Short Hopping Consistently

[milligraham]

Hello everyone,
I have been playing smash on and off for years and have recently become interested in improving my skills and be able to use more advanced techniques while playing.
I am able to do things like SHFFL and wavedash, but I can rarely pull it off in the middle of a match.

One major problem I have is being able to Short Hop consistently (especially while fighting someone else). Most the time I try I end up doing a full jump. If I'm messing around in training mode I can usually successfully short hop roughly 60% of the time.

Does anyone have any tips on how to improve my consistency?

 

[TreK]

Do you jump with up, or the jump buttons ?

If your answer is the latter, just grind the game, practice makes perfect.
If your answer is the former, try the jump buttons, and don't give up because it feels awkward. Effort pays off.

 

[milligraham]

I jump with X

 

[atangerine]

There's not a lot of advice you can give on short-hopping. Just keep practicing.

 

[bearsfan092]

Just keep playing. There's not much you can really do besides repetition. If you're playing a spacie, switch to Y, but X can often get the same job done.

 

[The 2t]

It does take some time to be able to do these things consistently. Just keep at it and try to incorporate it into actual matches and it'll come with time. One thing that may possibly help is if you go and try short hopping with Fox for a while (which will probably be frustrating, to be honest) then switch back to Falcon and try it again. Suddenly it'll seem a lot easier

 

[JKJ]

God, I am loving the surge of new players. We are so flooded with "longtime smasher, new competitive player" threads.

And yeah, only real advice i can offer is practice. Something that helped me was to not focus on softly pressing the button (some feel the need to just graze it lightly) but to simply focus on finger speed. For instance, hitting the button with some force can add a sort of rebound to your finger, making it bounce off the button and thus press and release faster. Don't feel like you need to barely tickle the button in order to short hop. That can get frustrating fast, especially in a match, when, most likely, you are pretty tense.

tl;dr Press the button harder and more violently, not gently and caressing as is the usual assumption when learning to shorthop.

 

[phish-it]

You're full hopping because you're holding the button down for too long. Try to only grace the edge of the button and slide your finger off quickly.

 

[StoryTime]

Wow something I can give advice on! I feel good inside.
Buddy I was literally where youre right now just a couple weeks ago. Everyone's pretty much right just go into Training Mode and spam short hopping as much as possible. A way to guage how long you need to hold down the jump button, which is not a long time at all, is to see how long it takes for your character to actually jump. You need to let go before your character jumps off the ground to short hop. What I personally do (I use the X button and I see you do too) is press only the bottom of the X button by quickly sliding my thumb downward and pressing at the same time really quickly. Also, it might help to practice short hopping with Fox since the timing for his short hop is insane and itll get you used to short hopping and itll help when you start to throw in aerials. Hope this helped

 

[Sedda]

On a more physical note, don't tense up when you're doing anything in any smash game. It might cause your fingers to stay on certain buttons for longer than you need to

 

[milligraham]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I feel like I'm short hopping on a more regular basis now. I'm even able to do a better job of incorporating shorthops into games with others too. I still make mistakes and do a full jump occasionally, but this is happening less often and I know I will continue improving as I keep practicing.
I found these tips especially helpful

Press the button harder and more violently, not gently and caressing as is the usual assumption when learning to shorthop.

press only the bottom of the X button by quickly sliding my thumb downward and pressing at the same time really quickly.

 

[azzucips]

tl;dr Press the button harder and more violently, not gently and caressing as is the usual assumption when learning to shorthop.

I've been playing smash for a while, and so I can consistently short hop easily with everyone that doesn't have Fox's jump speed.

However, after trying this, I rarely miss my short hops. Works wonders!

 

[JKJ]

@milligraham
@azzucips

Glad my tip helped you guys! It was kinda an "a-ha!" moment for me when learning techskill, and it helped me a lot. Happy to help!

 

[Double Helix]

A bit late to the party, but I will give advice that I gave others. When you want to get better at short hopping, you should alternate between short hops and full hops, one then the other after you can short hop consistently consecutive times. After you can do that you can throw in more patterns. Something unnecessary but helpful would be to practice as Fox. I regret not doing it, but oh well, I don't plan on playing him anyways. XD Seriously though...practice as Fox. It will be harder to short hop as him than anyone else, so it will easily transfer to the character you play.

 

[Mape]

Even though I'm a noob, I got short hopping down on Falco, 100% of the time.
What I do is as I click the X button, I instantly bring my finger down to where the next button is (for me it would be Down C-Stick b/c falco's got happy feet)
So basically its one quick motion as my finger is sliding down the controller.

 

[Acryte]

Hello everyone,
I have been playing smash on and off for years and have recently become interested in improving my skills and be able to use more advanced techniques while playing.
I am able to do things like SHFFL and wavedash, but I can rarely pull it off in the middle of a match.

One major problem I have is being able to Short Hop consistently (especially while fighting someone else). Most the time I try I end up doing a full jump. If I'm messing around in training mode I can usually successfully short hop roughly 60% of the time.

Does anyone have any tips on how to improve my consistency?

Had made an old thread about some things to consider when choosing your buttons
http://smashboards.com/threads/tech-consistancy-buttons-tips-and-techniques.300411/

Here is an excerpt from the op:

[Sliding and Slipping over Tapping [Short Hops]]

If speed in pressing the button such as the duration it's held down (Fox's sh) is a factor then you may realize that sliding across X for example is extremely easy and takes the whole "speed of pressing" out of the equation. With so few frames to properly shorthop, when you use tapping methods, you have to:

1) Press down
2) Release

Not only do you have to be very quick doing the 1st, you must also be equally fast doing the second. When using the slide method, you simply drag across X, and the friction rapidly depresses the button. Doing this, you can EASILY shorthop 50 times in a row out of shines in 2X speed in training mode. Pretty easy. The tapping method however is much harder to do consistently and you will notice that when speed is a factor you're more likely to mess it up than the slide method. In training mode under 2X it is actually difficult perform. Slipping off the button in the case of Y, is closer than slipping off X, and is faster to get out nair and more smoothly transitions to C stick than X, but B is very close and can often be hit accidentally and there are better methods than slipping off Y when not using B moves out of shorthop. But these aren't the only things that factor into sliding over slipping and tapping... When tapping, because you have to to it so quickly, you must get your thumb into position correctly on the button (most likely flesh with the button and using a certain part of your thumb). The same with slipping off Y and X. When using tapping methods, how loosely/firmly you are holding the controller will also affect how long its held down during the initial press. These things all affect it negatively. You may find yourself missing the jump entirely sometimes, if you didn't get into position over the button fast enough, and will watch what should have been a SHFFLED nair become a dash attack for example or a dair become a dsmash. Sliding across X however is very lenient both in positioning beforehand and also how loosely/firmly you are gripping the controller. It takes a lot of the variables and factors for error out of the equation.

 

[ycz12]

All of my silver controllers have the paint worn off right below the X button.

 

[Marmalad3]

As a relatively new competitive smasher myself it's kinda funny to see people going through the same realization I did, which is that there is rarely a secret easier way to do things in this game. You just have to practice and practice until you can do it in your sleep.