Optimized Pad Configuration (PS3) & Finger Training

So after a long online break (I spent my time offline, even signing out of PSN to simply train in the dojo and get my execution down as best as I could), I'm getting back into the game. I tried my absolute best to make stick work for me, but I just couldn't get it to work even after months of offline practice, so I return to pad (I use a Dualshock 2 w/ converter).

Here are some things that I came away with though.

1) I actually altered my button config for pad to be the following:
Sqaure = G
R1 = P
L1 = K
L2 = P+K+G

One of the advantages of using stick was each finger was mapped to a button, clean and simple. Thus, I tried to translate this to pad.

What I found this did was eliminate the time of my Right thumb moving around for hitting the singular P or G or K buttons and made my responses far faster. At first it is really different, but once you get used to it, it actually feels kind of like an FPS setup where you have a trigger finger. It definitely helped my EDCTE stuff since I'm not using my thumb to double up on buttons but thumb and right trigger finger. The 3 button trigger is just because I find my left index and left middle fingers more independent. You can always make the other face buttons single's as well so you find a config that is comfortable, but I think this helped me.

Plus, it also slowed down my button inputs so I wasn't committing as quickly and instead doing my best to hit-confirm (still a work in progress)

2) Pad movement

So I broke my hand (well specifically my ring finger) playing football in college which has made VF stick movements a royal pain since it affects my wrist speed and dexterity. However, it was really hard to keep up with pace of 3D techniques with pad since your thumb is going stir crazy. After reading online and remember back to my days playing drum set, I stumbled across some exercises designed to improve you thumb speed.

Exercise 1) Move you thumb to your index finger as fast as you can for 1 minute (while keeping all fingers relaxed), take a break, then repeat for 3 cycles. After doing this for a while (it burns at first), I actually notice my thumb was moving around the pad far faster and not getting tired. This made keeping up the with pace a lot better after a couple of weeks of practice

Exercise 2) Make circles around the D-pad by pushing up, left, down, right as fast as you can for 1 minutes. Take a quick break and reverse direction. The patterns to practice are

a) u, l, d, r
b) u, r, d, l
c) u, d, l, r
d) u, d, r, l
e) l, r, u, d
f) really any pattern

The key is to do each one as fast (but as relaxed) as you can a couple of times a day. Best time I found was during room matches while I was waiting for the matches in front of me to resolve. It sounds crazy, but my thumb speed improved immensely. It made my movement far more crisp and once I started doing the EDC canceling stuff again, it didn't feel as forced as before.

Didn't know if people had figured this stuff out (or if I'm just bat-shit insane) but I thought I'd share in case it helps anyone out or if people had any suggestions

Cheers!