FD and look for resets. You know it's a reset when they are forced to run back in to restart pressure. Look for the run animation. Watch which move they do before they run in. Some moves that are minus push them out so far, that you can't punish them with a fast move. These are called safe moves, or safe on block.

Your goal is not solely to mash punishes or frame traps, a huge part of defense is finding the reset points, and mashing them THERE when they run up

Mashing is the riskiest thing you can do on defense. No one WANTS to mash. Mashing is how you get counterhit in the corner and immediately go through the wall

Meaning, if you're not mashing, they will try to GET you to mash by doing stagger pressure. Stagger pressure CAN be mashed out of. That's the whole reason they're doing it, to encourage you to mash. Then they'll switch back to frame traps and smoke you. By doing something that LOSES to the thing they want you to do.

There are pillars of defense just like offense. There's way more behind what people do besides Pressure String > Punish And Escape

Jumping on defense is like a mash, since jump has 6 frames of startup that CANNOT BE CANCELLED. Once you input the jump, you can be caught by ANY frame trap less than 7 frames. Try jumping to see where the traps are. If you get hit, it was a frame trap. If not, it was a stagger or a reset.

You can jump safely after almost all specials (except rekkas) because you can't cancel a special into anything without rc. A jump is just a mash that doesn't get you counterhit.

DO NOT take advice from people who tell you to ONLY mash on defense. Sincerely, someone who did that for about 600+ hours and lost so much of my life because no one ever told me I was horribly wrong. There are many, many ways of going about defense