Actually getting worse the more that I study?

I am sure that this has been written on a million times before, but is this a common thing? I have been studying harder than I ever have before, and I seem to be getting pretty consistently worse. I was playing ~1600 in Rapid about a month or so ago. I'm playing at about 1500 now, and struggling -- hard. Not quite sure what's going on! Hmmm!

what are you studying? do you have a teacher?

You Are Getting Better But Worse In The Application Of What You Have Learned

Are you playing games after or before you study? I play worse after doing puzzles, it's probably just visual exhaustion in my case.

that's what I was thinking, I don't have as much experience as an NM so I can't speak for him but the way understand it is you are not as proficient with your new learnings. I play pretty much one opening on white and black but I am actively working on other openings and theory and I frequently try it in real time games and get crushed because I haven't learned all the variations or I don't understand how the opening works well enough.

@cyberash said in #2:
> what are you studying? do you have a teacher?

No teacher. So, basically, what I have decided is that I should learn one solid opening for white (the Scotch) and two for black (the Accelerated Dragon and the King's Indian). I have been using Chessable to learn all of the different lines and such. I watch the videos and I practice daily. Admittedly, I do not do puzzles as much as I probably should. Also, I haven't yet learned all of the lines of the Accelerated Dragon. Still, I know much more now about these openings than I did before -- and I am playing worse.

I'm not too concerned about my rating. 1500, 1600, 1700... I don't care all that much, but rating IS at least one indicator of progress and improvement, and to see myself going backwards after putting in exponentially more effort is... strange? unusual? disconcerting?

@MrDeCesare it seems to me like your theory knowledge is adequate, so like Pkill said to practice more is easily the best option. An important thing to note is that a lot of the lines you would learn on a website are if you are facing an opponent who knows the full variations and is as informed as you on what the position. With that being said it's unlikely that every opponent you place will be like the computer lines you are learning. The conclusion is that you should practice but instead of referring back to the videos or a website, analyze it yourself with stockfish and see where everything went wrong or how you could've achieved a positional advantage and repeat until you are winning consistently. One last thing to keep in mind is that bullet and blitz are good for finding lots of openings that your opponents might play but at the same time doesn't provoke great thinking.

Are you sure you're doing worse? Maybe it just looks worse because you can see a little better what's going on out there.