MODE
If this is something that you’re serious about, you need to dedicate time to do it almost every day. Initially, five minutes a day is all it’ll really take in order to build the habit to practice. No need to cancel your plans or quit your
job, but you do have to practice enough to make progress (even a little) every time.
Every time you’re in Training Mode, remember to go to Training Options and set Attack Data and Input Display to on. This is so when you make an execution error or have trouble learning a combo or sequence, you can diagnose where you went wrong.
Attack Data is also important because you want to learn how much damage and stun each of your moves do.
What to Practice
Knowing what to practice is just as important as how to practice. When
you’re new to fighting games, you should learn to react to situations immediately with the correct response. This means you must learn the ins and outs of your character. After all, how can you expect to be good or improve if you cannot use your character effectively in a do or die situation?
Since you are learning the game with Ryu, let’s start with his essentials:
• movement
• dashing forward and backward
• Hadoken
• Shoryuken
• Tatsumaki
• cr. MK xx Hadoken
• throwing
• performing combos that require EX Meter
• being able to perform either Ultra Combos
• being able to anti-air with the appropriate move
• using Focus Attack and Focus Attack Dash Cancels
• controlling space with normals
Learn to execute everything on that list above until you can execute each with minimal effort and at least 90%
accuracy.
Movement
Movement is by far the most important part of execution when you’re first starting out. This is because if you aren’t able to control your character well enough to quickly move into close range when an opportunity presents itself or move away when you’re in danger, you will always be at the mercy of your opponent.
When talking about movement as a whole, I’m referring to walking, dashing, and jumping. Generally, Street Fighter is a ground-based game, meaning that most of your time will be spent on the ground.
Yes there are character that excel in the air, however, most characters do not and it’s important to have a strong ground game because that is a characteristic of a strong player.
The reason why jumping is generally not as good as walking or dashing is because you cannot block in the air and jumps are slow enough to be punished by an observant opponent who is waiting for you to take to the air.
Although it is difficult for new players to resist jumping as well as to anti-air effectively, this is a stage that you must get past when it comes to becoming a stronger player. A good way to do this is to try to resist jumping as much as possible so that you will
develop a stronger ground game.
In order to develop a strong ground game, we must become an expert at the tiny nuances of ranges as well as walking in and out of dangerous and safe ranges. This is a skill that must be developed over time because first you have to develop a keen eye for these nuances.
Usually new players have very jerky walking speeds because they are unfamiliar with the process of simply holding the fightstick or controller for the amount of time necessary for smooth movement. The reason why you need to learn how to control your character well enough to walk back and forth smoothly is because strong opponents typically
have smooth movement which allows them to walk in and out of range of being hit by you.
A good exercise to work on this is as follows:
1. Start Training Mode and pick Ryu for both characters.
2. Observe the Training Mode boxes on the ground and wall of the Training Mode stage.
3. Pick the one to the left of the mid-screen line and try to walk in and out of the box, with Ryu’s right foot starting on the mid-screen line.
4. Practice walking left and
right within the box, with Ryu’s left foot as your guide.
The purpose of this exercise is getting your eye and hands used to the process of walking in and out of this box. Make an effort to try and make Ryu walk back and forth as smoothly as possible. You want relatively long fluid movements back and forth, not short, jerky movement because that won’t help you in a real match.
Practicing Dashing
Depending on the controller you use, dashing can either be easy or frustrating. (For the new player, it’s
probably the latter.) . With a stick, it can be especially awkward at first depending on whether you are left-handed or right-left-handed, and which side of the screen you are on.
Some players have a “stronger side” that they prefer to fight on, typically because it’s easier for them to dash or perform special attack motions.
If you find it easy to dash on one side but difficult on the other, you must then focus on improving the weaker side in order to balance your strength as much as possible.
Let’s look at your own physical body to make a point: The more you use the dominant side and neglect the non-dominant side, the more imbalance
you’ll experience in physical strength.
You can confirm this by lifting a pair of dumbbells in both hands, and notice that it’s more difficult on one side. This is the same thing. Don’t be the player that obviously plays effectively only on one side of the screen and ends up losing because of it.
A good way to get better at this is to do the fighting game equivalent of running laps on a track: dash from the left corner of the screen to the right corner, and then back again. If you can’t do this 10 times consistently with minimal effort, this should be the first thing to practice when you begin your execution training for the day.
Flawless dashing is important
because it can be a highly versatile and effective tool for both offense and defense. On offense, it helps close the gap between your opponent after a knockdown and pushes them toward the corner. On defense, it creates space between you and your opponent, and helps you get out of tight situations.
Practicing Hadoken
A Fireball is important because it is useful in combos and to control space.
Practice the down, down-forward, forward motion because a majority of Ryu’s game depends on using it effectively. Plus, the motion is very commonplace in Street Fighter (and
many other fighting games) so it’s a good investment your time anyway.
The best way to practice throwing Fireballs or anything else in fighting games it is to turn on Input Display (or Key Display in SF5) so you can see what buttons and directions you’re hitting on your controller. At this point, it doesn’t matter whether you are playing on a pad, stick, or keyboard--whatever you are most comfortable with will work. (Note that I’ll be referring to the controller as a stick because that’s what I use and am most comfortable with.) All that matters is whether or not you can hit all 8 directions and all 6-8 buttons.
If using a stick, here’s a simple exercise. Most people use their left hand
to control the stick and hold it between their middle and ring fingers. You should practice just doing the down, down-forward, forward motion on the stick repeatedly on the left side and then again on the right side of the screen.
The goal of the exercise is accuracy, not speed. You’re just getting a feel for how much pressure you need on the stick.
Practice this motion for ten seconds, then practice going down, down-back, back on the stick. Repeat for another ten seconds.
After working on just the motion, begin to integrate hitting LP after doing the motion. You don’t need to press LP at
the same time because that may be too much for your muscle memory at this point. Just press LP after rolling the stick from down to forward and once you get used to pressing the button after the motion, then begin to do the motion a little faster.
After you’ve done the motion a little faster, focus on pressing the button a little sooner. Finally after a few minutes of practice, it should begin to feel natural.
Now try to throw ten Fireballs in a row. If you screw up, that’s okay; look at your inputs and see where you went wrong.
Maybe you hit the punch button
when the stick was at down-forward or up-forward instead of forward. That’s very common, but with practice it’ll happen less and less.
Eventually, it’ll become second-nature and you will be able to throw ten Fireballs in a row on each side of the screen. That’s great because it’s the Street Fighter equivalent of adding more weight to a lifting movement.
In the same way that a muscle grows stronger when you consistently stimulate it with heavier and heavier loads, your muscle memory for execution also grows stronger over time from repetition.
Practicing Shoryuken
Ryu’s iconic uppercut is his strongest anti-air option, does a lot of damage, and is used in common combos.
When you can Uppercut at will, you make it harder for opponents to jump in on and can maximize damage in combos.
Many games are won and lost because a player missed an opportunity to Uppercut.
So to get better, practice the forward, down, down-forward motion by itself (similarly to how you practiced the Fireball motion). Aim to be accurate;
you don’t have to perform the motion quickly when starting out.
Practice this for five minutes a day
once you can throw a Fireball consistently on each side. Slowly, you will build upon your Ryu arsenal.
Practicing Tatsumaki
The Tatsumaki motion is the opposite of a Fireball: down, down-back, back. It can be useful in combos and going through projectiles. It’s not as commonly used as his Fireball or Shoryuken, but it’s important to learn next.
If you learned how to Fireball properly on each side, a Tatsu is no harder because the motion is exactly the same, except with a kick button instead of punch.
Practicing cr. MK xx Fireball
This is your most useful ground tool because it does decent damage (if it connects), does chip damage (if it’s blocked), is difficult to punish, and is relatively low-risk.
The crouching Medium Kick’s animation can be cancelled into the Fireball by doing the input immediately after pressing cr. MK. If the game doesn’t say 2-Hit Combo, you did it wrong. Either your motion was inaccurate (highly likely), you pressed the punch button too soon (also likely), or you did the motion too slowly (possible, but usually not that likely).
Practice hitting this when right next to the opponent and from maximum crouching Medium Kick range. This will help you develop an eye for that specific range, in which you can make contact, yet avoid being so far that your cr. MK whiffs which will cause no Fireball come out.
Practicing Throws
Throws are important because they beat blocking. Typically, if someone is blocking and not taking damage, he can easily be thrown. This threat keeps players from just blocking the entire match.
Learn how to utilize throws well
because they a useful offensive and defensive tool. Plus, they’re easy to perform (LP+LK), do a non-insignificant amount of damage, and are an important part of any competent player’s game. If you don’t throw in Street Fighter, it’s like playing rock, paper, scissors without knowing scissors exist.
Here’s how to get started: see how far you can stand from the Dummy while performing a throw and still have it connect. If it misses, this is called whiffing a throw, which puts you in a disadvantageous state called recovery frames. While in recovery, you cannot block and are vulnerable to being hit.
Throws are best used when you think your opponent will be blocking,
getting up from a knockdown, or after blocking another attack. However, if the other player expects it, be aware that they can input the same throw command (LP+LK) to tech the throw, which means they will escape with no damage. This requires a combination of good reactions and anticipation, but becomes easier with time and experience.
Tick Throw Exercise
A tick throw is a throw technique designed to catch the opponent off guard, by forcing them to block a fast attack and then throwing immediately after block stun ends. This is a common and effective tactic in all Street Fighter
games.
1. Set the Dummy to Crouch and All Block.
2. Get as close to the opponent as possible and press cr. LP 3. Immediately after your cr.
LP finishes, stand up by returning the stick to neutral and throw with LP+LK
4. Once you are comfortable with tick throwing with cr. LP, add a cr. LK before it
If the throw whiffs, you were either too far or did the throw too soon. If you are too far, take a small step forward
and try again. Remember this is why we took the time to find our max throw range.
If you were definitely within throw range and it still whiffed, that means that the Dummy was still in blockstun from your light attack. Without getting too technical, blockstun means you need to wait a split-second longer for it to work.
Blockstun is a state a character is in after blocking an attack. During blockstun, you cannot be thrown. The amount of frames that you are put into blockstun for depends on the attack you blocked. Generally light attacks have short blockstun and heavy attacks and Special Moves have longer blockstun.
Practice your new tick throw technique until you can do it comfortably ten times in a row on each side without the throw whiffing.
Throw Teching Exercise
Once you are comfortable performing throws and tick throws of your own, it’s time to practice teching throws. It takes practice to tech throws because of the limited amount of time you have once the throw begins to input your own throw command.
Teching throws successfully and consistently requires a combination of correctly anticipating a throw, having fast reactions, and inputting the throw
tech correctly.
1. Set the Dummy to Record 2. Record Dummy Ryu doing a cr. LK, cr. LP, followed by a throw. This is the same sequence that you just practiced.
3. Set the Dummy to Playback 4. The Dummy Ryu will perform the tick throw on an endless loop
5. Block the first two attacks low, then roll the stick from down-back to back and input the throw immediately after
blocking the cr. LP
The timing is crucial. If you did it right, you’ll see Technical appear on-screen, and you will be pushed away from the Dummy. If you either recorded the tick throw incorrectly on the Dummy or mistimed your own throw tech, you yourself will instead be thrown.
It may take several tries to get it right. This may seem like a tedious process at first, but as your execution improves so will your ability to recreate real match situations such as this one so you’ll be able to quickly find solutions to them, and hopefully to avoid falling for the same tactic again.
With practice, you will become accustomed to the timing required to tech throws, as well as when to look out for them at various ranges and times during your matches.
Practice Whiff-Punishing
Whiff-punishing is the art and science of exploiting your opponent’s missed normals and special moves with your own normal or special counterattack.
It’s important because when you establish that you are skilled in whiff punishing, your opponent will likely be hesitant to recklessly stick out normals which will make them more defensive. If
your opponent is reluctant to attack due to fear of being whiff punished, you can easily push them to the corner, then systematically dismantle their defense.
The simplest example is a whiffed sweep.
1. Set the Ryu Dummy to Record and record him doing one crouching HK while holding down-back to block.
2. Stand outside of its range and see how close you can get without getting hit. Once you have a good idea of its max contact range, you can walk inside and outside of it
carefully and not get knocked down.
3. Next, practice walking near the Dummy’s sweep and hitting it with your own sweep at max range. The goal is to hit the Dummy’s leg as it retracts while avoiding getting hit yourself.
You’ll know that you executed correctly when the Dummy gets hit but the game doesn’t say Counterhit on-screen. If the Dummy blocks (you were holding down-back when you recorded the sweep, right?), you did your own sweep too late. If the game says Counterhit, you did your sweep too soon
because you’re hitting the startup frames, not the recovery frames.
After a few minutes of practice, you should be able to do this pretty consistently, or at least be better at it than you were when you started.
Once you are able to whiff punish sweeps with your own, try cr. MK next because that is your most practical ground tool. This is harder because the recovery is faster, but still important to practice.
Practice Anti-Airing
Once you have learned to control the ground through cr. MK, sweeps, and
Fireballs, your opponent has no choice but to take to the air. Your ability to anti-air consistently and effectively usually means the difference between life and death in the game.
Many newer players tend to jump frequently. You want to avoid doing this yourself yet be prepared to unleash anti-airs effectively. Ryu has several anti-air tools for different angles and situations.
Anti-Airing with Shoryuken
His most damaging anti-air is his Shoryuken (good thing you practiced the motion until you could do it ten times in a row consistently and easily on each side, right? Right??), commonly referred
to as Uppercut. If you neglected your Uppercut training, here’s another opportunity to practice.
Shoryuken Anti-Air Exercise
Shoryuken Anti-Air Exercise