Hey Chaoz Try playing ! thats a good 12 to practice on and practice Anubis in Expert for some of the quicker steps. Then once you have that mastered to a tee start practicing Hardcore of the North. Good luck man

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live life to the fullest...never give up on the things and or people you love....and always try to have fun when ever possible

You're probably going to smack me for this, but I'm serious.

Play MONOLITH and SUMMER. they will boost your stamina up more than anything in the game, and help with the ridiculous fast runs that many of the 12s exhibit. I don't expect you to pass them without any problems either, they still give me problems

Also, play Vertex. The original. Not squared.

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If you are at an arcade that has R21 Custom Songs enabled, you might try practicing Max Forever (found on stepmania.com). You will have to make sure you rig the ogg file and desample it to be less than 5MB, but if you can get it to work, practicing the Hard Chart will surely train your body for endurance, which drains more quickly on the extreme songs found in ITG. I hope that helps because I am not good on 12s yet myself.

If that is not an option. I recommend songs that make you move that you can easily do. My favorite for vigorous excerise is our hard (i.e. Heavy) chart for Go Beyond! Now if you need in game songs my recommendation would have to be songs with alot of streaming, believe it or not Pandemonium Medium and Energizer Medium are good charts for just streaming too without wearing yourself out. Simple enough?

If you want my advice, and it's somewhat different from other people's, play 10's and 11's until you can alughter them. 98's and above, consistently. If you want to build stamina there are cheaper and more efficient ways to do it than failing Summer over and over again, like riding a bike around instaed of driving. Stamina is probably not your problem, technique plays a major role. I've never seen you play, but it's quite likely you're making one or more of the following mistakes:

* "Sitting down" while playing. A lot of people who initially start using the bar seem to think it's supposed to support all of your weight, or else that leaning heavily back is somehow sound. Neither is the case. The bar is really just a tool for focusing your steps. When you bend your knees heavily, the result is inevitably that you have to stand up when you step (or worse, sit down more), wasting energy and throwing your timing off by making your physical relationship to the pad inconsistent. Also, even when you can step that way, it just uses more energy than necessary. If you feel uncomfortable playing with your leg straighter, then you're stepping too hard. Step mostly from the upper leg, hip, and core, and not from the knee.

*Tightening up during faster runs. Exactly the opposite of what you should do, looseness will always be your friend when hitting faster runs. Stepping harder can help with timing by increasing your kinesthetic awareness of the pad and giving you an auditory cue to your steps, but it hurts stamina. If you can get away with it then that's fine, but you are paying for it, so make sure you can actually afford it. Looseness combined with focus works very well. If you remember what type of motion achieves what result on the pad, and keep an image of the pad in your mind, you can move more minimally.

*General psychological tension. I can't tell you how to get rid of this, I can only tell you that you need to learn to shut out thought and use your mind purely for focus. It's hard, but not because you need to try harder. You need to try softer. When you seek it, you canno find it. So I guess don't worry about this too much. In fact, just don't worry at all. Contrary to what many say, second guessing yourself is a very good thing, but it's absolutely critical that you wait until after you're off the pad to do it.

*A corrolary of this is, don't change what you're doing in the middle of a song. When you do that, you don't get a solid idea of what works and what doesn't, because you were inconsistent.

You have a lot of tools available to you to help your focus, and a lot of different things you can cue in on. Sounds, sights, physical sensations. Learn to take cues more subtly from your body, because this is where most people are lacking, and this is what will help you do more with less. Learn to cue from the song itself rather than just the sound of your steps, although both are very useful.

That's my advice. There's always more to learn, but I wouldn't want to confuse you and I don't know where you are right now in terms of skill, so hopefully that's appropriate.