This is a simple way of training your ground game in training mode solo.
It is universal, and is great for beginners trying to learn to whiff punish as well as veteran players that wish to quickly and efficiently cover multiple disciplines. It’s main goal is to provide a realistic environment that promotes reacting rather than anticipating. It can be expanded on by replacing jumps with something else. For example, replacing the jump-in with a fireball instead so you can practice reacting to it with your go-to FB punish while still focusing on the ground game.
This is brilliant, a training tactic that will stand the test of time so long as fighting games have a training/recording mode; I’ll definitely be utilizing this type of training while honing my skills in SFV.
smart stuff. I did the same for when the fadc shoryu nerf came in ultra to train the punishes on the dash forward. But adding a little more variety would help improve greatly on these certain matchups
I use a slightly different variation to practice midscreen footsies in SFIV. The aim is to improve ground control with basic pokes, whiff punishment and anti-airs.
Ryu recording example:
Walk back forth, low forward
Walk back forth, low short, jump
Walk back forth, low forward, low forward
Walk back forth, low short, hold level 2 focus, release
This will train you to whiff punish, AA on reaction when your pokes whiff, react to focus baits (be sure to try different approaches) and improve your spacing.
You can obviously switch characters depending on what you want to focus on. Juri, Cody or Dudley are good for practicing reaction anti-airs because of their low jumps and high priority j.hk.
I have never found recording the opponent doing normals and jump ins to be useful for real match footsies situations. The only thing I found it useful for is figuring out ranges of the normal and what are my options for whiff punishing said normals. And same goes for jump ins, just learning what the anti air buttons are for what angled jumps and what timings needed.
Here’s some advice I don’t see people usually offer which will improve your footsies. It’s called spacing, and a nice trick on how to “auto space” your self is using the blocked pushback of your pokes combined with standing idle right after to be outside of the opponents normal range so that if they go for it, it will whiff and then you react and whiff punish. It’s ideal to find your normals that push you back on block at a range so that their normal will make contact with you if you were to crouch but not if you stand idle as this will make pushing that button for them seem like a good option.
I’m not trying to take anything away from the video as I like anything that is intended for players to improve, but trying to whiff punish on reactions alone is near impossible. Whiff punishes are almost always scouted or anticipated with spacing and then you punishing their whiff is a reaction. So the example in the video will work in getting you to whiff punish, but it’s because you recorded exactly what the opponent is set to do. Going into a match after against a real opponent won’t actually be the same. That’s why I propose this method which allows you to dictate the situation to make the opponent do what you want, rather then reacting to a dummy set to do what you recorded. So hopefully people go into training mode and find the use of using blocked normals pushback with idle stance to help them in tricky match ups where they feel the opponents buttons are just to hard to deal with.
A basic example I will give is the shoto crouch mk. In a shoto match up, other then evil ryu, a blocked raw crouch mk combined with idle stance right after will leave you outside of the opponents crouch mk range and sweeps usually. So if you just stand and wait for a second and they immediately fireback their own sweep or low mk, it will whiff right in front of your toes and it’s an easy react sweep whiff punish.
It isnt a perfect metric by any means. But it does help in some respects. And this isnt new either, fanatic has gone on record saying that one if his training drills is to do a bunch of stuff on record in marvel and then play against the recording with various strategies like not blocking or not getting hit or trying to improvise superjump height confirms and stuff.
Not perfect, but nothing is. Even playing against people isnt perfect because differenyt people have different skillsets and varying degrees of knowledge.
The best way to attack footsies is as a multi part question. There is no one answer and there never will be.
Wiff punishing is just one of the many many many things that one can do and strategies to be played eith during footsies.
I learned to uppercut on reaction by training against the Cammy AI in ST. I learned recently that Fei Long was a better opponent but it doesn’t matter because that training was enough to give me the reactions and execution to DP basically anything I see unless I’m really expecting something else. Whiff punishment can also definitely be trained. You’ll obviously still fall for simple baits if you just twitch react without thought, but you can train yourself to react to animations. The canonical example is how Daigo trained himself to whiff punish Guile cr.mk in ST - he trained against his friend on the SNES version of SFII:T at speed 10.
(There’s another interview where he talks about this, but I’m not gonna look for it now).
For a more extreme example, read up on how Kuroda trained his reactions to deal with difficult situations in 3S.
I don’t doubt it has uses in improvement, I’m just offering my experience because this is something I have tried before and I found it not to have any effectiveness for me in actual matches because all this training drill did for me was whiff punish a recording that I made and already knew the exact movements my dummy was going to do. Not only that but because it’s a dummy recorded to wiggle a bit and then throw out a crouch mk or something, I’m not ever at the risk of it attempting to attack me. “Brick don’t hit back” sort of thing. For me, I need there to be at least another person in the mix that isn’t just wiggling and throwing out normals in a set recorded interval, I need there to be the threat of the opponent while I look to whiff punish, since this gives me a more realistic situation for me to practice and improve in. If I’m going into the training mode for something, it needs to translate into actual match situations, that’s why I suggested the auto spacing technique with using the pushback of normals combined with narrowing your hurtbox with an idle stance, which allows you to space your self and be ready to whiff punish something you trained for while also enticing the opponent to press that button because you had just forced them to block one of your buttons, and because if you used a button that’s pushback spaces you so that only an idle stance would make their normal whiff, that is the ideal spacing where someone would press a button since they still think they have range for it due to you just hitting them and that had you been crouching you would be in range.
And to your example in ST with the Cammy Ai, an Ai is still better then a recording, and twitch reaction anti air training against an Ai is still far better and realistic training drill then trying to learn how to whiff punish in a real time setting from a pre recorded set of movements and whiff by your hand. At least the Ai is trying to hit you and you don’t know when it will jump. Also the Daigo example still had his friend controlling when guile would throw out the poke.
And to someone saying fanatic was recording the dummy putting him in to specific situations so he could learn how to adapt out of those situations, that is an entirely different training drill which is far more effective since your learning how to adapt out of a situation you will be in. Like how do you think you learn how to get out of set ups in sf4? You record the dummy doing it to you and you find ways out, that’s completely different since it immediately translate into game play.
I don’t think you understand how this works. The nature of the recording means you don’t know when dummy will do the next action. Yes your brain will eventually recognize the pattern, but that’s exactly why you change the recording periodically, like it says in the original video.
Original video recorded two low forwards, a jump in, then 2 more low forwards.
So even if I disrupt the recording with a whiff punish, I know that he will only ever jump either immediately after my whiff punish, or after a low forward.
The problem is he’s not actually trying to counter space me, because it’s a recording…
An opponent isn’t just going to throw out multiple whiffed normals for you, he’s always going to try and throw out the rangy ones to make contact or the quick short ones that are hard to whiff punish from far to stuff your pokes coming in. This training drill won’t teach you how to space your self against a moving opponent whose actually trying to target you, so if you can space to make him whiff you only have one chance to whiff punish it, not 3 of that normal whiffed backed to back.
Juicebox has a good video on footsies that give a better understanding of how to use training mode to practice it.
I will say that if capcom implemented this in a away where they had randomized play backs so that you aren’t the one doing the recording, it would be much better
I’ve definitely always wanted an option in training mode where I could record a bunch of different options and the game would play them back randomly. would help tremendously in practicing footsies, oki, or oki defense. I know 3s training mode doesn’t do this - are there any training modes that do?
I like the spacing advice, it makes reacting alot easier because you can setup the time when you want to look for the opportunity to punish a wiff without it being absolutely random.
This is what I’d consider a “Pro-Tip”! Someone I was playing against mustve been using this tactic also. He would ALWAYS catch me wiffing because I’d think I could punish him, but nope. Definitely going to experiment with this, cause I know first hand from having it done to me that it works.
If I’m not completely mistaken, TTT2 has something similar: you can select a set of moves/strings for the dummy, which it will perform at random intervals. You can also set how often the dummy will do each of those moves compared to the others.
It’s not exactly what you’re describing, but it’s great for learning regardless. It helps a ton for practicing throw breaking in particular.
