The biggest thing you can do is keeping a positive attitude. If what you're called to do is within your ability, everything will come naturally with the right attitude. attitude isn't just "I can do it," though. It's also "I can do better," and "I'll take that criticism and play better" as well as "I have to practice the right way." Keep a good attitude and everything will go fine.

If you're still in school, as in it's not summer, practice in your classes. Move your feet and play through the exercises in your head or with your fingers. I've gotten better at a lot of things from just thinking about it enough, like weird rhythmic patterns and stuff like that. It helps me, with memorizing stuff too. So if your in an especially boring class with a long lecture 'bout somethin' you don't care about, or you don't really wanna start your homework right away, it might help. I'm not sayin' don't do your homework, or anythin' like that but, that kinda stuff helps me.

its all about attitude as he said. if u don't have the right attitude then ur not goin to go anywhere. u have to be able to keep urself motivated take criticism and such. if u don't have the right attitude then you're not going to be motivated to practice and therefore will fall behind.

as far as marching and playing METRONOME i know the eletronic beeping is extremely annoying but those little devices of satan are helpful when it comes to making sure you are in time. another thing would be to learn the music first until u can play it as easy as breathing air and then put ur foot to it...or if ur music isn't broken up into sections already (A B C D..rehersal numbers etc)
u can do it urself and work on marking time to one section at a time and add a new section every time u master one

Since you're practicing by yourself, I would suggest taking a look at the bass drum part as a WHOLE. What happens quite often is a bass drummer gets caught up in how HIS part goes and doesn't realize that the whole line needs to sound like one instrument.

I guess what I'm saying is, be familiar with your music enough to know your part and how it relates to others on your line.

practice marking time while playing with a met
as a bass drummer you need to be able to count and use your feet for timing

ive always thought to be a good bass drummer that you had to be an amazing counter.
like knowing your rests and knowing when you play then you put that with the feet and once youve got those down really start to build your bass hands
just my opinion though

yeah thats mostly right
the bass tech from BD has a good explination of bass drummimg...its mathmatical
you need to be able to fit a certain # of notes into a beat or 1/2 beat
and you need to know exactly where your note falls in relation to the met and the parts as a whole

sometimes it helps to play the whole part (like a snare drummer) and then see where your parts fit in