Movement - the next step

Hey guys,

I've been watching some top Brad players playing in Videos available on some of the threads here, and one of the main things I notice them doing a lot of is movement. I'm getting more and more comfortable using Brad's various stances, but a lot of the movement I'm seeing goes beyond that.

Rapid crouch dashes forward and backward, and even very quick punch/kick into guard cancels.

I can understand the benefit of this type of movement - it reminds me of a sort of ready stance in martial arts, or the ginga in Capoeira - it gives you a baseline of movement to move in and out of, and can bait and confuse your opponent.

What I _don't_ understand is how I would even go about practicing this. So, to people that have reached this degree of sophistication (most apparent to me was the Shinn Akira video I was watching, but I find most advanced players have this skill) - how the hell do I go about learning, practicing and actualizing on this? Is it simply a matter of going to the dojo and bouncing around back and forth to get it right?

Thanks!

--Adam

 

I don't. The crouching dashes is cool in all but you don't need to upgrade your game from jump.Understanding your distances and ring mamnagement is the key then It will come natural.I can do it but i don't because i feel it messes up opportunity for me and the way i play.

 

Learn the most useful/practical movement-related techniques and go from there. Start with backdash -> evade. This is easy to do and very useful. Basically it is a delayed evade, which will work against ~16 frame and slower immediate AND delayed attacks (it's early enough to evade an immediate attack, and late enough to also evade a delayed one).

Then learn evade -> crouch dash -> guard. This is similar to the above except it is more effective against immediate attacks and less effective against delayed ones. You will evade an immediate attack, and you will also be able to block a delayed knee-class launcher. If you opponent does nothing, it also acts as a sort of fake (like a k~g cancel) that can make the opponent stand on reflex into a throw, kind of like k~g cancel -> throw.

Then you can combine all three of these, i.e. backdash -> evade -> crouch dash -> guard. This is called box step. I believe you can also do evade -> backdash in vf5? I'm not sure since I'm a little unfamiliar with vf5-specific things.

Movement for movement's sake is fun, but what's important is understanding how it actually helps your offense and defense in practical ways.

 

You can cancel evade with any of the dashes now, in addition, its actually useful to do box step with /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/u.gif//forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/g.gif Because its possible to block a hair faster from normal dash than from crouch dash.

 

Okay, this is helpful. As I understood it, part of the reason to crouch dash was because it would let you block in situations where you have too much disadvantage to block normally (actually, I think it was to duck under throw attempts).

So in a game situation, what would I be using something like the boxstep for? Is it just to confuse the opponent, or is the theory that it is strictly better to create space between my opponent and I by backdashing and then evading. Kagay, I know you already explained this to an extent, but I'm still having trouble mentally figuring out how this fits together in the course of a normal game.

Where does blocking fit into this? Is the "general" case (general in quotes because I'm well aware of how important adaptability is in VF) that I would backdash, evade and then hold block?

I know some of these questions may make me seem like a n00b, but I'm fine with that if it means that I continue to learn and improve.