BPM training - a guide to improving acc by someone who sucks at acc

###How Bad I Sucked
A little bit about me before we get started. (this is relevant, I promise) When I was in noobland and learning osu, I would constantly push my the limits of what I could read and play to the point where I would be nofailing with 60% on every map. It was 3 months before I got my first S rank ever, it was a 2.75 star hard map. At this point, I was so used to attempting challenging maps that it was actually BORING to try to fix my acc, and the only way to get more pp was to push the difficulty even higher. Fast forward a few months to where I am only playing DT insane maps or AR10 jump maps: my pp was entirely combo and difficulty based. My top 10 plays had only one S and 5 B ranks. I didn't like where my playstyle was leading me so I decided to take a break and really learn acc.

This is the cycle I find a lot of players get caught in, they push themselves way too hard early on and never bother to go back to work on acc or consistency because they quite frankly DON'T KNOW HOW.

This guide is the methods I found effective, written from the perspective of the epitome of a button masher.

###What I Tried
Now onto how I've worked to fix that acc. I tried many different approaches including playing the bpm's I felt most comfortable in (200+), restricting myself to only playing OD9+, and playing really easy maps. None of these felt effective at training anything. Playing high bpm accurately forsakes every bpm below 200, OD9+ maps were progress but it was slow and extremely frustrating, and getting acc on easy maps was more related to your concentration than your natural rhythm/ finger control.

So, what did work?

###BPM training
BPM training is restricting yourself to playing maps within a narrow range of BPM, starting all the way at the lower range of BPM's to really learn the rhythm. How is this different from playing easy maps? The difference is that these maps are slow, but not easy. They have enough stacked notes, jumps or difficult patterns to challenge you enough to hold your attention while you play them, yet they are slow enough to really focus on your accuracy.

A proper map for BPM training should be within 5~10 BPM of the desired range, must contain triples or short streams, be longer than 2 minutes, and should be at a difficulty where a sightread will result in anywhere between 80-90% accuracy. This is the sweet spot where I personally found most of my improvement. You should continue to practice you mapset until you get around 95%-97% accuracy: anything past this is less about your rhythm or finger control and is more about removing errors from your play.

##I think I get it, but I still suck
Don't worry about it, I sucked at first too. This section will be a couple short tips on how I learned to play with accuracy, primarily directed towards people who have 75% or less acc.

Playing stacked notes
Q: I can play single notes fine, but when it comes to a triple or a stream, I can never seem to hit them with any consistency.
A: You have rhythm, you only lack finger control. Put relax mod on and physically tap out the song (even though you aren't actually doing anything). You will learn what a proper stream sounds and feels like. Once you know what you are aiming for, you'll eventually improve.

Rhythm-Dense Songs
Q: I can hit single notes and I can hold streams, transitioning between the two is difficult though.
A: Relax, you are most likely trying to "pre-load" your fingers before a stream or triple by hesitating to mentally prepare for the incoming stacked notes. This is a bad habit, you should be able to switch between streamed notes and singles with no hesitation. Practice flow, don't try to be so mechanical about your keypresses: you should be able to play the stacked notes without tensing your hand/arm too much. (maintain acc though.) This can be a real challenge to learn how to do well, I found grumd/ goreshit maps to help more than any other type of map.

Recovering
Q: I play accurately, but once I mess up it "multiplies" and I mistime every note afterwards.
A: Recovering after a mess up is quite a bit related towards just playing more and learning on your own how to react when you hit a note wrong. The few tips I might be able to give are: listen to the music, not the hitsounds. When you make an error and listen to the hitsounds, it can sound like everything is on rhythm when you are actually playing everything early/late. Don't freak out. Mistakes happen, you will play better if you just accept your error and move on without stressing about it.

###Conclusion
My acc is still not where I want it: everything is a work in progress, however after a month and a half of trying other methods, I have made more progress in the past week doing BPM training than the previous month and a half. I will post mapsets for BPM ranges to serve as suggestions for other people who are attempting to fix their acc in a similar way. These posts will be a place where you can share maps that you personally found helpful, or post pictures of your improvements.

Any feedback on how to improve this is welcome.