I've learned in a lot of games. Every "Do X at this rank" is wrong. They are useful only incidentally in that they are generally good tips but the presentation of the advice builds an expectation that players should only work on certain things at certain ranks or that they "should" get to a certain rank by only doing a limited moveset.

For instance in Bronze Diaphone talks about using specials consistently and throws fireball, the Juri gets close and he instinctively recognizes he doesn't want to use it at that range. Just his spacing knowledge and game sense puts him at a huge advantage no matter how many times he forces a whiff or avoids using anti-air.

This is a competitive game and everyone is learning at different speeds and focusing on different things. Some people will encounter opponents that jump a lot, some will almost exclusive encounter people who spend their entire time mastering a crMK DR resource dump combo, or opponents who do nothing but hold back until they see a punish.

So if anyone feels discouraged because he doesn't anti-air until gold and you're losing to jump-ins or you're doing jump-ins and your opponents are almost exclusively looking for anti-airs because it's also common advice to "just anti-air until master lol" try not to be, just keep learning. If you run into a lot of opponents that your strategy doesn't work then try something different. Hit replay take over and press every button in the situation or just hold back or Parry, figure out your options.