The speed flip was once an elite mechanic that was seen exclusively in high-level rocket league games. Then in late 2019, musty made a video about it. After that, it became a fairly common mechanic, kickoffs completely changed because of it, and lots of new players always want to learn how to do it. So here’s an easy guide on how to learn, master, and properly use the speed flip.
A word of advice before we start. Effective usage of the speed flip only truly blooms in higher-ranked gameplay. This is because to correctly use it, you need to have a good amount of understanding and experience in Rocket League.
Low-ranked players waste a lot of time trying to learn how to speed flip just to perform lightning-fast kickoffs. Getting first contact in kickoffs won’t get you to rank up quickly. Besides, fast kickoffs already have effective counters like delayed kickoffs. So if you’re a low-ranked player, you might as well waste your time learning something rather useful like air roll shots, or positioning and rotations.
Alright, with that out of the way. Let’s get into the topic at hand.
What is a Speed Flip?
A Speed Flip is the fastest way to accelerate in Rocket League. When it comes to gaining forward momentum, it is by far superior to any other kind of mechanic or to boosting while driving forward. The main reason for that is because the speed flip lets you boost through the flip which adds to the momentum gained by the flip itself.
If that sounded confusing, don’t worry because we are about to dissect and simplify it.
The essential component that stands out in a speed flip is something called a “Flip Cancel”.
What is a flip cancel?
In short, a flip cancel is the process of initiating a flip and then canceling it before it completes. Rocket League is designed in such a way that even when the flip (or the animation of the flip) is canceled, the forward momentum gained from the canceled flip still applies to your car.
This is the idea behind mechanics like wavedash and speed flip.
The 3 steps to performing a speed flip are
1. Initiating a front diagonal flip
2. Cancelling the flip
3. Recovering smoothly i.e. landing on all four wheels
Additionally, since the animation of the speed flip is one where the nose of your car always points forward (unlike a side flip or front flip), you have the added advantage of being able to boost through the flip.
So the 2 benefits of speed flip over other forward flips are
1. The ability to gain forward moment from a diagonal front flip without having to fully do a diagonal front flip
2. The ability to boost through the flip because the nose of the car points forward throughout the flip
The combination of these two factors is what makes a speed flip the fastest mechanic to make your way around the field in Rocket League.
Flip Cancel only works on Pitch Axis
Since we’re talking about flip cancels in speed flips, I think I need to quickly indulge in a much-needed digression about the axis of cancellation. There is a right way and a wrong way to flip cancel.
Many tutorials will tell you that you must cancel diagonal flips by pulling the stick to the opposite side i.e. if you flip 45 degrees to the front left, you must cancel the flip by pulling your stick 45 degrees to the rear right. While this is a common claim, it is 100% incorrect.
The game code in Rocket League only registers flip cancels on the pitch axis i.e. leaning forward or leaning backward. Any flips on the roll axis (left/right) cannot be canceled. Therefore the correct way to perform the flip cancel in your speed flip is by pulling your left analog stick straight backward.
Why use a Speed Flip?
A speed flip is the quickest way to go from point A to point B on the field in Rocket League and so it has some obvious uses in offense, defense, and rotations. Besides, it is also useful in scenarios where you are trying to beat an opponent to grab boost or in strategic demolitions.
But the most popular use of the speed flip still remains the kickoff.
Prior to the days when speed flips became common in kickoffs, the players that knew how to do some premature version of it would arrive at the ball a whole staggering second before their opponents.
In medium to high level ranked games, speed flipping at kickoff still continues to remain an advantage because it easily lets you start by getting the ball in the opponent’s half of the field.
Two methods of performing Speed Flips
There are many variations in how different players perform the speed flip. Some players like to hold the free air roll button all the way through their flip, some like to hold powerslide upon landing, some like to cancel the flip diagonally while others swear that a backward 180 flip cancel works best.
All these variations can be categorized as minor subjective differences in car handling and control because predominantly the end results are pretty similar. However, in recent times, an alternate easier method of speed flipping has actually emerged. This means we now have 2 methods of doing speed flips.
Traditional Method (without dedicated air roll)
Here are the steps involved in a traditional speed flip. In this example, I’m writing down the steps for a front left diagonal flip. If you want to speed flip the other way, simply adjust the steps.
Step 1: Hold boost and drive forward
Step 2: Point your left analog stick diagonally at 11’o clock
Step 3: Jump twice to initiate the left-diagonal flip
Step 4: Snap the analog stick back to 6’o clock to cancel the flip
Step 5: Once you see supersonic trails on your car, stop boosting
Step 6: Release the analog stick and let it fall back into neural position
Step 7: Hold down powerslide upon landing
Here is a nice video tutorial on learning the traditional method of speed flipping.
Easy Method (with dedicated air roll)
The easier method of speed flipping utilizes a simple trick. Someone discovered that instead of doing a front diagonal flip, the same effect can be achieved by holding air roll left or air roll right while front flipping.
When properly implemented, the steps of easy front flipping look like this
Step 1: Hold down air roll left or air roll right throughout the flip
Step 2: Drive forward and boost throughout the flip
Step 3: Perform a front flip cancel
As a bonus step, you can powerslide upon completion of the flip to make sure your landing is smooth. Here is a nice video tutorial on how to perfect the easy method of speed flipping.
Although the second method is clearly easier to learn, many people still prefer the traditional method of speed flipping. My recommendation for beginners is to try both methods to find out what suits you and what you find easiest. You may like one method over another simply because of preference or comfort or because of the way your controller key bindings are configured.
Learning how to speed flip
There’s no point trying to reinvent the wheel when the world is full of such brilliant wheel makers. So here are three of the best speed flip tutorials from YouTube which already do a brilliant job of explaining the mechanic.
1. Musty’s Tutorial
2. Thanovic’s Tutorial
3. ApparentlyJack’s Tutorial
Practice & Custom Training Packs
In order to perfect your speed flipping skills, you are obviously going to have to practice. The best place to begin doing that would be in free play. Start by focussing on individual components like diagonal flips, flip cancels, and air roll adjustments.
Practice these over and over again until you feel comfortable performing them. Then string them all together and work on perfecting your landing with air roll adjustments.
Once you start practicing, you’ll begin noticing common speed flip mistakes that everyone makes. For example, if you find that the nose of your car is always pointing downwards upon completion of your flip, then you have to make minor adjustments in the initial pitch.
Likewise, if you think your flips are going more sideways than diagonally then you are probably adding too much roll.
As far as custom training packs go, musty’s is the most popular one because it lets you practice and test if you’re even speed flipping in the first place. Here is a list of all speed flip training pack codes that I have tried and found useful.
YouTube Use Musty’s training pack: A503-264C-A7EB-D282
YouTube User AirCharged Gaming’s training pack: 23BF-DD84-BBA6-AE0B
YouTube User dlg’s training pack 315D-FBC3-D181-8DE7
YouTube User Snapt’s training pack BFAA-45A5-7A56-73CC
Reddit User Overkilldan’s training pack 509F-22E6-1441-05AD
Reddit User its_NTG’s training pack 98E6-EF86-7BD6-E585
Closing Thoughts
Before I end the essay, I wanted to share two more interesting thoughts.
Method Preference based on Input Controls
In the beginning, I had planned to conduct a full-blown survey to find out if there was a correlation between the kind of controls a player uses and their preferred method of speed flipping – traditional vs. easy. But later I thought that the idea was kind of stupid so I dropped it. Anyhow, I did conduct a smaller survey in a closed group of all my rocket league friends.
Here’s what I found – Broadly, PC players that use keyboard/mouse (kbm) and Nintendo Switch players lean towards the easier speed flip method while Console (xbox, ps) and PC users who use controllers gravitate towards the traditional method. Of course, there were exceptions and outliers and the sample size was very small, but just thought I’ll put it out here in case someone cared.
History & Origins of Speed Flip
And lastly, here is some interesting speed flip trivia for all you Rocket League enthusiasts. Although musty is credited with popularizing the speed flip as a better way to do kickoffs, he wasn’t the player who first discovered it.
It’s not clear who discovered it first but Musty didn’t invent it and he even clarifies the same in his video. Interestingly, this discussion thread on the RLEsports subreddit dates the first emergence of early speed-flip-like mechanics back to 2018. The link is full of clips and resources that are evidence of speed flips being around for almost a whole year before musty’s video even came out. Fun little read for when you want to kill time on the loo.
Happy speed flipping!
