Week 9: One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

This week I’ve hit a few familiar hurdles that I experienced earlier in training. Since I’ve been doing really well in my competitive matches lately, my mentality has changed a bit to almost expect to win. This is rather dangerous thinking. As you move up the ranks, you play more players that are better than you and that makes it more challenging to win. This makes sense. However, Rocket League has such a heavy load on mental resilience that I got used to it being relatively easy to beat my opponents in matches, that now the difficulty has affected my motivation to play.

It’s a classic example of when the going got tough, but I am bowing out. I need to keep pushing and remember that playing people who are better than I am is a necessary difficulty that will help make me a better player too. I need to keep pushing through these moments when I’m down, because just like with Bronze, soon I will improve and move up the ranks as I did before. But that won’t happen if I don’t practice.

Just as I did when moving from Bronze to Silver, I will probably drop a few divisions before I start to move up through Silver. But this okay and normal! Even though I’m back at the bottom of the barrel again, I need to keep trying to push my way through Silver by practicing the necessary mechanics required at this level of skill. Yes, this means dribbling.

THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

I have been having a tough time with dribbling. There is not much guidance from pros on how to dribble at an elementary level besides the basic tips to push the ball forward and match the speed. I need a little bit more with this, but there just isn’t much out there. As a result, I’ve been fairly unmotivated to practice dribbling because it is hard. I’m hoping that if I keep reminding myself that it is a necessary difficulty and push myself to just sit down and play, then it won’t be as daunting, in time.

To my own detriment, I didn’t play that many matches this week because I was having a hard time focusing on one goal in-game. Previously, I was playing my competitive matches with the goal to make good contact on the ball and apply my game knowledge for how to rotate on the field and defensive and offensive strategies. In casual and bot matches, my main focus was dribbling. I thought this would be useful to separate out the tasks and engage in part-task training, but the issue I ran into this week was that my casual/bot dribbling goal permeated into my competitive match goal. Now this isn’t a bad thing, eventually I want to be dribbling in competitive matches. The underlying issue again was mentality.

Since I started to practice more dribbling in my competitive matches, I left myself vulnerable many times, which cost my several games, resulting in dropping a few divisions. This is a direct hit to my confidence, especially when I was getting excited that I was doing well. But, when I take a step back and think about it, I need to dribble in competitive matches because that is my “real-world” test of my skill. I need to let go of focusing on winning or losing and just practice the elements of being a good Rocket League player. If I do that, everything will fall into place.

NEXT STEPS

It has taken me a few weeks to figure out how to manage my dribbling practice but this week I think I may have the plan going forward. I will still do my traditional warm up practice and training packs. Then after some dribbling in freeplay, I will hop into bot matches against All-Start level bots to play the hardest difficulty to get the closest simulation of a live match against a real opponent. I think this will provide me with a good place to start with practicing dribbling in-game, with some actual pressure.

Casual matches were good to a point, but as I mentioned in Week 8, the match-up isn’t perfect.

Lastly, I will continue to play competitive matches with the reminder to forget about winning or losing and just play the best I can and apply all of the knowledge I have collected so far. I’ve put in all the work so far, I might as well apply it.