I would say there are many good ways to train but all of them involve two basic principles, the first one is working in your weaknesses by analyzing your games you can notice where your main problems are. For example some months ago i noticed a couple of problems with my game, i was prone to miss many tactical oportunities and also i couldnt make my strategic plans work because some tactics errors in the execution of said plan. so i begun to work hard in solving puzzles and here is where the second principle comes out, you have to work hard. If you dont take the time to really think when you are analyzing a position you are not going to improve your chess. i have solved some puzzles that seemed imposible for my level one of those took me around 5 hours of active calculation but if you continue trying at some given point your brain simple comes with the right move in the critical position. The key is not to quit when you are analazying a position until you are completly sure you have the right sequence of moves or the right plan, even when you feel your brain is gonna explode you have to continue. The reason why hard thinking works is because when you are analyzing you are not only memorizing patterns but also your brain beggins to adapt, how does it do it? simple by creating new hardware to process that specific kind of information. This phenomenae is called plasticity and is how the brain creates new neuron networks to make specific kind of processing more efficiente, in this case to process chess information, thats how you beggin to calculate faster and more accurately. So, whatever you study or whatever you are training on at the moment it doesnt matter if is oppening theory, strategy or endings, do it thinking really hard and taking the time to do it. Thats the only way to improve. by using this method i went from 1550 to 1700 in around 3 months.
Is there a right way to study chess?
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Of course, I guess the answer is no, because then everybody would be doing it.
But maybe there is a right way and it is so hard that people can't put in that much effort.
So, for the higher rated players, who have got their by putting in effort, what is the way to improve?
My coach has suggested an excellent way, but again, it is EXTREMELY hard. He says that take some annotated/unannotated games. Set up a blank board and follow the pieces on the blank board till you can and try and make it till the end. This exercises board visualization and also helps understand the relation between the pieces and squares.