Transcripts
1. Introduction: Speed running is a
sport of playing a video game as
fast as possible. And as an activity, I
think in naturally lend itself to the human desire
to get better at something. But since it's
pretty competitive, improve it can be
very difficult. This class was better. Equip you with the
knowledge on how to go from someone who just started playing the game to the top level, almost being one step
ahead of the competition. Hey guys, my name
is Kristof prior, otherwise known as kid goes in the speed running community. I'm an accomplished Legend of Zelda speed runner
being one of the best in the world
at scoured sword, and also having experienced in the wind wake and
Twilight Princess, as well as this, um,
the current senior British champion in the sport
of artistic roller skating. And I'm a musician,
singer songwriter. This course won't cover a lot of the stuff from
the very start, such as picking a game or
category or specific setups. Because a lot of that
will be dependent on the game that you run. And there's a bunch of
tutorials on just that. This class is designed for those who are looking at the game, but don't know how
to start practicing. Or maybe your
midterm on a wall in your improvement and aren't
sure how to break past it. If you're someone
who's just looking to find more efficient
ways and how you can practice that can guarantee you they'll find some value
out of this class. But that being said, let's
head into our first video, which is going to
be about mindset.
2. Mindset: Awesome. So now, don't worry, we will jump into a lot
of practical advice in this class are very shortly. But I put mindset as
the first section here because I do truly believe that this is one of the most important aspects
to organise improvement. And thinking back to my
part of the speed running, I noticed that a lot of the time when I was improving quickly, it was directly
correlated to how my mindset was at the time. So this realization
mostly hit me around late 2019 to early 2020, the period just before I started to have some rapid improvement. So take the word record of your desired category and game. Now, one thing that you have to know is that if you
copied everything about the world record down to the frame, you would tie them. Therefore, all you gotta do is save one more frame and boom, you're the best
player in the world. Okay, So this is pretty obvious and I doubt that I'm
saying anything new here. But if you make this
your default mindset, then you as a player will
be more willing to learn off the top players and figure
out why they're so fast. Additionally, having
this mindset will prevent you from having to
reinvent the wheel yourself. I think that because
speed running is such an isolating sport, it can be really easy to want to just keep bashing your
head against the wall, trying to naturally
improved by yourself. Yes, whilst this may
work, eventually, learning from top players is essential if you want
to get there quickly. I think that having this
mindset also really helps because it
takes the entirety of speed running this massive
mountain they have to climb and just mix it into
a giant game of copying. But at the end of the day, it is still a journey. The next part about
this class will be about how you get
started with our journey, with how you'd learn
your game efficiently.
3. Learning a Speedrun: So now onto the
practical advice, This next section is about how
your practice efficiently. After this first video of
how you'd learn a game, it's generally more aimed at those who are
trying to get into longer runs that can last for
hours and hours at a time. But I feel like everyone can
find value out of this pot, even if you're category
is fairly short. To anyone who finds a speed
run very daunting to learn. The first advice that I
would give you would be just to start by
watching others do runs. Preferably, you should start with the board
record if you can, because then you'll get
a good idea on what the optimal movement and
techniques are like. However, in some instances, the root of the word
record users can be pretty tricky to pull
off and you are runners. In this instance, I'd recommend looking for other
routes the game, and then trying to find the
best time with that route. As for how you'd find
alternate routes, a good place to start
would be discord, love communities will
have their discourse is linked in the SRC page. You can click on that and
look through who ask around. Another great option
if your game has it, it would be a Wiki page. The Zelda community is
pretty fortunate here as we have a website
called Zelda speed runs, where a lot of the
various tricks and roots are documented. Among other things, a lot of big franchises will
have something similar. Again, it's always worth trying to find something like that. Next, you just stopped
playing through the game. Doesn't have to be
timed at this stage, nor does it have to be fast. The point of it is just to familiarize yourself
with the root. Once you are happy that you're relatively fluid with the game, then you can start doing
time segments of it. Again, this point is more aimed at those with longer categories. But in general, I'd say that it would help to get
a good estimate on how long your first run would be before you attempt it. Additionally, now
having a timer of practice will get you into
the good habit of trying to do segments fairly quickly just before you go do
your first one attempt. One thing that I'd recommend you do if you haven't already, is to familiarize yourself with the optimal end game mechanics. It could be technical mechanics
such as general movement, but it could also be some other smaller details like what is the optimal setup and
all version of the game. E.g. in many Zelda games, is typical to be playing on a Japanese version of the game. The reason behind this differs depending on the game itself. But typically it's either because there's more glitches in the Japanese version or the
text is slightly faster. As far as something like
general movement goes, an example from the
Zelda games and what the fastest movement would
be is typically rolling, even in Skyward sort, where there's an actual
running mechanic. Although rolling
only saves about a frame per roll in that game, since rolling takes up
more stamina than running, it's only really worth
it if you don't have a massive amount of land
that you need to traverse. Knowing stuff like this
about your game early on, it can be incredibly
useful as it pushes off at a really
good starting points. So you won't have to relearn
a bunch of this stuff later. Okay? So you're finally ready
to your first attempt. So you take some time out
of your day to do it, especially if it's a long one, you start playing
through the game and it probably sucks,
but that's okay. I think at the start,
it's always worth doing and no reset run as
soon as possible. So you can get a good idea on how the run fields when
you do it altogether. Personally, I think in general, it's always worth
trying to get into the habit of doing
the reset runs, even when you start to
get very good at again, this is because during
certain segments in runs can feel quite a bit different from when they're done in practice. Maybe it's the added
pressure that I run brings given
that usually have to hit things first try or
maybe because you're not used to gaming for 5 h straight. There are many factors
and good reasons into white want to get into the
habit of doing no reset runs. And now that you've
learned the game, that brings us onto
the next video in this section about
pressing efficiently, which will be about
how you practice efficiently when you
are on the grind.
4. "On the Grind": This part of the class
is generally aimed at those people who
want to get better at best selected game. If you're a low to
mid tier player who wants to raise the top, but I can guarantee
you that this is the part of the
class you'd want to pay attention to improving and speed running or anything for that
matter, just takes time. This is something that we'll
discuss later when we get into like time efficiency
and stuff like that. So also could boil this part of the video down to just
play the game more. There's not exactly helpful
in knowing how you can be as efficient as
possible with your time. Before we do get into the
practical advice though, I do just want to
distinguish the difference between runs and practice. A lot of people think
that they can just do runs and get by with that. And yes, you will gradually
improve over time. Naturally won't be fast nor efficient because
of the nature of runs, you wouldn't be able to do
certain segments multiple times and you won't be able
to drill a certain segments. Additionally, because
you'll probably be resetting most attempts, you'll probably get
disproportionally better at the start of the game then compared
to the later segments. So when you have a run going and the nerves
are kicking in, there'll be way less likely
it's cluttered out because you won't be as trained
at those later segments. Yes, runs are
important to measure general skill and to get used to doing all the
segments back-to-back. But focused offline practice is truly where many of the greats and speed running are born. So doing both will
optimize your improvement. Now, the question remains still how you'd practice efficiently? And this will differ depending
on what game you run. Maybe you run a small
enough that you can play it all in one sitting. Or maybe it has loved
difficult tricks in it. The certain aspects of the run and the segments that
you choose to focus on. We'll of course again change. But the fundamentals
should still be the same with all the different
ways that you can practice. There were none that are more
efficient than drilling. Drilling is basically doing
the same segment technique, trick or specific
movement over and over again with the intention of getting as good as
possible at it. By doing this, the
technique will go into your short-term
memory and then into stronger muscle memory
later down the line. Now, it is important to do
things over and over again. But if your game is fairly long or it has a bunch
of tricks in it, then it can be
pretty difficult to dedicate time to
all the techniques. One thing to keep in mind is
that time spent practicing one technique is time not
spent practicing another. Just to put an example from my own experience,
in early 2020, I tried to get as good as
possible as Sky left one, which is the first segment in the sky which showed
any presents Speed Run. I just drilled that segment
over and over and over again. And yes, I didn't
get very good at it. Sometimes being
able to compete or even beat the world
record times. But because I didn't practice
any other part of the run, I would always lose a lot of
time in the later segments. So even now, my biggest time losses are
towards the end of the run. This shows that you need a healthy balance
when practicing. You should repeat
segments or techniques, but not to the point where
the deficit of others, an example of how I achieve
that balance in my runs, I cut up all my segments into around ten to 20 minute chunks, typically centered around
areas and dungeons, then I would only give
myself a maximum of two attempts before
moving onto the next one. This ensures that I'm
repeating segments. So I won't just go through
the motions with them, but also because I limit
myself to two attempts, I won't get stuck on
a specific segment. Now I recommend that
you take this as a rough guide as to how you should structure
your practice, cutting things up into ten to 20 minute chunks and giving myself only two attempts made sense to me because my game's
off fairly long. But if your game
is fairly short, then you can probably
get away with giving yourself more attempts. The same goes with
difficult tricks. Now, in my runs, they
tend to be glitch. There's a lot of the time. They're typically
aren't that many tricks that I have to focus on. But if your speed
one is full of them, then you might want to spend a little bit of time focusing on them regardless
of the segment. For practicing
trick specifically, I would recommend that the ones that you can do consistently, I'd say try and limit yourself
to around 305 attempts. However, if it's a
trick that you can do consistently or you haven't even incorporated into runs yet, then I'd recommend
spending a good 10 min on that one trick. Okay, so now giving you the overview on how you should
structure your practice, I'm now going to draw your attention to
things that you can do to make your
practice even better. This should be most helpful for those mid tech players who
are practicing like this, but still hitting walls. The first and arguably most
important strategy that you can do is watching the runners who are
better than you, preferably the world record. Sometimes you might not know why there's so much
faster than you. So getting into the
habit of watching them consistently can make you more familiar with what the optimal technique
and movements are alike. E.g. for the first 30 min of my practice sessions
that are long enough, I will just watch the
board record. That's it. That's all I'll do
for the first 30 min. I'll just sit in my chair
and watch him play the game. That way I can move familiarize myself with the proper movement. Because one thing
I've realized is that you really
don't know how much. You don't know until you start watching people
who are better than you. Now, Yes, I get that. It could be pretty
boring to just watch players who
are better than you understand a lot more of what it takes to be the
best when you start actively watching
the top runners bolster you're watching
the world record. More thing that I recommend
you do is in your mind, try to recreate the
exact same button inputs that they are doing
on the screen. Either again, using your mind or having a physical
control it in your hand. This toilet training is known as mental visualization and it's typically used by
real life athletes when they're preparing
for competition. And additionally, there are
many scientific studies out there that say that training
with your mind's eye can be, if not just as efficient
as training in real life. Finally, I want to talk
about safe states and how they can be used to
practice efficiently. Safe space are incredibly
useful because they eliminate downtime between
certain technique attempts. This is incredibly useful because the less
downtime you have, the more time that you have pressing the surgeon technique, and thus you will improve
faster at beset technique. An example of this and how
it can be useful from well, the games that I play is the lender door Candle
in the Wind weaker. Usually, if I wanted to practice this
without safe states, I would have to regain
storage every time and then walk up to the building
and then perform the trick. But if I use safe states and I could retry the
difficult movement instantaneously
without having to do all the setup
shenanigans beforehand. Aspects like this really show how important
safe states are. But it's worth noting
that they might not be available for every game. If you can play a
game or an emulator, then that's
definitely an option. But sometimes it's
not suitable because maybe your setup isn't
geared towards emulation, or maybe because your game
is not on an emulator. In this case, I'd recommend
using the next best thing, which tend to be
either wrong hacks or strategically placed
to save files. An example here would be for when I play Twilight Princess, I find that it's pretty difficult
to practice on emulator because my input delay is slightly different
compared to console. But the game does
have a ROM hack. I'm one of the features of it is a main file system which
basically acts like safe states. I just wanted to stress that safe states aren't
required aspect of getting good at speed running for my entire career
in Skyward sword, I never use safe states and I did end up getting
pretty good at it. But my improvement was
very slow and could have definitely been sped up how
I chose to use safe states. So that was probably a lot
of information all at once, but I hope that a lot of
that will be useful and stuff that you can apply it
to your practice sessions. Next, I'm gonna be covering
a time efficiency, because the more hours you can spend into playing the game, naturally, the better
you will become.
5. Time Efficiency: So now we get into the things
that you can do outside of the game to improve your
speed running ability. Now, this part might
not seem like simple, and since you're not
actually playing the game. But I can guarantee you that
if you pay attention to, I'm bound to say in
the next few videos, you'll find yourself
improving at a way quicker rate
than other people. Because it's worth noting
that a lot of people don't actually do many of these things that I'm
about to tell you. A lot of people would
just play their game. So by incorporating
many of these habits, you will genuinely
put yourself one step ahead of the vast majority
of the competition. First, we'll talk
about time efficiency, because efficiency
towards the quantity of your practice will be one of, if not the biggest contributor to your rates of improvement. The math is fairly
straight forward here. Person a, who plays for two to 3 h with
medium efficiency, will always improve away
quicker than person B, who plays for 15 min
with maximum efficiency. This is fundamentally why a lot of those in speed running who tend to come out of nowhere
or be in their adolescence. The type of people who get large breaks for the
summer holidays. This point couldn't be better illustrated than when Jessica, Zoe, and myself started playing with gouache
or randomizer. I was 18 when I started playing. So I was still in college, but I also had a part-time
job at a roller skating rink, which divided my time
over the summer. But on the other hand,
genetics was 14, just fresh out of school
for a summer break. So no surprise, he improved away quicker
than me over the summer. All of this culminated
in both of us facing against each
other in Season five, where I'll ultimately
lose to him. Things like this really do printed respective that a lot of the improvement is
just how many hours you sink into a game. So this is primarily a
class on speed running, not on time management. So I'm not gonna go
too in depth about stuff like time blocking
and other strategies. But I will say that as
you go about your day, should try and squeeze
as much practice in there as physically possible. If you're at home and you have an hour before you
typically go to bed, why not do some
speaking practice instead of anything else? If you're on a boring
commute than one, what some of the world record, instead of doing anything else. Just to give you an example, when I started
writing this class, I had to do so alongside
skating, speed, running, college, and work, amongst
other leisure activities. It was a pretty big load, so I had to find time with
them my day to do it properly. Now, I tend to drive
to college and I will typically be on-site or
Wednesdays and Thursdays, and again, hour's
break for lunch. So I tended to use
that extra hour wisely and write a lot of the script
while sitting in my car. Sure. It was only an hour. But over the course
of weeks and months, it meant that I could
release this course earlier than they
otherwise would. If you want to be the
best speed runner, they can possibly be, then you're going
to have to think in as much time as physically possible and try not
to make excuses. Like, I did have a
full day of work and I deserve some
downtime or something. Yes. If you need a break, then by all means take a break. But if you can crack is
for just 30 min a day, then it will
drastically increase your total hours in
the game over time. And of course some days
you won't be able to contribute anytime
to speed running, but any action you take, big or small will
contribute in some form. One more thing when it
comes to time efficiency is I should probably
only try and focus on getting better at
one game as opposed to getting better at
multiple at a time. Now, it's not impossible to get good at multiple
games at once. A lot of people with a lot of time on their hands will do it. But there's a reason
why you see a lot of people only just
stick to one game. Take Jim Mercedes six, e.g. a, pretty well-known, run
it in the Zelda community. Speeding, running the wind
weaker, skyward sword, Twilight Princess, or
crooner of time 3D, imager as mosque 3D. Now, that's a mouthful. But if you shoot into a streams, then typically you only see in play one of those
games at a time. The reason why you'd
want to stick with just one game is
because your brain will develop muscle memory away quicker if it just had
to want to focus on, especially if your
games are very similar, if you keep switching
between games, then that gives your
brain a lot of work to develop a bunch
of muscle memory. As stated earlier, there is a good reason why May top runners don't
constantly switch. It goes back to the old
saying that those who tried to catch many rabbits
ended up catching none. If you can put as much of your
focus into just one game, instead of splitting your focus, then you will improve much quicker than you
would otherwise. So now you have a decent
understanding and knowledge of how much time efficiency plays into speed on improvement. But now I'd like to draw your
attention to another aspect as a fairly overlooked
aspect, which is sleep.
6. Sleep & Rest: So as stated in the
previous video, sleep and rest in
general tends to be a very overlooked aspect of
improving as a speed runner. And I think this isn't
held by there being a small but noticeable kind of no sleep culture
within speed running, I'm pretty sure that every
community has a one-person. They'll start a six-hour run at 40 in the morning and will know many others
who are actively staff missing out on sleep. But trust me, when I say
that getting a handle on sleep is not just important for your
health and well-being, but also for your improvement
as speed running. Now, I'm pretty sure that we all know the benefits of getting enough sleep and how not getting enough of it can be bad for you. But here, I do just want to
talk about how sleep can affect memory consolidation
and skill acquisition. When you go to sleep, your brain will be processing all the events that
happened during the day. The brain will improve
on and solidify. So neural networks around a specific motor
skill as you sleep. If you've ever noticed
yourself playing really badly and then go to sleep and
then waking up the next day. And then suddenly you're
the greatest be running in the world and literally
can't make a mistake. Well, this is why
when you're sleeping, your brain was processing the practice session you
had the night before. So by the morning,
you'd improved a lot more because of the sleep. Things like this really show
you that the effects of a practice session onto well established until
you've gone to sleep. And this is why I say they're practicing for 30 min a day, for seven days a
week is better than practicing for one day a week
for three-and-a-half hours. Because when you practice
for seven days a week, you're taking advantage of
all those sleep cycles. Understanding this can
also help you not to get frustrated when things
aren't going well. As by knowing that you
weren't immediately see the effects of
practice session, you can reassure yourself that even if you're
playing badly, you're still getting some
use out of the session. And this leads me
into my next point, which is going to be
about getting tilted. Being tilted was a
phrase coined in the speed running community
for when you'll be frustrated and not
playing very well, be tilted means to
get frustrated. So a point where you
can't think properly, which will inevitably
lead to more mistakes. If you've ever noticed
this happening to you, then stop playing. If you're just playing bad
because it's an off day, but you're still level headed, then I'd say that's fine. I'll encourage you
to keep going. But if you're
playing bad because you are absolutely
not level headed, that continuing can do
more harm than good. And you'd likely end
up with equivalent of just bashing your
head against the wall. So at that point, I'd say
she's better just taking a break and then tackling the
game once you feel better. Sometimes you might
insist that you should continue to
practice and you might try to latch on
hoping that it will just magically get better
if you stick it out. But that is not your
rational side talking. Those are your emotions. And your emotions
can't be trusted because they'll be naturally
high in this situation. And that the reason that
you're not even level headed. So when possible, try not to listen to your
emotions and try to just remove yourself
from the game if you have the mental
capacity to do so. It is worth saying
that a lot of people, especially in the speed
running community, does struggle with sleep. I mean, the person
doing runs all night. I thought that that's a
voluntary decision on their part and more just
because they can't sleep. Now, if you do have insomnia or some other sleep-related
disorder, then okay. Yes. Fair enough. You're just going to have
to work around that. But for the vast majority of us, I do think that we can all get at least a somewhat
healthy sleep schedule if we just tweak some parts
of our lifestyle, e.g. many people will
note the leg wake up at 05:00 in the morning. When people asked me about this, I tend to just tell
them that that's just what my body
called came to. But I don't think that
that's necessarily correct. I think there's actually because I've been training my body to do this for about five
years in bed by nine, I wake up at five. And honestly, when 09:00
P.M. roles around, I'm out like a light switch. A lot of people are perplexed
and or jealous by this. But I genuinely think
that because I've given my body such a consistent
sleep schedule, they just knows when
to go to sleep. Now, this is a guide
on speed running, not on getting better sleep. So I'm not going
to bore you and go into massive details here. But if I can give
you one advice, is that consistency is key, preferably down to the
minute, if you can. Yes, Not every day. Will this be possible? And just to give you
an example for myself, sometimes I will actively stay up just to have a
speed one race, but some of my North
American friends. But if you're consistent
with it more often than not, then you'll probably
find that sleep is way easier than before. Now, I get it. It can be pretty
difficult to do this, especially because it
requires a level of discipline that can be
quite hard to come by. But that is what the
final video is all about. Trying to harness discipline. I'm putting motivation
on your side. It's not just trying to
get a handle on sleep, but also help practicing
speed running as a whole.
7. Motivation & Discipline: Okay, so now onto the final topic which
I wanted to cover, which is motivation and
discipline in general. Now it's worth saying
that admittedly, this isn't the most
important topic here. Unlike normal Sports,
Speed running, and competitive video games
in general, odd, usually fun. I don't have a lot of
barriers in the way, in the form of
mental resistance. But I do still want to
talk about it because I think at some point in everyone's
speed running journey, that's always a point
where people just hit a drought of motivation. I think it's always
worth knowing a few tips and tricks to combat the said drought
if it ever occurs. So out of all the advice
that I could give you, I think the one that
has helped me the most is they do
something principal, originally coined
by Mark Manson. The states they're
gaining motivation which has bleeds into action, isn't just a one-way system, but it works both ways. Like have you ever had a
really good start to your day? And then just naturally
found that that day be more productive as it went on bass, because the action that you took in the morning helped fuel the motivation which
towered you introduce more action throughout
the rest of the day. Okay, So this self-improvement advice is all well and good. But how does this apply
to speed running row? If you find that you want very motivated to practice a game, then just trying to watch it, either the world record or just some random dude on Twitch. In fact, it doesn't even have to be your games specifically, just watching anyone do
anything speed when unrelated, or sometimes be enough to
trigger you to do that action. Something like this is also
why a lot of people will have posters of an old legend of
their sports in their room. So just by looking at it, they can harness that motivation to do the constructive action. So that's most of my advice
when it comes to motivation. And now I just want to talk
about something that's a very similar vein,
which is discipline. Putting it simply,
discipline is doing the hard work regardless of whether you feel
like it or not. I feel like this is a very
scarce trait nowadays. But one thing to keep in
mind is that discipline is a skill just like any other. It's a mental muscle. They'll get stronger
the more you use it. If you are someone
who is easily temp dated with instant
gratification, then start off small, just make a commitment to drink
30 min of practice a day. And when that seems too easy, you can then start
to bump it up to maybe 1 h and a half hours, 2 h, then you can keep going. If you want to improve
it, you're asleep. They'll say just try and make a commitment to being in bed on time and then start to
focus on when you wake up. You have to understand that no one is disciplined overnight. It takes time to
develop this muscle. So plant the seed of self-discipline and
you'll start to see your life and the rate
that your improvements be running to increase
dramatically.
8. Summary: Now in this class, I've
given you a ton of advice. And the point of all
of it is trying to put yourself in one step
ahead of the competition. Anyone can just play a game, but by putting a
different mindset on it and treating it like a sport. Not just playing the game, but also studying those
who are better than you and being as
efficient as possible, you will be successful. It's easiest to look
at all the top runners and then look back
at everyone else. Then focus on those
who didn't make it. But that doesn't have to be you. If you're still here and you've watched this in its entirety, then you'll probably more
dedicated then 95% of runners out there because
you've actually taken the time to try
and better yourself. And also, if you are still here, then I must have
greatly Thank you. It's not everyday
that people listen to me talk about to be
running for this much. So I really do appreciate the time that you've
taken out of your day. So watch this. If you have any queries or just want some one-to-one advice that my Discord DMs or open
click on 7175 is my tag. I tend to be fairly active and a bunch of Zelda
spiraling channels. So if you can find me, then don't hesitate to chat. I also stream might be
ones that live on Twitch. My channel is kid called Six, typically stream a
few times a week. So if you see that I'm life, again, don't hesitate
to talk in the chat. This was my first ever course. I do plan on making
a lot more of these. So if you think I
could've done anything better or you liked
any sudden part of it, then feel free to
drop me a review. I really hope that you found
some use out of this class. I hope that you can
apply some listeners TO speed healing journey. And I really hope to one day see you as a top
run-up of your game. Thanks for watching
and take care.
SkillzKit, Athlete + Gamer + Musician
