to just jump into the fire and go up against other real players. And you WILL fail and suck for a week or two. But your improvement will improve light years beyond just practicing in a lab or against the cpu. There is just something in our brains that creates more urgency when up against a real opponent and THAT is where I've found the real learning and muscle memory happens. So I definitely agree with this video. Don't ever get down on yourself when losing while learning something new. Expect it, embrace it.

This is natural for the learning process for improving at anything. implementing higher order skills will always lead to an apparent "dip" in performance but will lead to a new peak over time.

This process also isn't limited to Street Fighter or any fighting game or even any game. This is an efficient way of putting learning in perspective and executing on it to improve at any skill!

I'm a Plat Modern Luke switching from a PS5 pad to a hitbox-style controller while also switching to Classic. This is motivating me to get out of training mode and be ready and willing to lose games.

Love Brian_F explainer vids where we zoom in on Luke's feet every 5 seconds (joke aside this is a great and helpful vid thank you)

In the last month, I went from Bronze IV to Platinum after just randomly deciding to do ranked with Juri after watching Nephew play her. There was a lot of losses on the way and there’s lots of losses now as I try to climb to higher ranks, but the knowledge I gained from those losses have helped me a lot.

Coming from Tekken, and really going through it in ranked these last few weeks, I needed this. Gaining new skills not getting things right in game, feeling like im getting worse while i see my friends that arent putting in that effort get by without it has been tough, but this has helped me keep the faith and trust that it will pay off. So thank you

I'm an '09er, but recently decided to pick up Dhalsim as my new main in SF6 just to shake things up a bit. Never having played Sim before, it took me weeks to get used to doing the most basic things with this character. Some things that are simple and universal for the rest of the cast are just different for Sim. Instead of just neutral jumping to punish a command grab, suddenly I have to jump, float, then punish. I'm now devoting mental stack space to confirming off of stray fullscreen fireball interactions. I have so many different anti-air and air-to-air options for different ranges and angles of jump, and even punishing a blocked sweep isn't necessarily straightforward. And adjusting to defense on a character with such limited reversal options has been the hardest part for this former shoto player. I've had to unlearn years of muscle memory and relearn skills that I can do in my sleep on other characters. Sure enough, adjusting meant losing a lot of matches at first, but it's been really refreshing going through this process again in my main game. It's humbling, which is a good thing, and I'm having more fun with street fighter than I have in a long time.

Im saving this...i have this exact problem with ed...but ALSO, wit me being so competitive and wanting to win...the minute i see my self losing trying to implement new things i immediately go back to what im comfortable with to win the match and ignore implementing what i was trying to do and say "ill jus try it next match" the next match happens and the same process...and these are in casual matches by the way lol...Directing my focus on new tech over winning is where i struggle with

This is true in any aspect of your life. Any hobby or skill you are learning you will eventually hit this same feeling. The key is to keep going and you’ll break thru it.

I think the worst of getting better is knowing what should be done and getting punched in the mouth because you expected your opponent to do "the right thing" instead of whatever the hell they did.

Id argue this is easily the most important sf/fighting game/life lesson to learn. You’re literally teaching how to learn

Doing ANY task with intentionality will reduce your competence temporarily, you're not vibing anymore you're trying to build an actual skillset. Just gotta trust the process that you'll accommodate to it all in time~

I needed to hear this. I'm not making progress because instead of messing up trying to use my new techniques I'm falling back on what's safe and works.

Its also important not to beat yourself up for knowing that you missed the better option, I often whenever I get jumped in on or miss a punish or drop something I shouldn't be will get too harsh on myself and beat myself up over dumb mistakes and it makes me steadily play worse and its a bad cycle, its good to identify missed opportunities mid match, but not to get frustrated at yourself for missing them.

Mainly overconfidence and underestimating your opponent. Just because you landed a max damage combo for your character doesn't mean you have to go for it EVERY SINGLE TIME. Improving your basics is all you need to improve, even if its not flashy

This is actually the best explanation for how to improve in fighting games, and how it feels to improve in fighting games, I’ve ever seen. This is a great video. Amazing summary of a weird process.

I practiced with Ed for the last 2 weeks. I got all his routes and setups down to a T. Then I proceeded to win 2/10 Placement Matches. And I'm a decent player who has spent 400 hours in Training mode total.

I love these discussion videos. I enjoy your gameplay videos immensely as well, but I REALLY like these videos where you just talk about about various aspects of the game and how to play it/build experience

I'm currently in the exact same situation and it's frustrating as hell. I finally reached Diamond 2 rank and was cruising away quite smoothly in my ranked matches, then suddenly it felt like everyone just started seeing through everything I was doing. I dropped from Diamond 2 allll the way back down to Platinum 5! I even achieved my greatest losing streak of 15 losses in a row. It's like all of a sudden all of my opponents just started doing all the right things and every time I made the smallest mistake, I got punished to hell for it. By the way, I'm an A.K.I. main for some context. Also, this whole uprising of Ryus lately is partly responsible for my downfall. I've been losing to Ryu almost every time I meet him in ranked. I'm developing PTSD over here. 😵‍💫

Oh yeah that right there is the why i fell in love with fighting games. Training for weeks just dp fadc into ultra 1 and basic anti-air, finally get to play against friend who beat me, couldn't do anything i trained because brain went oompa loompa. More weeks go by, and out of a sudden during a match against same dude i hit dp fadc ultra and close the match, and it felt amazing. Playing any fighting game since than is just a constant chase for that moment over and over. It feels even more amazing when it happens during offline tournament, and sf6 making training mode easier to setup and train stuff just makes these moments happen more often, which is one of the whys i love this game over the hundreds of others in the genre.

Seeing this is like reliving my journey through ranked mode with my character, so rewarding when you apply what you practiced. Still is how i approach this game.

This is very universal, I'm a Tekken player and I've recognized myself being in a similar state. Thanks for sharing

I'm a coach for varisty esports and im still figuring a lot of things out, but this video has helped me recognize a step I was missing when teaching my players. Thanks so much!

I experienced this feeling training both judo and bjj and I've definitely been in a slump trying to deal with it. Sometimes the answer is just keep putting in the work and keeping an open mind.

13:54 has been my life in Diamond 3 purgatory for the past 2 months. The plateau is real, first one was Plat 4. Great vid and take, good to know it's typical but man it truly is the "valley of despair" in the Dunning-Kruger chart that is leveling up in this game. I'm getting throw so much new tech at me it's hard to pick just one to improve upon, getting bodied in nuanced ways. I kill Diamond 2's consistently but D3 is a CRAZY, at least for me. Ken, playing since SF2 SNES. Thanks Brian!

To be honest thats a really good process to learn almost anything in life

Can't lose if you don't play

My issue is learning combos and executing stuff in training with zero latency, then being in the caribbean with no servers our ping connections at best maybe 100ms unless we connect to someone local which is limited. What helped me is creating a new profile , just hitting around plat in ranked and executing combos and punish counters with the latency at the lower ranks where people aren't pressuring you as much at the lower levels and whiffing a lot. Basically learning to execute with the latency instead. This helped A lot ! Now i'm at 1600 MR and improving , see you high level guys soon , haha

This video is awesome Brian! I hadn't broken down steps 3 & 4 into separate steps of growth, and it's really smart. Not thinking of every step before 4 as growth and success is what makes you frustrated, and its completely unfair to yourself. I had to stop and forgive myself for dropping an input because I went for it on muscle memory, and just *that specific time* it wasn't fast enough, even though it was the right idea. Keep it up!

I don't even play sf6 but your videos are often still very helpful for other fighting games. Great stuff

This learning and development process is why I've fallen in love with sf6! Thanks for the help along all the way, Brine!

I need this video haha. I feel so much better about my play after watching this. It all makes sense

This is the video/message I need right now and also because of the switch to Ed. ^^ Learning a game I can easily put any ego aside and grow better, which happened playing Ken, the moment the wins overshadow the loses feels great and you feel the progress, but switching to another character, and a very different one at that, beeing again at the very beginning, that's new. ^^

I love the premise of this video! Great job would love to see more of that nature :)

One of the best explanations of getting good at something I have ever heard

unrelated to the video but your editor does such an amazing job with very subtle changes in background music that add emphasis to what you are saying. It is a very cool editing tech mad respect

i am literally going through this phase of losing more and have been working on correcting it in the past week, naturally seeing the title of the video i had to click and watch it to give my 2 cents fresh out the oven. i may be repeating a lot of what Brian says in the video, but i guess it just adds credibility to it: honestly the best thing i've found to improve consistently is having a better player play with you regularly and focus on punishing your bad habits and "guiding" you towards the right solution, be it mid-game or between rounds where you discuss it.for example my friend who does not like jumping in SF6 has made a habit of jumping in on me to help me practice my DPs and cross-cuts. essentially "manufacture" the situation you're trying to solve to speed up the growth process through mental pressure... if i'm not punishing these jump-ins i'm becoming vulnerable or falling into a ken oki vortex. don't focus on losing/winning, focus on surviving as long as possible and taking as much advantage, if the goal is growth, winning is a side-effect, not a target... "1HP and a dream" can mean your opponent spends their bar to kill you and now you have some advantage in the next round... think about the game, watch your replays, ask better players what you should have done, record to memory, try again, lose a lot more, keep doing it till you drill the practice into your brain's "mid-battle mode". if you're getting jumped in at too much, you don't have to REACT WITH DP every time, make sure you AT LEAST register that you've identified the moment and thought "i should dp here"... next time or maybe the one after it you'll be able to do it and celebrate... now keep that up. nothing more fun than the growth process, especially when you're losing but your opponents have to work harder and harder to beat you... and in those match-defining moments you'll be learning the most because you're figuring out what made you win/lose. further about the step 2 and 3: try to incorporate this mindset of awareness as much as you can mid match... pay attention to every mistake and every correct decision you make and your flowchart will slowly but surely improve and become perfected, no matter what the "mistake" or even "Scramble" is like... you'll even find that in most fighting games the majority of scrambles (for example dropped combos or being tapped with a LP while jumping) are repeatable and have optimal options to follow up with. i've personally gotten really good at reacting to a missed meaty button with grab to get meter and space control to punish the opponent for making a mistake. what i'm trying to say is that every moment of a FG match contains a problem and its solution, and the long-term goal is to become good at identifying problems as you play, the ideal being that you're able to identify the problem, solve it, assume your opponent assumes you will, and respond accordingly, all in the span of a tournament set. and most important advice i can give is : know when to take a break... having a bad day of loss after loss? call it a day and come back tomorrow after a good night's sleep, you'll surprise yourself. been playing nonstop for a whole month? game feeling a bit stale cause you're seeing the same things over and over and you're going on autopilot without any improvement? perfect time to take an extended break, maybe play another game or genre entirely in the meantime, the feeling you'll get after you come back to it with a fresh mind is exhilarating best of luck to everyone, i'm no pro or good player by any means but thanks to this mindest i regularly play with master ranks (maybe i should just start playing ranked i guess?), but i guess i'm a bit privileged to have a friend who consistently places top8 in tournaments he enters as a training partner best of luck to y'all and i hope my wall of text was helpful info on top of the video.

As a tidbit of advice when incorporating new tools it’s essential to take breaks if you get too frustrated. Muscle memory often builds in the off time. So if one thing is stressing you too much take a break from it and shift to a different piece of the puzzle. Then when you are calmed some you can switch back. Also remember your opponents online aren’t trying to do what you are so some of your losses are just gonna be to people doing what they think works. Stupid as it may be focus on your goal more than the win rate 🙏🏾

I got a racing analogy: First, as you drive by gut feeling, you'll drive slow but relatively smooth (like in regular traffic). As you learn the ideal line for any turn combination your drive will become more robotic, stiff, un-flowy untill the complete ideal line gets ingrained into your brain and you can see it as almost another track with your inner eye (this happens through lots of repetition). Only then you'll beginn to drive smooth again, and faster and faster 💟🌌☮️

Muscle memory is such a fascinating thing. Recently played from Mahvel 3 again and just kind of autopiloted through combos and set ups i haven't done in over s decade

My version of this is when i land heavy punch target combo with manon. So many times my opp would neutral jump to avoid a command grab. So i had to practice back heavy punch into command grab to keep them from jumping. But now when i play diamonds and masters, they OD DP cause they don't wanna be in the situation and the meter is worth it.

This video could not have come at a better time. From a fellow Ed player, thanks.

One thing I really hate about learning SF is how jump-ins work for low to mid level play. In high level, jumps are extremely risky and only ever worth going for if it's a setup or if you've heavily conditioned your opponent. In everyday-Joe level you get like 10% damage if you fail a jump in and 50+% damage if you succeed. The risk-reward is definitely in your favor when you _know_ people won't get it 100% of the time. It's not unusual to get people trying 3 jump-ins back to back, and it frustrates me to say that I don't stop them all. lol

This is definitely the method that will help improvement with no failure. Been doing it for years and it has been the one to take me to the next level every time.

it is surreal to see Brian, Smug, Punk etc grow up right before our eyes

It sounds so obvious when you say it out loud, but grinding away online and ranked matches and learning all of this new tech really gives some tunnel vision to the player. I truly was so lost at why I was going from multiple win after win to suddenly losing match after match

the first 10 seconds of your video is totally relatable. I could pull off the combo 100% of the time in training, but I totally mess up in a match. Even when they're stunned in the corner and I have all the time in the world to position myself :'(

for a new player, fighting games that rely on motion inputs will have two different paths of learning. game sense and execution. it's just difficult to focus on both as you learn in a real match environment. but once you nail one down that it becomes second nature, the mastery of the second will follow smoothly. the upside to this is that motion inputs are almost universal in a lot of fighting games that use them. so learning them in one game will carry over to another. (although I'm not sure how long this will continue in the future, with the recent games all having modern control variants, or straight up no motion inputs at all)

Love hearing from the perspective of somebody who’s been participating in the fgc for such a long time and yet still really passionate about fighting games. So cool. Also…I feel like more people should reconsider their own opinion about a character’s strength if somebody like James Chen says they’re strong, lol

This is something that happens even more with Ed for me, he has SO MANY options it's hard to keep track of all of them.

Put something I had kind of noticed about my game play into words very well, and gave everyone a great path to self improvement. Great Video

Easily the best SF6 coaching video I've seen this month!

Wow... this video has instructions that i needed to hear for so long! Thanks man! I'll apply this!. I'm 3 star Platinum and stuck in this rank.

I really needed this, thank you!

I don't play Street Fighter (not since 2) - though I like watching it and that's how I found this channel. But this is a great great video. The way you break down this topic is very impressive. I'm a musician and everything you said could apply to playing music as well. Just a great, informative, and widely-applicable video. Kudos.

He's spittin, this applies to all fighting games. Finding solutions and filling in the gaps in your gameplay is what separates the best from really good players.

Great video, and nice articulation of what goes on mentally here

hello Brian F, your videos are awesome and help me stay motivated. I have played fighting games for a long time but never invested the time to properly invest in my own skills until very recently and amazing channels like yours are what made me realize I could become good too. thank you for your awesome content

GREAT video! Thanks Brian!

additional tip to improve your muscle memory: go into arcade mode and try what you want to learn against the cpu if you're not comfortable to go into online yet. i swear it did wonders for me because it made me focus on applying what i learned instead of winning the match

What i found most useful as a beginner to fighting games is i take time to learn the individual moves before i do anything crazy, that way I'm a pinch i know what is at my disposal and can easily improvise in a match to figure it what works, and what doesn't. Switching between sf6 and tekken makes it easier to digest. Especially finding Tekken so fun that i can't even decide on who to main

its just info overwhelm and how it translates to execution. its like practicing music/sports/performance in general

So i fought an Ed player who literally strike throw mixd and had the st. Fierce into EX Flicke, DP, barrage combo down to a T. Whooped me 3 times...sometimes less is better. The painful part was that I analyzed this play style after the first match and still couldn't stop it. Felt fuckin bad man...

I needed this.

Learning the right timing for punishment in Tekken is so satisfying. I got 3-0’d by a Jin, realized he was spamming an unsafe launcher, figured out which move punished it best, then I 3-0’d him twice in a row.

This was awesome, thanks man! :D I've been practicing a lot of things at once, no wonder I take so long to actually improve. I'll try doing this, one node of the tree at a time. :))

This is so useful. I can probably get to Master

This advice is also very helpful for me in my AoE2 journey . Thanks man !!

Awesome video, Brian! I also feel like the OP of that Reddit post you shared. I'm going to incorporate the lessons you taught in this video. Thank you for the tips. Keep up the amazing content!

Sometimes your muscle memory betrays you. Your fingers do something before your brain can realize it was the wrong decision and send the stop command to those damn digits.

One of my method learning new combo is to fight cpu lvl 6-8 and try to apply the combo there cause if I can't land it on a cpu, most probably I won't be able to land it on rank match.

Ive always played fighting games my whole life as only a casual. Beat the story mode play a few online matches then shelve the game. Sf6 i wanted to become great at the game. I started at the lowest rank and now im gold. I practice everything so much except anti airs alot and i hate getting jump killed. This video is so gold thank you

Just started fighting games in general just a bit ago and was second guessing myself if i was actually getting better, so reassuring to see i was mostly there just got to work on consistency and also great tip to great it down a bit more then add/change things up as a beginner to get the concepts of openings

I wish I had your mentality. I’m so hard on myself when I mess up. I just hit master after about 100 hours. I have since lost 100 MR in master and my win rate has absolutely tanked. Just feels like everyone’s offense is crazy and I have to to find tiny frame openings.

Last night i was playing FT10 with my bud, he's way better at the game than me+i was super rusty after a 3 month break from SF6, so he wiped the floor with me, to the point that i got super tilted. I disnt flame him (not without muting my mic a few times, cant help it, im emotional), but after that we labbed some stuff and just had a nice post game chat about what should i improve in my game, and it all came down to this: I play in a very predictable pattern, which hasn't changed much in a long time and he, basically, could anticipate most of my moves, but the fact is, with my garbage tier flow-chart, i got up to diamond, and most of the time i tried to learn some new stuff, be it a setup, combo, proper punish or something as simple as good pokes, it didn't work out for me in game, i dropped it and went back to my basic stuff. We talked about it over discord, with my phone near me and Chrome opened on my PC at the same time. And here i am, literally getting vid about this very topic recommend to me the next day. Funniest thing is: i wasnt a subscriber and i haven't watch any FGC content for the time of my break from SF, even FGC channels i was subscribed to weren't getting into my recommend list. Funny how the internet works, eh? Anyway, great vid, gave me something to think about +its good to know that i aint the only crazy trash player with this kind of problem. Step 1 is identifying it, right? Now i just need to identify the solution and do all the other steps :D

You can have 1000 hours of pure training but if you don't know what you are doing it will be of no use, 1 hour of specific training is more valuable

Hitting the plateau is hard stuff. You go from winning to losing most of your matches. Its a difficult feeling.

Im currently trying to implement whiff punishes into my gameplan but im getting blow up by whiffing into mash a lot and when i doo get them i mess up the combo. Is really painful.

them luke toes zoomed in when brian talks challenge my focus

This is the reassurance I needed

Me hearing the first part “😢 I still make this s***it mistakes after years 😂”

The other day I was drilling this AKI corner combo in practice mode and I set my match making to go from practice screen every time. I will do the combo in between every match. I found it to be useful. I suppose I’m going to do the same thing with Ed when I try to use him. I’m stuck at plat 4 with AKI. I need some new routes.

As boring as it might be to some. I usually run Arcade when I'm tilted or chilling. My combos literally feel mindless. Plus it's a little more fun then just fighting the stationary dummy(once you have your combos). .u.

This video feels illegal how powerful it is to map learning

I reach D5 in modern control After learning some basic about the game I switch to classic and it is really much more funny

Same as the reditt poster. I'm plat 5, been labbing really hard and working on my problem areas, and I'm strugggggggling to get to diamond

I know im a bit late but i have never felt this more then when i hit master. I feel like ive been declining and i went on a 14 L streak and down to low 1200 mr. One thing thats helped bring me back up. (Back up to 1330ish Mr) is recording my loses and then rewatching them and seeing what i can do differently. Its hard sometimes to know what to do in the moment so its good to look at it as if its someone else playing. Just my thoughts on it.

This is me in master rank, I feel like getting to master is a breeze and I've done it with multiple characters but getting beyond 1500 is so hard. People are just really good 😂