As a very strategic Rocket League player whose mechanical skills are somewhat lacking. I recently decided that I should make a more concentrated focus on my mechanical skills and in order to do that, I should come up with some sort of training regime.

After trying out many different tools, training packs and Workshop maps, I managed to find some that I have combined into what I consider to be an effective guide for training, focusing on certain aspects of my game at a time.

I have started to use these while I warm up for games and sometimes, I will just load up Rocket League with the sole purpose of training my skills in order to get better at the game. Some of these features are only possible for players on PC which means console players are unfortunately at a slight disadvantage, but I will try to provide alternatives where I can for console players.

Dribbling

To start off with, I will practice dribbling, both bounce dribbling and keeping the ball on top of my car. I will start off with practicing bounce dribbling in Free Play just by popping the ball up and trying to pop it up on each bounce before taking a powerful shot on net. I’ll do this for approximately 5-10 minutes.

I’ll then move on to dribbling with the ball on top of my car for approximately 20 minutes. The best tool to practice dribbling with the ball on your car is a map available in the Steam Workshop called “Dribble Challenge #2” by a user known as French Fries. If you do not have access to the Steam Workshop then what I have found quite useful is to switch off the “Unlimited Boost in Free Play” checkbox and then try to dribble around the map while picking up the small boost pads. I will implement flicks into my dribble practice as well.

For those unaware of how to dribble/bounce dribble, here is a great tutorial from Rogue’s Kronovi.

Practicing these dribbling techniques give you a much better feel for the ball and will undoubtedly help you with your overall ball control in the game.

Aerial Control

Once I’ve completed my dribbling practice, I will practice my aerial car control. There are a few ways to do this and one thing I would highly suggest is Kevpert’s Aerial Control YouTube videos.

My favourite way to practice aerial control is by using a number of the maps in the Steam Workshop. For general aerial control, I will practice using the Obstacle Course 1 by French Fries (creator of the Dribble Challange #2 we mentioned earlier). What I will do with this obstacle course is go through it facing forwards, then go through it facing backwards, which of course inverts your controls. What I will then do is combine the two so I will face forwards for a short while, air rolling around to face backwards I will often continue doing this for about 20 minutes but 10 minutes should be acceptable. It is exceptionally difficult to grasp this technique at first but you will get better over time, particularly as it’s quite frustrating when you are struggling to understand the concept.

After this, I’ll practice the Speed Jump Boost workshop map by a user known as dmc. This map is one of the best Workshop Maps around and it teaches you how to control your car in the air while feathering your boost as in order to make the full benefit of this map, you should be turning off the “Unlimited Boost in Free Play” option as instructed when you load up the map. When you realise how little boost is actually required for some of the levels on this map, it is really quite eye-opening for the rest of your gameplay. Typically I will play this map for about 15 minutes

As these features are unavailable for console players, what I would suggest doing for you and I would equally advise this for PC players too, is to follow the drills in Kevpert’s Advanced Aerial Control tutorial shown below.

Recoveries

Recoveries are an essential skill in Rocket League. They help you carry your momentum throughout the game meaning you can play faster and more efficiently. To train your recoveries, there are some key skills which you should learn how to do. One is the powerslide landing, another is the half-flip, and the final one is the wave-dash. A powerslide landing is pretty self explanatory, it’s simply holding the powerslide button when you land to carry your momentum. See the below tutorial from JakeRL on the Half-Flips and Wave Dashes.

Training your recoveries is easily done. Just head into Free Play and throw yourself around the map, try to go up in the air, throw in a flip and land facing an awkward direction while landing on your wheels and holding powerslide. One of the best ways to help you land on your wheels is to switch off ball cam once you’ve made contact with (or missed) the ball. Once you’ve set yourself up for landing and you’re holding powerslide, you can switch back to ball-cam to plan your next move.

Practice your half-flips both forwards and backwards going the length of the field and when you reach a wall, try to jump off it landing with a wave-dash. These will really help you continue your momentum and are worth practicing every day before playing. I’d advise practicing your recoveries for approximately 10 minutes before you play and any time you’re waiting in between games.

Ball Chasing

Next we move onto one of the most fun parts of my training practice. The ball chase. Although I will always discourage you from ball-chasing too much in a real game, in free play, it is one of the absolute best ways to increase your speed of play and your reads on the ball.

What I mean by ball-chasing is just driving at the ball, dodging into it, throwing it off to the side, trying to get bounces off the walls and backboard, and trying to read the bounces so that you can hit the ball again. Doing this is one of the best ways to teach yourself wall bounces as it makes each hit unique as it’s you performing the initial touch.

You can also take the ball up the wall, pop it off the wall and jump off following the ball with aerial, throw in plenty of air rolls for good measure and try to get a second touch on the ball. This will also really help you with your aerial control as well as your reads off the wall. I would recommend spending approximately 10 minutes ball-chasing too. Below is an excellent example of ball-chasing in Free Play from Cloud 9's "Squishy Muffinz"

Defence

One of the things that many people neglect in their practice is their defence. There are a few training packs that I like to use to practice my defending in the game which I find really helps and it is hugely beneficial to your gameplay as being a solid defender means that your teammates will trust you a lot more. There are three things that I consider to be the main things to practice for your defending. Goalkeeping, Shadow Defence and Backboard Defence. I’ll typically spend about 20 minutes practicing my defence.

Your goalkeeping is mostly practiced by custom training packs. One of my favourite training packs in the game is Carlos Mailman’s “Uncomfortable Saves” pack (Code: 5CB2-6D82-1B54-47B7). This training pack is a sequence of saves where you are in an awkward position to make the save, perhaps the ball is coming over your head from midfield or, it might be coming in quickly so you need to fast aerial for it. It makes the world of difference to your gameplay.

Shadow Defence is something that is best practiced in 1v1s. Check out SunlessKhan’s tutorial video on the topic shown below and it will really help you. The code for the Custom Training Pack he alludes to in the video is 5CCE-FB29-7B05-A0B1. The training pack is useful for learning the basics of Shadow Defence but it has nothing compared to the reality of 1v1 gameplay as it means you have to set yourself up for the Shadow Defence as opposed to your position already being set for you.

Backboard Defence is one of the key skills required once you hit Champion and upwards. There are a few useful training packs to use to practice your backboard defence, there is a collection of shots from NRG’s jstn, who created a “Wall Clears” training pack (Code: 9274-D4A2-967B-0D7A) This training pack has fast shots coming into the backboard and the idea is that you hit the ball just as it has bounced off the backboard, hitting a hard power clear away from your goal. The other two I like to use are G2 Rizzo’s “Backboard Reads” (Code: 07E1-81BC-DD2E-BF8C) and WayProtein’s “Backboard Clears” code: (F1D5-36FA-257C-80A8) These packs include more shots from when you are in the goal mouth and have to read the hits off the backboard.

I would probably spend about 20 minutes practicing defence.

Ball Striking

Finally, we come to the part that most of you will be familiar with training and that is your ball striking. When it comes to ball striking, a lot of people will repeat training packs and wonder how they’re able to hit balls consistently in the training packs but when it comes to a real match, they struggle. The issue that custom training possesses is that it can be just memory taking over and because you know where the ball is going to go, you’re easily able to get it whereas in a game, it requires you to think about where it’s going to go.

There are two brilliant tools for PC users which bypass this conundrum. One of which is Bakkesmod. Bakkesmod allows you to go into Free Play and when you press one of your D-Pad buttons (you can configure which one), it will fire a ball off the backboard for you to read. Another feature of Bakkesmod is that you can set it to throw you an aerial pass from wherever the ball is on the field. This makes everything a lot more unpredictable and will help you improve much quicker. Bakkesmod also has a feature that allows you to randomise your shots in Custom Training and it’ll slightly alter the trajectory of the ball each time making it less predictable.

The other tool is Rocket League Trainer, which is what people used to use before Custom Training was a thing in the game. It still has superiority in some ways in the sense that it allows you to randomise your shots. This tool allows you to download some additional packs which you can find online from various sources. Kevpert has some very useful ones in there.

For players not on PC, I can recommend the following training packs to improve your ball striking:

Biddles Consistency: 55C9-36FE-613D-7F12 by Biddles
Biddles Progression: 7E96-B9C7-3AC0-9B70 by Biddles
Aerial Off Wall: 5BFE-60D6-0D59-79F2 by Wheelchair {LFLegs}
Wall Shots: 9F6D-4387-4C57-2E4B by Poquito

Those four training packs are very useful for your overall ball-striking and I would advise spending about 10 minutes practicing at least one of them each day.

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