think i'd been feeling a little "going through the motions" with playing lately and kinda just jamming games without making conscious effort to focus on learning and improving, but tonight was a really nice reset to that. spent some time warming up in training mode practicing charge inputs, then hopped into matches. feeling a bunch more comfortable executing leo's fireball made neutral feel a lot better, though i'm still iffy at executing his DP in live matches. might have to practice that one some more. but overall it went great, felt a lot more comfortable going toe to toe with people in floor 4 and overall won more games than i lost (even despite ending the night going 0-9 against a ky i really struggled to win exchanges against. motivation to get stronger!)
also man, playing long enough sets to start getting a read on someone is really fun. played a bunch of games over the course of the evening vs this one gio and eventually got a decent feel for both when she wanted to go for 236Ks in neutral, and 214Ss when pressuring, and it was really rewarding being able to capitalize on that. punished her 214Ss with HS flash kicks a couple times and that just felt dirty.
tho hmmm people kinda just block my pressure all day for free. think i wanna practice mixing in throws next time. had been a little intimidated to go for grabs up till now cause running in that close seems risky and leo doesn’t have the quickest buttons up close, but if opponents are just gonna sit there holding block all day…..
besides, i sorta instinctively started using 236H as a punish vs blocks tonight since overly defensive opponents kinda just give free reign to get into backturn stance with it, but now that i think about it, dash in + throw is kinda just a better version of that.