Playing Other Games/Taking Small Breaks(and how they help)

Lately I've been mixing up my games a bit! While I have been getting some training regimens in(I haven't been able to play online so much-just a little), between T7, Rev2, VF and even starting to get my ground in UNIEL lately, I mostly have been focusing on some other things video game wise. Namely playing some MMO(FFXIV to be exact, though fairly casually), replaying Shadowrun Returns on Steam from time to time, and playing Final Fantasy Tactics again(PS1 version actually-I think War of the Lions is so much better but the slowdown finally got to me, please make a new version without that T_T). I've even been fiddling with Hearthstone again, though that game does bad things for my salt values. :P

I actually think this does us some good. Sometimes stepping away for awhile helps. I've talked to some competitors that feel you almost have to take some breaks now and then in fighting games. JDCR-the current world champion and easily one of the best of the world-has said in interviews he really doesn't play Tekken for hours on end, so it's not always pure hours put in(I think there is something here about training smarter, not necessarily harder.)

For me, there was a stint where I was writing up newbie guides between Rev2 and Tekken 7, working on the extensive(now 21 pages @.@) Dragunov guide for the long-form video, now working on a smaller version of said Dragunov guide for a short starter video, and so on(so I guess said stint is still sort of going on.) After all of that pounding away(and testing stuff, and double checking stuff, etc, etc), I started to feel a little bit like 'okay, time to indulge in some other games now.'

While I feel spending TOO much time away might not be a good idea(and I still pop in during the week for some lab time and/or a few matches), I think actually focusing on other games one likes is actually a solid idea to do. (Hell, I still need to get and play Sonic Mania!)

I think it ranges from person to person, but I feel that after stepping away from something, one can return with a clearer head and it actually helps! Sometimes we hit barriers in something(execution, some sort of matchups, whatever, a little bit of everything), and actually breaking off from the norm helps. For some people, grabbing a sub helps with this, but sometimes we reach walls on the games themselves, and going back to chill a little and come back refreshed, so to speak, helps a lot.

It helped us back in the old hard mode raiding days, I can say that-we'd sometimes insist on pounding away at a certain boss for hours and hours, days in a row, would help, but when we ended up deciding to try something else for awhile and coming back? We'd actually get the kill after what felt like a few tries. I think subconsciously we get in a sort of 'repetition mode' where we keep banging our head into a wall once in awhile with things.

So yeah. It's a short blog I guess; but I figured I'd let folks know if you're considering taking a little break from fighting games and playing them lighter for awhile before diving back in, it's not always a bad idea! You could come back with some flashes of inspiration, after all.