There's sort of a "technique" involved in developing your skills with mara. You want to get used to the movement so that you can set yourself up in battles, so as to effectively improve your accuracy, which is half the class. But it's necessary, at least if you want the most out of your mara, to keep your movement and accuracy in sync at all times. It's quite possible to get a "good" mara with good aim and only poor movement control, but you WILL get owned by good dancers if you don't know how to adapt your movements to those who can dodge well, so to be one of the best maras, you need to be damn good in both movement and accuracy.
This is very basic advice, maybe sometime I'll go into details. I'm not quite as dedicated to mara as Draik is though.