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EDIT: I played around with the character's original file and added helpers (or at least the helper codes from the strength training character's). Apparently something in that code is preventing it from attacking, but I can't figure what. Would anyone know?

I grant you the cryptic comment award.

We don't really know what you're doing. See the thing is. If you take the original character and swap the sprites over. Then take the original everything else and put it with that sff, MAYBE correcting the animations. It should work. Can't give you more than that without knowing what you've changed and how.

You're taking sprites from a character A and adding it to a character B, but you still want your character A to do his own attacks even if he's in character B's files, do I get that right ? B does not originally have the move at all, not even the coding, is that it ?
In that case, then yes, only having the sprites and animations is not enough if B did not originally have the move. The animation alone is nothing, it's just a sequence of pictures. You do need to copy the corresponding statedef from A's files, as well as the command part that tells A to go to that corresponding statedef.

cmd tells the character to go to a given statedef upon command input
cns says exactly what happens during the move, and tries to display an animation from the air ; it goes from the start of the animation until it gets back to its statedef 0 (standing state)
the air file is a suite of numbers that refer to sprites in the sff.

Given that, if you're trying to add the whole move of A into B, including the movement, animation, effects, then yes, you need to add all the bits that make up the movement : cmd, cns, air, sff corresponding parts.

Don't forget that the statedef numbers must be unique. Meaning, if in A the statedef number used is 1650, then when adding that statedef into B, you need to make sure that number isn't already used. If it is, you have to change it for a unique one. Ditto for the animations.

But once again, as Cyanide and [E] said, it's a lot, and it takes time to understand each part of it. But if you want to persevere, please make sure to point out in which part (of the list I gave) things go missing.
In fact, ideally, actually post exactly what you transfer from A to B - post the added code as well. We need as much information as you can provide.

I copied certain codes with the word "helper(s)" from that particular st and placed them into character A's cns. I found that I generated helpers, but none of them could attack. I know that's a very crude way to go implementing helpers into a character, but do you think that it's possibly a sign that the helper codes could be preventing my character from attacking?

[state blah, blah]
type = helper
...
stateno = numberhere
...