Need to improve at DDR

I need to get my DDR skill up. Right now I am crossing over from Standard into Heavy (by that, I mean that I can get AA on many Standard level songs, but there are some Heavy songs I can't complete). I see myself as advanced, but not good enough to call myself an "expert". For example, I can clear Tsugaru on Heavy, but I always miss a lot of arrows near the end, and I can finish MAXX UNLIMITED on Light with my Awesome Bar (that's what I call it lol) awesomed out. I have unlocked Extra Stage in MAX2 quite a few times and got 16.71 sec., but I don't feel like I am good enough to win the tourney at my school on Thursday. Any helpful tips on how to get better/what songs to practice with? I have SuperNOVA and MAX2.

What I did when I went through my first extreme DDR training cycle was played a lot in endless mode. At least twice I played 50+ songs without breakpoints on basic/beginner. It ends up costing 3+ hour sessions but in the end what it does is allow you to get more easily into a flow and to better recognize patterns and such. The next move settings-wise is to up the difficulty (menu-wise) to the highest. What this does is that the songs stay the same, but you lose more from misses and gain less from perfects. This force you to be better to pass songs at all.

The last big thing I did was start wearing ankle weights. I bought a set at sports authority that allows you to change the weight from between 1/2 - 5 lbs a piece. This really upped my speed, and after wearing them for a few days, once they were taking off I was able to fly ;).

Hope that all helps.