Everyone knows that free play is one of the best ways to improve fast in Rocket League. But at the same time, almost everyone just uses it to chase the ball and spam air dribbles. Sure, chasing has its place but unless you're already a pro, it's not the only thing you should do and it's definitely not the fastest way for you to improve. In this Rocket League freeplay drills guide 2023, we show you 5 must-know freeplay drills, training, and tips.
Rocket League Freeplay Drill Guide 2023 - Top 5 Freeplay Drills, Training & Tips in RL
Let's go over the top 5 Rocket League drills for free play created by SpookLuke. Even if you just mix in for five minutes, every time you boot up free play will make you improve and rank up three times as fast as everyone else at your rank. We're going to be counting down in order of increasing difficulty plus. However, we’re going to throw in one bonus drill that's a little bit advanced and requires some extra setup. But if you're in a higher rank, you're absolutely going to want to have it.
No. 5 Freeplay Drill - Wall Ball Drill
With many of these drills, there are going to be multiple levels to it, but all the wall ball drill is meant to train is your actual power and timing with clearing the ball.
Level 1
This drill will be simply hitting the ball and volleying it to yourself off the same wall repeatedly. For your first touch you're not going to want to flip but after that simply practice pacing back and forth, hitting the ball off the wall letting it bounce once or twice depending on how hard you hit it, and then striking it back into the same wall with a front flip. This drill is great for practicing your timing and actual power clears, but one key here that we also want you to pay attention to is the actual power side turn you’re making when you’re rushing back and hitting the ball off the wall. As you get better and better at this you want to practice making that 180 power slide turn after you hit the ball off the wall as quickly as possible. This is what's really going to prepare you for in-game scenarios where you can quickly turn and get power clears in situations that most people won't expect.
Level 2
We're going to do the same thing but instead switch walls as we go. This one is going to really ramp up your speed and if you can get the timing down clearing these consistently, you can push up to Diamond and even Champ with just this stuff alone.
No. 4 Freeplay Drill - Cornering Drill
Corners are so important when it comes to ranking up in Rocket League. The idea with this cornering drill is you simply want to get on the same side of the field as the ball, use that left command on your d-pad to send it at your net, and practice catching and controlling the ball into your corner. If the shot comes on the ground, simply catch it and take it over to your corner boost. But if it's in the air, you're going to have to jump and make a backward save, trying to move with the ball into your corner. This might not look hard but having to drive backward and having to get the timing down is much harder than it looks.
One thing that we want to highlight that is super important to learn is the actual timing of the defensive flip. When you do this drill, you’ll not flip when you connect with the ball like in the wall ball drill. Instead, you're often jumping up to meet the ball and hit it to the corner. Then flipping after you make contact to move your car toward the ball and chase it down. This is what's going to allow you to control the ball really quickly and turn defense into offense. So practice this drill and not only will you become a brick wall on defense but you're going to start scoring so many breakaway goals in your games.
No. 3 Freeplay Drill - Backboard Clears
Backboard play is one of the most underutilized mechanics in the Rocket League. Very few people realize you can actually train it in free play so that's why we're doing this here. Just like with the cornering drill, we can once again use the left command on our d-pad to shoot the ball at us on defense. But this time the only difference is you start driving up the back wall before you send the ball at you.
Level 1
Practice just meeting the ball and hitting it right after it connects with the backboard. Pro tip here and a mistake that a lot of players make is you don't want to actually front flip on these clears. The reason is that if you front flip, your car will likely stick to the wall and even if you do hit it, you're probably only going to graze it with the hood of your car. Instead, we want to practice using diagonal flips and barrel rolls to generate more power and clear the ball upfield with our noses. Once you get good at that, you can start doing level two of this drill which is instead of timing the ball and just trying to meet it when it hits the wall jump off the air roll and try to flip into the ball before it connects with the wall. But being able to jump off the wall and meet it before it comes will become super useful. Especially if the ball is shot on that or it's going to fall before it gets to your backboard.
Level 2
You can practice the sort of catch into carry drill. This is the hardest variation of them all but once you get to around low to mid champ is going to be super useful to learn. The reason is that as you rank up players are going to start to anticipate you clearing the ball, so if you can learn how to get a soft touch off the backboard and then jump off and clear it, you'll be able to fake people out and relieve pressure so much better than if you always just go for the booming clear. The key with the catch into the clear is to make sure that you're catching the ball on the nose of your car as it connects with the wall. But even if you can just get level 1 and level 2 of this drill down, you're going to have a better defense than people one or even two ranks above you.
No. 2 Freeplay Drill - Ground to Air Dribble
Air dribbles were not the best thing to train but specifically working on ground air dribbles is something a lot more useful. Because it's going to make you good at first touches. For this Rocket League drill, there are going to be three levels. For those of you newer, we're going to start out with a simply assisted ground air dribble.
Level 1
You're going to want to use the up and then to the right command on your d-pad to spawn the ball on your car and then pop it into the air. For starters, your only goal is to get the ball in the air and follow it for two or three touches if possible. At first, it's going to be extremely hard to even get that. But stick with it because practicing this drill is going to make your setups and aerial car control so much more precise than if you spent the exact same time just practicing aerials or aerial redirects. Once you can do the assisted method, we're going to level up to the sort of half-assist.
Level 2
For this one, spawn the ball on your car, pop it in the air, but then move your car back to let the ball bounce one or two times. From here we now want to do that same air dribble setup but we'll have to double-jump to get that pop. This will take some timing at first but once you're able to get it down, it's the exact same motion through the rest of the carry. You may also recognize this drill from a lot of pro play because this is becoming a super common way to take the ball down the field or to move it at the highest levels.
Level 3
Finally, for the hardest level, we'll move on to the no assist. this is basically going to be just spawning the ball straight on your car, popping it into the air, and trying to keep it up for as long as possible. The best tip here is to make sure that you Pop the ball a good way toward the back of your car, to make sure you get enough lift on it. This level is significantly harder than the previous two but sticks with it. Because once you get these down, we guarantee your first touches and your arrow and aerial adjustments are going to be so much better than everybody else who's just practicing the setups off the wall.
No. 1 Freeplay Drill - Hot Potato Drill
Hot Potato drill might look easy but it's actually one of the hardest and most important things for you to practice in the Rocket League if you're anything below GC 2 or 3. The idea with the Hot Potato drill is we simply want to practice moving the ball in circles around the field while keeping a bounce. The reason this is so useful is that there's no other drill that forces you to be as precise with your ground sensitivity as the Hot Potato drill.
Level 1
Spawn the ball on your car using the up command or in front using the down and just practice moving the ball around the field in circles without a power slide or without anything crazy. Just keeping the bounce by hitting the ball on the side of your car is going to be difficult at first. The more you do this, the faster and sharper your turning is going to become.
Level 2
Once you get good at timing the up bounce, you can then start to tap the power slide and mix in cuts. The best tip we can give here is that less is more. You don't need to move fast and you don't need to hold powerslide for a long amount of time to get sharp turns and pops on the ball. Once you can get all of them consistently, practice finishing things off by shooting on that using a barrel roll or diagonal flip. If you can just master this mechanic alone, you can use it to get all the way up to GC with almost nothing.
Bonus Drill - Freeplay Checkpoint Plugin
The Freeplay Checkpoint Plugin has probably been the single best thing for car control. Basically what the Freeplay Checkpoint Plugin allows you to do is freeze and rewind to a specific moment in free play and repeat it an unlimited amount of times. So once you get to a higher level, let's say you're trying to master the double tap, and you're having a really tough time finishing a specific setup. What you can do is literally go into free play and after you miss the shot click a button to rewind and save that shot, then you just hit play and you can repeat that exact scenario to target your weak point specifically and drill it as many times as you want.
There is almost no better way to drill a specific moment of a mechanic than this and if you want to train stuff like flippers sets and double flip resets, there's literally no better way. The only downside of this plugin is, it's PC exclusive you gotta download it install it with Bacchus mod and it is a little bit of a pain to get set up. The good news is once you do, the amount of time you will save training mechanics at the higher ranks is insane.
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