This is a tutorial that I came up with; it is called manual onion skin:
When you’re animating with a background you can still have an onion skin, all you need to do is with the sticks that will move in the next frame change the color to light grey and put a copy of the stick where you would put it in the next frame, like this:
http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q308/xray5982/untitled-4.png
or this:
http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q308/xray5982/untitled2.png

Also here a couple tips about gaining ranks:
1. When you start out on pivot usually your main problems are choppiness and stiffness.
Choppiness and stiffness are both low beginner mistakes but stiffness is common to even the best animators. If you are low beginner and you want to achieve medium beginner you have to get rid of choppiness by turning the frame rate to 12+ and then add more frames so it looks more realistic.
2. After choppiness is gone work on stiffness, at this stage your usually medium beginner, in each frame move all the joints, not just the main ones, so that it makes sense. Stiffness is a very tough problem to get rid of but if you just remember to move each joint your animations will gain ranks.
3. The next stage is easing, when you move you don’t go the same speed all the way along, you start up slow, speed up then slow down to a stop. If you want animations to have physics you better apply easing. This rank is usually high beginner, here is an example: (frame = |, space = -) |-|--|---|----|---|--|-| not this |-|-|-|-|-|-|
4. Effects always look cool if you put them right so why not put them on an animation to make it look cool and gain ranks, the better the effects the better the animation looks. Follow these 4 steps and you should be on your way to inters, but don’t forget to keep improving on this while making your way to elites

prettey good tut even though i'm somewhere between low bigginner and high bigginner

um..... thanks i guess it worked alright..