I'm not ignoring you. The suggestions you've made about sparring/free training and arcade mode is something I already do and have done since well before the release of Ultimate.
In fact, I don't touch any options outside of Training and Fight. I don't normally go online, all my online fights, as it were come strictly from throwdowns while I'm free training or playing Arcade mode's harder difficulties. If I come up against something online I don't quite know how to deal with, I run through that character in free training and analyze the move's frames, range, and more. I study all the replays I record (though I often end up with doubles of every match). I play a few hours every few days and take occasional breaks during play. I do everything a good player should or could do. I start with the basics, I don't do anything too advanced or too complex (though I practice the stuff), I don't play complex characters anymore, and keep to beginner friendly characters.
If you want to know my character usage, I have over 3,000 games play with Kokoro between DoA5 and Ultimate, no other character even comes close to 1,000 plays. Marie Rose on ultimate is now my second most played character at 684 games played. Kokoro has around 1,700 wins, Marie Rose has 247. There are characters with a higher number of wins (Brad, and Momiji), but fewer plays overall. Speaking solely of Ultimate's game, Kokoro leads at 764 games. Its very likely that Marie Rose will soon beat that number. Everyone else hovers around 400 or (much) less.
Now for today, again swearing off Rondo has paid off and I'm at 11 wins out of 16 games tonight. There were a lot fewer challenges this evening. Several of my losses come strictly from a Tina player who couldn't stop running easy gimmicky stuff (4K BT P+K or T, 3H+K, 1P, PP6PK). After losing one match to the player I got really pissed off and reamed him in the next game. According to the replay I beat him in 43 seconds. probably less if you don't count the intros and outros.