Hello, so I was watching a match daigo vs mago in the topanga league of this year, and in the final match daigo does this crazy solar plexus from almost midscreen that lands, so I digged into it, wasn’t really a big secret to uncover but I didn’t know about it and i figured some of you might not know about it either.
So the thing is, the move forward animation of ryu is made in a way that the last part of his body that moves forward is his forward leg, which means when you make a step forward, for the very first frames, your forward leg stays in place (because he does this kind of strafing motion, pretty much like every other character actually). And so by pressing forward just slightly before HP, he will start his move forward motion and litterally take one step forward, but directly continue on to a solar plexus so that it’s almost invisible that you took a step forward. Of course technically speaking, it leaves you vulnerable for a lot more frames than if you only did the solar plexus, but it really improves the range. Try it on training.
Might not work on small hitbox characters though, I tried on about 5 characters randomly and it worked for all.