This is a guide for movement in RTA speedruns. It will help you get familiar with common terminology for movement options and discuss the mechanics associated with them. Note that these various movement options can be chained together to create more complex movement options. For example, doing a triple jump followed by a wallkick is called a "triple jump wallkick".
SeanRaider's video covers movement options very well and also has an input display to help visualize everything. It provides a solid foundation that can be built on with the movement options listed below.
Single Jump - Press A to single jump. How long you hold A determines Mario's height during the jump. Maximum height is proportional to Mario's horizontal speed.
Double Jump - Upon landing from a single jump, kick, sideflip, or walking off of a ledge, press A when Mario makes contact with the ground to double jump. This jump gives Mario more height than a single jump. Similar to a single jump, how long you hold A during the double jump will discern Mario's height and maximum height is dependent on horizontal speed.
Triple Jump - Upon landing from a double jump, press A when Mario makes contact with the ground to triple jump. You must have at least 20 horizontal speed to carry out this move, and it is also not possible to ledge grab out of a triple jump. Unlike single and double jumps, triple jumps are always the same height.
Long Jump - While Mario is moving, hold Z and press A to long jump.
Sideflip - While Mario is running in any direction, flick the stick in the opposite direction to make Mario start sliding. While Mario is in this sliding state, you can perform a sideflip by tilting the stick in your desired direction and pressing A.
Backflip - While standing still, hold Z and press A to backflip. This technique has very few applications in an RTA run, but the most common use is on the Advanced CCM Wall Kicks Will Work strategy.
Walljump/Wallkick - While Mario has forwards momentum and is within approximately 45° of a vertical wall, he can perform a wallkick. When you get close to the wall, press A to wallkick. There are 5 frames in which Mario is able to wallkick, and each frame is slightly different. The most notable wallkick first-frame wallkick, also known as a firstie/firsty where Mario will gain speed out of the wallkick. On 2nd through 5th-frame wallkicks Mario loses some height each frame.
Punch - While standing still on the ground or with low forward momentum, press B to punch. Pressing B while crawling, or pressing B with high horizontal high speed while holding neutral on the stick will also perform a punch.
Kick (on ground) - While standing still on the ground or with low forward momentum with the A button held, press B to do a kick.
Kick (in air) - While in the air with little to no forward momentum, press B to kick.
Dive - While grounded or in the air with a lot of forward momentum, press B to dive. Being able to perform a kick or dive in specific parts of the game requires some effort. A common point of failure among beginner runners is trying to do double jump kicks in Bowser in the Sky. This is great movement to practice to get a feel for how to kick versus how to dive.
Dive Recover/Rollout - While Mario is in the dive animation and hits the floor, you can press either A or B to roll out of the dive. Some players slide their finger from A to B (for two chances) to try and make the rollout dustless. When doing long jumps, dive recovers, and slide kick rollouts you have a large window to hit the next movement. Dustless rollouts can be performed on the first possible frame. If performed correctly, no dust will be generated under Mario, hence the name dustless. Mario does not lose any speed with dustless movements. If you roll out over an edge, Mario will be in a state where he does not take damage, but cannot ledge grab, kick, wallkick, or ground pound.
Slide Kick - While Mario has forward momentum, hold Z and press the B button to perform a slide kick. Slide kicks have the property of quick startup, so it is preferred in very specific instances. One common spot is when going to talk to the penguin inside the CCM slide area.
Ground Pound - While Mario is in the air in a jumping or falling state, you can hit Z to ground pound. It is very common to ground pound under stars, since it extends Mario's hitbox upwards and he falls down faster after grabbing the star. The same thing applies to breaking boxes to grab stars. If you hit A+Z on the same frame while grounded, Mario will ground pound. Mistakes often occur during speedruns when the runner attempts to long jump but instead ground pounds.
Ledge Grab - Mario can grab a ledge out of any state with 3 exceptions. You cannot ledge grab if you are in a dive recover state, on a steep slope, or in a triple jump. This is why players often chain a triple jump with a wallkick so they can ledge grab.
Swimming - When swimming, you press A to keep swimming. To swim optimally, there are audio and visual cues most players use. If you watch any runner swim, you can pick up on those cues and determine what works best for you.
Flying - To start flying, Mario must have a Wing Cap equipped and perform a triple jump. This triple jump is unique, since it can be done in place, whereas a regular triple jump cannot. A good general practice while flying is to try and make smooth parabolic arcs to retain your speed. If you are falling or ground pounding with the Wing Cap on, you can hold A to fall slower.
Crawling - While standing still, holding Z and a direction on the stick will make Mario crawl.
Intermediate/Advanced Movement Options
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Example of a slow turn. Despite its name, this is a perfectly suitable movement option.
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Example of a quick turn. Notice how much faster you can begin a triple jump compared to the slowturn.
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You can jumpdive immediately on some slopes by holding Z.
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You can save a few frames by delaying your groundpounds under star boxes.
Twirling - When Mario bounces off a Spindrift or Fly Guy, or gets sucked into a tornado in Shifting Sand Land, he enters a twirling state. While in this state, you can hold A to make Mario spin faster and cover more ground as he descends. When landing on an enemy (such as the bird star in SSL), holding neutral while bouncing conserves your horizontal speed and direction until you move the stick again.
Pole Grab - When you grab the bottom of a pole, Mario will try to catch it but fail most of the time. If you mash B, he will keep trying to regrab the pole instead of falling off of it. You will see this a lot when runners try to do Lakitu Bounce in Rainbow Ride or grab the pole in Bowser in the Sky Reds.
Quick Turn - When holding neutral while landing (e.g. from a rollout), Mario will lose all momentum and perform a quick-stop animation. By inputting a direction on the stick during this quick-stop animation, Mario will begin to move, cancelling the quick-stop animation. Once Mario's speed returns to zero, the next directional input will be a quick turn, and Mario will instantly face the direction you input.
Speedkick - This is probably the most difficult movement option in the game. At a high level, you speedkick to maintain your speed and get a specific amount of spacing into some other movement option like a triple jump wallkick or a jump dive. To do a speedkick, Mario must be moving. Before he makes contact with the ground, you must be holding A and the control stick must be slightly tilted in the direction you want to speedkick. If you've played any Super Smash Bros. games before, it is similar to performing tilts instead of smash attacks. Finally, when Mario hits the ground, hit B to speedkick. Check out the videos below for more on speedkicks.
Though it may seem unintuitive at first, using different camera angles can be very helpful for a wide variety of movement throughout the game. Manipulating the camera is also a key part of lag reduction. Play around with the camera modes and see what works best. When watching the videos on this site, make sure to pay attention to the cameras that are being used. It is not always easy to implement right when you start learning, but it is good to be aware of them.
Lakitu Cam - Lakitu Cam has fixed rotations in most stages. The clearest example of this is in Bowser secret stages, which are widely open and Lakitu can move freely. This is very useful to perform specific movements or tricks in the game because you can guarantee the same angle every time. In other stages, like Bob-Omb Battlefield, Lakitu Cam acts more unpredictably due to the camera colliding with walls as Mario moves around. If you double tap the R button, the camera refocuses at the original distance from Mario. When falling large distances, this is useful to get the camera behind Mario again instead of waiting for it to catch up to him. Common examples of this are in CCM 100 coins or Wall Kicks Will Work when you intentionally fall to the bottom of the stage.
Mario Cam - Mario Cam is best described as directly following behind Mario. When using Mario Cam, it is most often used in the C-down version. In places where Lakitu Cam fails to turn or follow well, Mario Cam is often used to see better. Mario Cam is also very helpful for setting specific angles upon stage entry. Some common stars to use this for are at the start of CCM 100 to grab the first red and LLL to enter the volcano.
Castle Cam - For lack of a better term, the camera gets fixed to certain viewpoints for some areas. Most notably, inside the castle lobby and inside the mansion for Big Boo's Haunt. In these areas, you can switch between Lakitu Cam and Mario cam, but lose the functionality of using the C-down versions of these. In BBH however, if you enter the mansion in Mario Cam C-down, that camera will persist as long as you do not switch back to Lakitu Cam (This is useful for a number of stars in BBH). This is not an option for the lobby, since when you enter, you are changing loading zones.
Underwater Cam - When swimming, the camera will always follow behind Mario. The only difference between Mario Cam and Lakitu Cam for swimming is how close the camera is to Mario. If you need to use specific cameras while swimming (to lag reduce or swim through rings), you have to hold the C-button for the direction you want the camera to pan for as long as you need it. When you let go, it will pan back to directly behind Mario. Some players prefer to switch to a claw grip on their controller for swimming to make this easier.
Tricks VS Movements
While it's not always clear cut to distinguish what constitutes a trick and what constitutes movement, we have a common saying in the community. "Tricks save seconds, movement saves minutes." Basically, if you want to optimize your personal best quickly, sinking time into how Mario moves and interacts with different parts of stages will help you gain strong fundamentals. If you focus on specific tricks (pillarless, lavaboost, lakitu bounce, etc,) the time you spend learning those stars does not really improve your game as a whole. That being said, there are several runners who jumped in the deep end (reset over every failed trick until they became consistent) and still made it to the top. Pick what best works for you and make sure you are having fun with the game.