What you guys are talking about is quickening your reaction speed. You're training your mind to work complex thoughts at a higher rate of speed. That is not gaining reflexes. A reflex is this:
A reflex action is an automatic (otherwise called involuntary) neuromuscular action elicited by a defined stimulus.
An example of a reflex. For a person not trained in martial arts, if you swing at their face, they'll either wince and freeze on the spot, or they will duck out of the way. If you try to do the same test against a practitioner of physical combat, they will most likely swing an arm to block and then already have their arm pulled back for a counter-attack.
To apply this to smash, a reflex would be this. A newbie is playing the game. He runs at the enemy, whom of which is charging an f-smash. At the last second, the newbie realizes what is happening and shields or gets hit.
Stimulus- Seeing the opponent charging an attack
Reflex- Pull the trigger down to avoid damage/get hit.
A veteren would be more like this. Two people engaged in battle. The enemy shffl's a dair. Before the vet. actually can think of a command, he automatically WD's out of the way and slammed down on the c-stick for a counter-dsmash. That is a reflex.
Stimulus- Enemy is about to land a strong hit
Reflex- Hands do a complicated procedure. Press x/y, split second later pull the trigger all the way down, then smash the control stick down and press A simultaneously/ pressing the c-stick down.
These, are reflexes, whether they're taking the hit, or avoiding and punishing, still reflexes. The only way to gain these reflexes are to constantly play and train against people. If you want to be sickeningly good at powershielding, then do nothing but shield for an hour a day against a well versed player(s) with all the characters, including projectile spam. You must set up a specific situation constantly and execute that situation until you do it without thinking, "Now I press this, that, and do this while...". It must be an
automatic response.
On the other hand, reaction time is processing the situation and consciously acting out from there.
The priority of the mind goes from, reflex, to response time. If you respond fast enough, you can order the cancellation or redirection of the reflex. If you're a bit slow, you might not be able to respond until after the reflex is commited and finished. What I mean is this:
You're standing in a room, facing a wall. All of a sudden, you're suckerpunched directly in the back of the head. You spin around and you see two men standing there. The first man you see is doing nothing but standing there. If you're quick enough, you'll see another man, standing there with his fists in boxing position. If you don't notice the second man, you would strike the first man. People who have lower reaction times usually will hit him. If you have a high reaction speed, you'll see the second person who is actually the assailant and further threat, you'd change target to him.
As for building reaction time, you can do the stepmania thing. After a while it'll definitely raise your hand speed, which is always an important thing to acquire. So it'll always help in warming up at the very least. Typical reaction speed/reflex games are the hand slapping games which are everywhere in the world.
Also, there are things like this:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/reactiontime.shtml - The ruler thing
http://www.steriley.com/speed/ - This is pretty cool too.
http://www.bullettimereaction.com/ - Another online reaction timer. This has a gunshot being played, so it allows for a quicker response due to startling, as opposed to a docile yellow dot. (I got to stage 11 on the first try. It gets much more difficult as the reaction speed demand is higher, and you get used to the gunshot so the scaring factor is removed from the equation.)
In order to build reflexes, you need reaction speed, whether it's slow or not. The game of smash is a dance of reaction and reflex, constantly pulsating, struggling against eachother. You use your reaction speed to read your opponent's moves, find what stimulus causes which reflex, and counter those reflexes with your own. That, I believe is the clearest definition of mindgame that I've heard in a long time.
