Ch. 31 · The Programs — osu! Codex

31 The Programs

11 min read🎯 14 drills💬 3 coach takesD13E4A5C1T1B11✎ Suggest a change

Each program below is one creator's routine, condensed. Run one at a time. Where two programs target the same skill, pick by temperament: some people like ladders, some like maps they enjoy.

Before any of them, the method the top players interviewed name when asked how to train a skill set at all:

Drill: Beat your own locals

Pick a handful of maps that sit under one skill umbrella and are hard for that skill only. A map that tests aim, tapping, and reading at once takes far longer to improve on than one where only your target skill is the problem; one to two skills at a time is their limit.
Play them without expectations the first time, to set a baseline score rather than a target.
Return every day or two and beat your own local score: one fewer miss, one percent more accuracy, a longer combo. That is the progress report.
Keep the set for weeks. One of them spent five years unable to stream 220 BPM, then played one map at that speed about a hundred times and could. ⁴⁰

Beginner path: build the base

Tonehh and bloo put the first hundreds of hours in the low 3 to low 5 star range, playing nomod, chasing full combos rather than pp, and adding one new skill at a time. Tonehh's rough map of where each skill first appears is a useful compass, not a rule. ^3,14

Skill	First appears around	Peaks (fundamental form) around
Jumps	4 stars	Mid 5 stars
Bursts	High 3 stars	—
Prolonged bursts	High 4 stars	—
Streams	Low to mid 5 stars	Low 6 stars
Cross-screen jumps and spaced, curvy streams	Mid 7 stars and up	—

Drill: Low-star isolation (digitalhypno)

Pick a 1 to 2 star difficulty of a song you like. The map should be easy enough that nothing except your chosen skill is hard.
Play it three times, each with one instruction: alternate every note, then start every pattern on your other finger, then put the cursor exactly in the center of every circle.
Move up a level only when your comfortable range gives full combos at 97 to 98% within a few tries. ^1,3

Drill: The approach-rate ladder

Decide the AR you want to read, then practise one step below it: dense, consistent AR 8 maps to build AR 9, AR 10 to build AR 10.3. Convert maps down with osu! trainer or lazer's difficulty adjustment if you need more of them.
Give it a full day, or a week, and play nothing else in that block. An hour of AR 9 followed by an evening of AR 10 teaches neither.
Come back to your old AR periodically so it doesn't decay; what you've played a lot of sticks around.
Expect flat progress and then a sudden step. Don't jump two steps at once. ^39,83

Streams, route A: bursts up the star ratings (Tonehh)

Drill: The burst ladder

Start at low 4 stars (3 if bursts still turn into mash), on older maps with plenty of bursts.
Alternate every burst deliberately, even when mashing would pass. If you lock up, drop a star rating and 10 to 20 BPM.
Full combo each level at 97 to 98% before moving up: low 4, mid 4, high 4, low 5.
When bursts are clean, extend them: prolonged bursts around high 4 stars, first streams from high 4 to mid 5.
Check your hit error graph for over- or under-streaming and adjust consciously. ^3,7

Drill: One variable at a time (btmc)

Write your current clean stream down as three numbers: BPM, object count, and spacing (stacked, moderate, or spaced).
Raise one and hold the other two. Drop 5 BPM and add two objects; or add 5 to 10 BPM and cut the count; or keep both and widen the spacing.
Full combo it, then push a different variable next time. Rotate which dial you turn.
When a level stops working, lower the variable you last raised rather than dropping everything at once. ³⁴

Streams, route E: the foundation course (Almost)

The most staged of the routes, and the one aimed squarely at a player who cannot yet use their second finger. Expect roughly four months, and treat taking longer as fine. ⁶⁷

Drill: Zero to deathstream

Triples, stacked. From about 3 stars, find maps with triples on a single spot so no aiming is involved, and learn the zxz movement. Alternators should practise starting triples on the weaker finger now; it is harder at first and much harder later (Ch. 6).
Five-note bursts, stacked. Same idea, longer. Then extend toward ten notes, and start caring about accuracy on them. Set up hitsounds you can hear, and watch the hit error bar for over- and under-streaming (Ch. 7).
Add movement. Bursts and triples spaced half a note or less, in straight lines or shallow arcs. Read each circle individually.
Short streams at 4 stars. Ten to twenty notes, spacing still under half a note, chasing accuracy rather than length.
The gate. A full combo at 97% or better on a long stream map you have chosen as your benchmark. Keep everything in this course under 180 BPM.
Consistency, not one-offs. A single 100% run doesn't clear a stage; being able to repeat it does. ⁶⁷

Almost’s take

Slow everything down to train technique. Agrees with the chart. He edits high-BPM maps down to about 150 BPM and lowers AR, which is Half Time with control over each variable, using osu! trainer or McOsu. Get the movement right slowly, then speed it back up. ^1,67,82,83
Stamina maps have an entry requirement. Supported in spirit. His gate for long monotonous stream maps is 99% accuracy across the first hundred circles; below that, shorter streams are the better use of the session. Play them at most once a day and at the end of a session, since that is fatigue work and fatigue impairs what you learn next (Ch. 30). ^67,132
Raise one axis at a time: OD, then BPM, then length. Agrees with khz and Korilak. Same ladder logic all three routes use, applied to three separate dials rather than one. ^5,31,67

Streams, route B: the deathstream ladder (khz)

khz builds streams directly on long practice maps, starting slow and climbing 10 BPM at a time. Tonehh, who had warned against grinding those maps, concedes in their video that more than one road works. Both stress that the method is gym-like, boring, and not for everyone. ⁵

Drill: Khz's phases

Phase 1, finger control (140 to 160 BPM). Play a long stream practice map three times at the start and three times at the end of each session, with No Fail if you need it. Full combo it at 95% or better, then move up 10 BPM. Clear 140, 150, and 160 before moving on.
Phase 2, stamina (170 to 180 BPM). Same routine where the arm starts to strain. Tapping lighter and relaxing the hand lets you recover mid-stream. Strain is expected; pain is the signal to stop.
Phase 2.5, optional. Keep climbing if you enjoy it. khz considers 180 BPM deathstream stamina enough to stream much faster.
Phase 3, speed. Play maps above your comfortable BPM and adapt, using osu! trainer to change speed. Keep OD between 8 and 10 so you don't train sloppy timing.

Safety: stop at pain, do hand exercises daily, keep the tapping hand flat rather than tilted steeply upward, and treat hours away from the game as recovery. ^5,83

khz’s take

There's more than one road to streaming. Supported. Challenge point research ties the best practice difficulty to the learner, not to one universal path, and both routes share the order control, stamina, speed. ^108,109
Climb 10 BPM at a time, only after a 95% full combo. Supported. Small, mastery-gated steps are progressive overload, and expecting scores to dip after each step is what the framework predicts. The exact figures are rules of thumb. ^108,110
140 BPM is finger-control territory. Agrees with the chart. That's 9.3 notes per second, about 4.7 per finger when alternating, so it builds alternation without maxing either finger; at 170 BPM each finger needs about 5.7, at the top of the single-finger range. ¹¹⁶
Push through strain like the last reps at the gym. Nuance. Going to failure isn't needed for gains, and practicing while fatigued impaired learning in a 2019 study. Treat end-of-session runs as stamina work and keep precise technique for when you're fresh. ^131,132
Keep the hand flat; a steep upward tilt invites carpal tunnel trouble. Supported. Carpal tunnel pressure rises as the wrist bends back, climbing between 15 and 30 degrees of extension, and pressing harder raises it further at every angle. Whether keyboard use causes carpal tunnel syndrome is still debated. ^133,134,135
Daily hand exercises prevent injury. Partly supported. A large review found strong evidence for strengthening programs and moderate evidence for stretching in preventing upper-limb problems at work; his specific routine hasn't been tested, and his two injury-free years are one person's experience. ¹³⁶

Streams, route C: Korilak's sets

Drill: Korilak's stream sets

Start on a long stream practice map at 150 BPM. Aim for a full combo; accuracy matters less at first, but 97% or better is the signal to move up 10 BPM.
Play it five times back to back, no breaks. Then rest five minutes.
Repeat for three rounds. You can move up mid-session if a level full combos early.
Step back down a level, or stop for the day, if a higher BPM stops working.
Test progress occasionally on a long deathstream marathon: getting further means it's working.
Don't play anything fast afterwards, and stop at any irregular pain in the arm, wrist, or fingers. ³¹

Korilak went from 150 BPM long streams in March 2016 to reaching halfway through a 200 BPM long stream map by August. Five months, one skill. Expect that pace, not a breakthrough week. ³¹

Streams, route D: cut the map down (We Luv Lama method)

Tonehh's third streaming video takes a long deathstream map and rebuilds it shorter in the editor, so the load grows in controlled steps instead of all at once. ⁹

Drill: Progressive cuts

Open a long stream map in the editor and save copies that stop after 100, 150, 200 notes, and so on.
Work out where to cut with arithmetic: the gap between 1/4 notes is 15,000 ÷ BPM milliseconds, so at 210 BPM notes are 71 ms apart and 100 of them take about 7 seconds. A 1,025-note stream at that speed runs about 73 seconds.
Full combo the short version cleanly, then move to the next length. Add BPM with osu! trainer instead of length once the map is long enough.
Keep OD at 8 or above so speed practice doesn't train loose timing.
Soreness is expected; sharp pain is not. Take days off and accept that progress is slow. ^9,83

Hard Rock

Three routes, all gradual. Korilak's is the most structured; the precision video's is the most map-driven; BTMC's is the most brutal.

Drill: Korilak's collection ladder

Make four collections: HR, HR Passed, HR Consistent, HR FC.
Fill HR with AR 10 maps you have already full comboed without mods, around one star below your comfortable nomod level.
Give each map three attempts with Hard Rock. Pass it and it moves to HR Passed; fail three times and you move on to the next map. Don't replay a map the same day.
Pass a map in HR Passed three times (on separate sittings) and it moves to HR Consistent, where you get one attempt per visit. Fail and it drops back.
Full combo a HR Consistent map and it moves to HR FC, where the target is one attempt at 99% or better.
Korilak spent about two weeks with 80% of his playtime on this, learning Hard Rock without Hidden. ³¹

Korilak’s take

The three-strike ladder. Supported. Spaced repetitions beat massed ones, and each promotion raises difficulty only after mastery, which is what the challenge point framework recommends. The specific numbers are his. ^103,108
Timing built without mods is what carries Hard Rock. Supported. Hard Rock raises OD by 40%, so the same hit error yields worse judgements; at OD 10 the 300 window is 19.5 ms either side. ^46,49

Drill: The isolate-then-immerse route (btmc and the precision video)

Train each Hard Rock ingredient separately first: small circles (CS 5 and up), tight timing (OD 9 to 10), and fast reading (AR 10), using nomod maps or lazer's difficulty adjustment. Find which one actually fails.
If isolation alone doesn't transfer, do what BTMC did: play nothing but Hard Rock for about two weeks, starting on maps you know.
After a few weeks on known maps, start sightreading with Hard Rock; mixing nomod back in shows how much has carried over.
Don't take on two reading styles at once: nomod players learn Hard Rock alone, Hidden players learn it with Hidden. ^1,32,41,56

Double Time

Drill: The dt on-ramp

Prerequisite: comfortable across a variety of mid 5 star nomod maps, and ideally Hard Rock first, so AR 10 is already familiar. AR 8 with DT is effectively AR 9.67, just under it.
Start on AR 8 maps that stay under about 220 BPM with DT, or on maps that are high 3 stars nomod (about low 5 stars with DT).
Play the map without mods first to learn its patterns, then add DT. The patterns are identical, just faster.
Progress along one axis at a time: higher BPM, then higher AR (AR 9 maps become 10.33 with DT), then longer maps.
Expect reading, not stamina, to be the wall at high AR: at AR 10 with DT an object is on screen for 300 ms. ^{13,14,31,32,47}

Speed and single-tapping

Drill: Korilak's single-tap practice

Prerequisite: you can play DT comfortably around 220 BPM. Before that, this is just a way to hurt yourself.
Warm up with a slow map played entirely with one finger, around 130 BPM.
Cycle a handful of AR 8 maps in the 250 to 265 BPM range, no Hidden: this is speed and endurance work, not reading practice.
Repeat the cycle until performance stops improving that session, then stop. It uses more of the arm than streaming does. ³¹

The gentler version of the same idea: play burst-heavy maps about 10 to 15 BPM above your comfortable speed, or raise a map's BPM in osu! trainer, and let control catch up before you climb again. ^5,42
Speed built this way still needs stamina and finger control underneath it, which is why Tonehh's speed stalled for two months until he trained streams instead. ¹¹

Consistency and long maps

Drill: Length and pressure

Pick a map you can pass, then add about 30 seconds of length every time the current length becomes comfortable. ⁸
Give each attempt at a target map two or three tries, then move on; come back hours later or the next day. ^31,42
When you miss mid-map, finish the map anyway. Learning the second half is worth more than a fresh retry.
For a section that fails every time, cut a practice difficulty of just that section in the editor and drill it, then put it back in context.
Hide the HUD with Shift+Tab when the combo counter is what makes you tense. ^8,58

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