How Should I be Practicing?

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
1

Just to familiarize you all with my situation, I’ve been playing street fighter since SFII (like probably most of you). I haven’t taken any of them seriously due to a lack of a community in my area (Toms River, NJ). When I first started playing SFIV I chose guile because he was my character in SFII. Since then, I’ve migrated from Guile to ELF to Gouken to Ryu. I probably should’ve started with a shoto now that I think about it. Anyway, There is a lot of information out there but from the perspective of a semi new player it seems like a lot. I’m wondering what information I should be focusing on now and what I should be focusing on later. Like footsies before I start worrying about frame data.

How should I be practicing? Should I be going into practice mode and practicing my combos over and over until I do them in my sleep and then trying to apply them to my matches?

Basically, I want to make sure I’m thinking the right way about street fighter. I don’t want to get into the habit of doing something incorrectly or even inefficiently. Anyone who can help me get better, either through advice or actual playtime would be greatly appreciated.

2

visit Maj’s site at www.sonichurricane.com and click on footsies. It’s got great information. Just read it and practice online or with anyone in NJ close to you.

3

I’ve read these articles. I need to play someone who has really good footsies to actually apply it though. i’ve played floe online, we have a mutual friend, but every time i do he completely overpowers me. He doesnt really give me any tips or anything either. I cant really blame the guy, I’m just some random dude that asks him a lot of questions. I feel like I’ve hit a brick wall as far as progression goes and the only way I see becoming better is by player better people

4

you’ve pretty much answered your own question here.

No offence, but it’s typical for players not practicing or playing enough to ask how to practice, the truth is that there’s no shortcut. You’re on the edge of progress to the next level, because when you start thinking you want to get better, then you are already getting better. All you need to know is posted on srk, read all the stickies and put the time into it, it’s up to you to find what rutines work best for you.

5

I just finished a set with a skilled akuma who beat me 20 - 10 for one sole reason : i need to block more. if i could offer any suggestions as to one incredibly important thing to practice, it’s blocking under pressure. when you’re being rushed down, you’re going to feel pressure so you’re going to want to get out of it by the quickest means possible (especially when you’re an abel player facing akuma vortex), and this often leads to getting nailed with some deadly combos. i feel, however, that if i just blocked through the pressure ( with necessary throw teching), i would have done much better, and so i learned that one of the most important things to learn and practice is a good, solid fundamental defence. crouch tech, tech by reaction, and learn how to block well

6

That’s basically it.

On the topic of footsies, it can be hard to figure out what you’re losing to in a match because they’re based on misdirection, but that’s what you should learn to do. Good players rarely do random moves often. So if you keep losing to something that looks random it’s probably not.

Here’s an example of what I mean:
I recently played a Ryu who would whiff random c.mk’s at a certain distance, and then walk slightly forward so that he was at a good distance for me to cross him up. So that’s exactly what I did when I thought he was going for another poke. But when I did this, my cross-up would always whiff and I’d end up getting punished. At first I thought I was misjudging the distance or using the wrong attack, but I still could not land the cross-up. Then I finally realized that what I thought were random, mistimed c.mk pokes were in fact intentional evasion moves. Every time I’d go for a cross-up, he’d c.mk under my attack. Once I figured that out I stopped falling for it.

7

I don’t necessarily want a quick way out. I just want to know how to best spend my time, which i guess i did answer myself. sad frowny time. anyway, i appreciate your advice. The SRK community is a great resource that I’m going to try to tap into as much as possible. I’m going to watch some videos and systematically break down everything that happens in them to see where i’m at

8

if any of you want to play I’m on pc. my windows live acct name is wirestyle22. don’t be gentle, i’ll never learn if you are

9

Fighters in general are very frustrating, and the time they take to master is pretty much why we don’t see many of them. What tends to work for me personally when I’ve hit a brick wall is to stop running into it. I just take a break, which could be anywhere from a couple hours to a couple weeks, sometimes even months. Obviously, practice has its place, but even the best practice is dirty. Do the same thing or play the same player too much, and you develop bad habits. By removing myself from it for some time, I can come back more refreshed without those bad habits.

10

If your maining Ryu, just practice to fight without ever jumping on your opponent. Yes, jump straight up over projectiles but simply try not to ever jump in on your opponent.

I think in one of the trail modes, you cant actually jump at all which I found to be really good training.

Once you get into the habit of staying grounded, you will improve, because alot of the opponents in the game want you to jump at them as their strengths are in AA(Sagat, Ken, Ryu, Akuma) or general mid-air priorities (blanka, chun, Fuerte).

Ryu’s greatest strength is his ground game and your not going to improve on it if your carrying out random jumps (not saying you do at the moment). Once you manage to glue yourself to the ground, the 2nd thing to do is to improve your blocking, especially blocking on wakeup, blocking crossups on wakeup.

Once you’ve nailed these two, then try improving your c.mk usage. Ryu has one of the best pokes in the game, if you master this one move and know when to cancel into fireball/SRK you will force your opponent into either jumping at you or taking more risks.

By sticking to the ground and using your poke you will inevitably have to use the fireball more to keep your opponent at bay. This will improve your timing on your fireballs and you’ll learn your fireball range. This is called zoning (not fireball spamming).

As for damaging combos, fadc Ultra, Option selects, these will all come later and will come naturally.

I’m not sure what level of player you currently are, but thats what I focused on to begin with and I’m not doing too badly.

You’d be surprised how many players will continuously jump at you knowing fully well that you’ve got one of the best AA’s in the game.

If you get the basics right for Ryu, you’ll improve quicktime.

11

That actually makes a great deal of sense to me. Thanks for the advice

12

This is certainly not limited to any one character. Learning how to adapt without always committing to a jump in is a very important exercise.