Week 5: The Cold Hard Truth

This week the frustration really started to sink in. I wasn’t feeling like I was seeing any progress of what I was practicing in training, applied in matches; and the reality of the matter is that I may not see progress for quite some time. It’s more than likely that I will get worse and see my rank drop before I get better. This is just a testament to how difficult Rocket League is.

Up to this point, my training plan has been to focus more on training exercises and less on playing matches. However, this hasn’t been working too well because even though I might be doing something really well in training, there was a key element missing that I need to master to be able to apply my training to matches: playing under pressure.

Rocket League is just like any other sport, you can practice all you want in training, but if you never play against an opponent and learn to apply your training under pressure, then it’s all for not. So instead of playing again real opponents, I played practice matches against the Rocket League bots at the Pro level. This helped me play some matches with very low stakes involved.

OBSTACLES OF THE WEEK

The biggest hurdle I kept tripping over is getting mad and losing my composure after I mess up a seemingly easy move. When this happens, I play poorly and my performance continues to suffer. I’ve noticed that when I stay calm, I do really well, but when I get mad at how I’m doing, I forget everything and start to overthink.

Something else I realized, is that Rocket League is a very mental game. On several occasions I would miss an easy shot and then my opponent would type in the chat “What a save!” This is infuriating when you already know you messed up and then the opponent rubs salt in the wound. Something I did to avoid this, was turn off the chat so that I don’t have to worry about any distractions or hits to my confidence as I’m playing.

The following video really shows the difference in my playing when I lose my temper, and when I stay calm and practice patience.

SEEING SOME IMPROVEMENT

The first half of the video was from the beginning of the week when I was really struggling with feeling like I wasn’t making any progress. Then as I realized over the week that I needed to practice more patience in my matches, I started to see the change that I never thought would come!

I was hitting the ball more and making good contact with it when I did hit. I was directing it on the field better. I was being patient to take shots and wait for the ball to drop so that I could hit it better. I didn’t realize this, but I definitely got Mr. Miyagi-ed!

In the past few weeks I’ve been doing what I call Freeplay Ball Beat Up every day to practice hitting the ball as hard and as often as I can to practice making good contact. Not only have I seen my Freeplay practice improve, but I’ve noticed that I make good contact with the ball in matches because I’m applying that training!

Something else I’ve noticed is that from the Pro Goalie and Aerial Training practicing double jumps and bounce shots to hit the ball when in the air, I am better at recognizing these situations in the matches and responding appropriately.

Even though I dropped in my rank and didn’t win many matches this week, I still feel like I have made a major improvement just by conditioning my emotions to keep a level head and not let the mistakes get to me in the moment.

So if there is anything that I’ve learned this week, it’s that PATIENCE, really IS A VIRTUE.