So I understand the theory behind safe jumping - do a jumping attack vs. a knocked down opponent timed so that if they mess up their reversal or block, you’ll hit/tick but if they do execute their reversal, you land and block during their reversal attack’s startup frames so you are safe.
How the hell do you practice this? Ideally you’d have a situation with a knocked down Guile or Boxer or whoever that has a random chance to reverse or not that you could just jump at over and over again, but I have no idea how you would set this up. Do you just need a friend who is pretty good at reversals to sit there and do them over and over while you try to figure out the timing?
You may as well learn it in actual match environments where you get a feel for the spacing at your normal knockdown ranges and how to cover that space/time to produce a safe jump. And it’s not enough to practice against just boxer or Guile since each character has different rising frames as well as different frames before the first hit of their respective reversals.
A good way to get a head start on learning to safejump is to set up a ghetto training mode against a dummy opponent. Knock it down with whatever move and then do a jumping attack. Repeat this a bunch of times and you will soon teach yourself how to time it such that your jumping attack hits as late as possible while still not missing altogether as they’re in their stand-up frames. (It’s a little like trying to flick coins as close to the edge of a table as possible without accidentally flicking them over.) That’s the same timing you’ll want to use when you’re safejumping.
Personally, I watch the opponent’s falling-down animation to help me give a visual cue of when to jump. (“On this character, jump after he hits the ground the 2nd time, after the bounce.”) The timing is different on different opponents, which is one of the big pitfalls of learning how to do it.
Of course, you’ll have to supplement this with plenty of in-match practice as well so that you can get smooth in punishing the opponent’s harmless reversals and etc, but this is a good way to get the timing of the jump down. I’ve also used safejump-practice macros and stuff in the past, but I don’t find them worth the trouble.
I’d like to add that some jump in moves are better for this than others. I guess one example is jump in with down+short with Zangief instead of with jump in neutral strong or roundhouse ( for an exagerated example )
Unless some one dissagrees with me on this, I think it would be cool if some one with the right knowledge to post a list of the best moves for safe jumping and we could contribute to the list as needed.
Better for what you’re gonna do next, but if we’re just talking about the ability to safe jump, I think any move can do as long as it can hit a crouching opponent.
If you have an emulator, get up to CPU Ryu. He’ll try to wake-up reversal every time you try to attack after a knockdown. Just save a state at him and practice doing it. I find the easiest way to get fast knockdowns is to pick O. Hawk and MP DP through his fireballs then try safe jump LP. If you can block his wake-up DP, you’re doing it right. Just don’t waste your time trying it on Claw. That shit is impossible to land consistently on him.
Simple way to gauge it:
-If you’re getting thrown after you land, you’re doing it too early
-If you get your ass knocked down, you’re doing it too late.
You want it so it’s just barely late enough that it doesn’t fall into the first category.