Improving at Rocket League with Deliberate Practice

Every person that plays Rocket League wants to improve. Silvers want to be Gold, Platinums want to be Diamonds, Grand Champions want to be Supersonic Legends and new players want to… well honestly we just want to be able to hit the damn ball.

There is no doubt that right from Unranked to Supersonic Legends and beyond, Rocket League has a steep learning curve. That is why the makers of this game have included a section solely dedicated to helping players at all levels – it’s called TRAINING.

The way to get better and keep improving at Rocket League is using regular practice aimed at learning specific skills and repeating them until they become second nature to you.

But so many people who practice don’t improve or improve a little at first but then hit a wall. This is because of incorrect practice. What is the way to correctly practice?

My 4 rules for correct practice.

1. Playing games is NOT practice. For practice, allot extra time before playing online matches.
2. Practice has to be regular. Preferably daily. If you play less often then practice at least as often as you play.
3. Practice has to deliberately be directed towards 3 things – learning new skills or mechanics, improving what you’ve already learned, and unlearning incorrect habits.
4. The time spent practicing has to be equal to or greater than the time spent playing matches. The reason for this is simple – if I spend more time every day doing the wrong things then I will only get better at doing things wrong. I need to spend at least half my time doing the right things, for me to start doing things right.

Before writing this post, I spent 6 hours watching my replays and made a list of things I wanted to focus on.

1. I want to be able to JUST hit the ball. Then with time, be able to strike the ball with power and in the right direction.
2. I want to be able to effectively defend goals for my team. Then with time, clear the ball far and away from our side.
3. I want to be able to step up and score goals when needed.
4. I want to learn to understand rotations. I need to develop basic awareness of the ball, my teammates, and the opponents to be able to predict how the play will progress, where the ball will likely go, etc.
5. I have to stop running out of boost when I most need it.
6. I want to be able to perform very basic aerials and slightly higher jumps mainly to defend against aerial shots.
7. To not get nervous and screw up when the ball is in my possession. Especially while trying to score goals.

I’m a beginner, these simple things are what I need to work on. New players may resonate with many of these points. Experienced players might smirk at how basic these are. The idea is to go make your list, regardless of your rank or skill level.

Ok. Let’s pause and recap. My daily session is going to have 1 hour of practice, followed by 1 hour of play and then 1 hour of replay analysis.

But what if on some days I have just 60 mins for Rocket League? Simple, I will divide that into three equal chunks. 20 mins of practice. 20 mins of play. 20 mins of analysis. The only rule is that playtime should not be more than practice time.

Also on days when the total session length will be 3 hours long, I’ll inject short breaks of 5-10 mins each between practice, play, and analysis, and long breaks of 30-60 mins between repeated sessions. On most weeknights, I’ll be happy to complete one 3 hour session. And on weekends I’ll try to do 2 or sometimes 3 sessions.

Now let’s get into details of what I specifically plan to do in practice, play, and analysis.

Two ways of training.

How training packs work in rocket league is obvious. What’s not obvious is that there are two distinct ways of using them. The first way is simple. If you miss a shot you hit repeat, and you keep doing that until you are happy. Henceforth in this essay, I’m going to call this “repeatable training”.

The other way is without repeating shots. For each shot, you have only one chance – exactly like how it is in actual games. If you miss, you miss. There’s not a thing you can do about it except watch the replay of your whiffing. Let’s call this “non-repeatable training”.

Non-repeatable training gives you the option to keep scores. That way you can log them in a sheet and track your progress between sessions, days, weeks, etc. Repeatable training forces you to quickly try many ways till you find the right way of taking a shot, or one you are satisfied with.

In my practice, I plan to use both.

Practice

Here’s my beginner practice routine. If you have less than a hundred hours of gameplay, feel free to use this. If you don’t like it or are at a different skill level, then just follow along to understand the thought process here so you can make your practice routine.

1. 5 mins: Basic Tutorial
2. 5 mins: Advanced Tutorial
3. 5 mins: Striker Training (Non-repeatable) [Rookie -> Pro -> All-Star]
4. 5 mins: Goalie Training (Non-repeatable) [Rookie -> Pro -> All-Star]
5. 5 mins: Aerial Training (Non-repeatable) [Rookie -> Pro -> All-Star]
6. 10 mins: Free Play: Hitting the ball around
7. 5 mins: Free Play: Ground dribbles
8. 10 mins: Custom Training Pack (Repeatable)
9. 5 mins: Free Play: Car control
10. 5 mins: Free Play: Boost management & ball cam toggling

For non-repeatable training 3,4 & 5 log the score for every session in a sheet.

For 3,4 & 5 I’ll start with the level Rookie. I can progress one level higher if I’m able to score 100% three times consecutively.

For 6 I’ll start with just hitting the ball around. Once I’m comfortable with that. I’ll try to hit it onto the wall quickly turn around and hit it back. Once I’m comfortable with that I’ll try to hit it higher and include some rule of X (1 or 2) bounces allowed before I hit it again.

Doing this will improve the accuracy with which I make the car meet the ball and help me get better with hitting chip shots as well as power sliding for making quick turns.

For 7 the progression will be ground dribbles with and without boost and ground dribbles with both ball cam and car cam.

For 9 I’ll start with basic flips, doges, powerslides, etc. Then progress to simple beginner mechanics like half-flip, speed flip, and wave dash. Eventually, I’ll attempt simple goalpost to goalpost aerials.

For 10 I’ll focus on memorizing paths around the field for efficient boost collection and toggling between ball cam and car cam for corner boost pickups.

For no. 8, I’ll be doing a custom training pack that focuses on backboard clears. I’m doing this training pack because watching my replays helped me identify that my weakness with backboard clearing often costs me team goals. Once I’m comfortable with that I’ll move to a different pack based on my needs. If you are planning to follow this routine as a beginner to rocket league, then I recommend that you too should practice backboard clears.

After I’ve progressed to All-Star in 3,4 & 5, I’ll replace the first 5 stages of practice with 5 of WayProtien’s custom training packs to be done in a non-repeatable manner, logging scores and tracking my performance. If anyone’s interested here are the codes for those.

Novice Aerials: 0A40-E21D-61C1-49C6
Novice Rebounds: C64E-54EA-FA78-707E
Novice Clears: E530-9668-C5B6-086F
Novice Striker: 137F-0F44-6FA1-91EE
Novice Defender: 87E7-773A-CBE5-B2C3

Play

There is only one rule here – extra modes like rumble, dropshot, hoops, or snow day don’t count. I play a lot of unranked 3s, 4s, and ranked 3s. You can play what you like – ranked or unranked 1s, 2s, or 3s.

I just have to remember to save all replays. With time, they will start taking up a lot of space but they can all be deleted once a week.

Analysis

This needs no explaining. I’ll simply watch my replays and try to make note of the mistakes I make during games. If a pattern of the most commonly repeated mistakes emerges, then I’ll tweak my practice to prioritize correcting those mistakes first.

While watching replays, I’ll also be keeping an eye on how opponents and teammates play to try and learn from players better than myself. This should help with ball & player awareness.

Watching other’s games

I’ll also be watching gameplays of experts and pro players to slowly start learning different approaches and play styles. The attempt will be to see how other players deal with the same problems that I face in-game like backboard clears, 50-50s, boost management, etc.

Closing Thoughts

Like all new players, when I started playing the game, I was terrible at it. I would run all around the field chasing the ball, desperate to make contact with it – many times scoring own goals or accidentally defending the opponent’s goals. I sucked so much it was embarrassing.

I’ve already started following the above-mentioned process of training and yes I’m starting to see significant improvement in my game. If you decide to use this then I’d appreciate it if you come back and leave a comment to tell me what you feel about this routine. What worked? What didn’t work? What did you change?

Lastly, I’m also watching a lot of my replays and I’m noticing that there are so many other things that players at my level do (myself included) that I decided to make an additional list of rules to keep in mind. If you are a beginner, please try and follow these rules too. It will improve the quality of games for everyone significantly.

Rules for beginners

1. Wait for the ball to come to you.
2. Pass the damn ball. Don’t try to be a hero all the time – teammates are your friends.
3. Learn to rotate and fill gaps in the field. Don’t leave your net open.
4. Don’t blame your teammates for being inadequate. If they genuinely suck, then it’s your opportunity to rise to the occasion and learn to get better.
5. Be nice to both teammates and opponents. Try not to be an asshole because that attitude will certainly get in the way of your improvement in the long run.
6. Remind yourself that this is a game. So the main objective is to have fun.