Rocket League Aerial Tips & Training Packs 2021 (Beginner To Advanced)

The most amazing factor about Rocket League as a game is the fact that it's similar to soccer or football, except it's even more complex because it adds an entire new dimension with the ability to fly and within that new dimension comes a whole new world of creativity, speed and mechanics to master. In this guide, we are going to lay out a timeline of aerial skills to work on from complete beginner to the highest level of gameplay, you'll be able to determine where you are currently on that timeline and follow it the rest of the way until you have complete mechanical freedom.

How To Master Aerials in Rocket League?

To master aerials, here is a timeline to help you go from not knowing how to do one at all to mastering them completely from any awkward position, this timeline is broken up into five levels, you should determine what level you're at and then continue on to improve your aerials down the timeline. First, let's go over how fast aerial is performed and then we will move us down the timeline eventually working our way up to mastering them from every angle with the maximum amount of speed. 

Level 1: How To Fast Areial in Rocket League?

How To Perform Fast Areial: The process of learning an aerial is pretty simple but there's many ways to go about it: In short the ultimate goal for what you should be eventually trying to learn is what's called a fast aerial, a fast aerial is performed by: 

1. Jumping once leaning back.

2. Stop leaning back

3. Jumping again

4. Continue leaning back all while the whole way through it. 

Fast Areial Learn Tips: A common mistake people run into with this is, they'll only tap the jump button instead of holding it down, this doesn't get you in the air as fast because you go higher when you hold down your jumps. We don't recommend just jumping right in and trying to do the fast areial without any experience, it can be discouraging when you realize how difficult it is to get the motion down; so instead we recommend learning to just double jump and then lean back and , so you can get used to controlling your car in the air at all. Once that becomes easy you can try learning the fast aerial, so you'll be through the aerial the whole time and leaning back in between your jumps. 

Fast Areial Controller Buttons: Something people are often confused about with fast aerials is the fact that you actually do need to press multiple buttons with your thumb in order to perform it. On a playstation controller, the default button is circle and the default jump button is X meaning that in order to press both at the same time you kind of have to rock your thumb between the two buttons. For those that don't learn this movement, they either never learn how to do a fast aerial and stay down in platinum or they just rebind their button to something else so they can press with a different finger, there are many pros that choose to rebind their button to a bumper but it's just not as common as choosing to keep it default.

Fast Areial Training Pack: AE34-6C1E-8CCD-D8A5

For this level 1 training pack since it's only 5 shots and they're all very basic aerials that are stationary in the air, you should make sure that you can fast aerial straight into the ball with your nose on all five shots without fail. If you can't do it yet, just keep practicing until you can, once you can do it you're ready to move on to level two.

Level 2: How To Read The Ball When Doing Aerial in Rocket League?

Now that you have the general motion down for how to fast aerial, it's time to start reading the ball as it's flying through the air.

Training Pack: 876E-1C19-0086-8232

For the level two training pack, it's basically the same as level one but the ball is moving so it requires you to read the trajectory, these are all still very basic aerials that don't require much mechanics to perform. in fact the ball is so low that you're probably capable of single jumping and then flipping into the ball on some of these, but make sure you don't do that even when you can, because we're trying to learn how to aerial here. 

Reading The Ball Learning Tips: So treat these 10 shots exactly the same as you did for the level one pack, fast aerial straight into it and smack it in with your nose, if you hit it with the side or top of your car that doesn't count you may get lucky and tap it right in a few times with that but as you climb the ranks, you'll need to start relying on shot placement and power more, and it's going to be much easier to place your shots specifically where you want them if you're hitting it with your nose every single time, so make sure on these that you hit it with your front even if it's harder for you that way.

A good rule to use is to determine if you got the touch right is by looking  at how your car reacts to the touch, if your car bounces off in a way and your front is no longer pointing forward that means you did it wrong, but if your nose stays mostly solid through the touch the whole time that means you did it right. Also there shouldn't be any air rule necessary so don't try doing these while spinning.

Overall reading the ball is pretty self-explanatory, so just grind it out until you can get 80 or more on this pack, once you can get 80 you're ready to move on to level three.

Level 3: How To Do High Areials in Rocket League?

This is where you can really take your aerial game up a notch, because what separates a lot of diamond and champ players is not only their ability to reach the ball when it's up by the ceiling, but also their ability to reach it up there fast. The thing about aerials is people don't just stop whipping them at higher ranks, whiffs on aerials still happen multiple times a game even at grand champion. 

Although most diamonds and grand champions are capable of reaching the same aerials, it comes down to who reaches them faster, the whole reason why whiffs still happen at grand champion is because they're pushing themselves to get up to it way faster. If a GC tried to go up for an aerial as slow as a diamond player does, they probably wouldn't have any whiffs all game. 

So our point in saying all this is that whiffs are inevitable, so if you want to improve your aerials don't just practice hitting the ball over and over again in the air, practice hitting it as early and as fast as possible. 

High Areials Training Pack: 76CD-1B72-20D9-53DC

So in this pack what that means is hold down almost the entire time while doing the aerial, if you're feathering your you're doing it wrong. In a real game whether you're going to hit it or not doesn't matter if you get beat to it anyway, so if you're going to go for it, go for it fast. For the shots in this pack, you might even notice that some of them are easier if you air roll your car a little bit at the end, that's a good thing to experiment with. It's often easier to get power on the ball if you hit it with the top side of your nose rather than the underside, so if you need to air roll for some of these to make it happen, we encourage trying it out, just remember that you shouldn't be spinning the whole time as you're taking off. The simpler you do it now, the easier it will be later on. Once you can get 80 on this pack or more, you're ready to move on to the next level.

Level 4: How To Get The Perfect Angles To Do Aerials in Rocket League?

This is one of the most important aspects of aerials to master if you're going for a shot from a tough angle and there's someone in net ready to save it, sure it may be an easy save for them since it's a pretty small angle to cover, but the fact that they do have to save it is huge when it comes to breaking down the defense. 

On top of that sometimes the defender just won't have faith that you can score it from that tough angle so they won't jump for the save at all,if you can put a shot on net from these tough angles every single time, you'll find yourself with way more opportunities to score even if they do get saved. If you haven't been practicing using arrow on your aerials yet, you definitely need to now. Most of these shots are pretty much impossible to score with power if you don't use arrow. 

A common mistake with these types of shots is waiting for the ball to come to an easier angle to score from, again just like before if you're going to  go up for it, go for it fast, even if you do miss the angle on the shot, it's still better that you hit the ball rather than just getting beat to it by the opponent, you should be holding down almost the entire time during your aerial and of course just like before make sure you're not holding air roll the entire time.

Aerial Angles Trainning Pack: 04A6-F117-971F-3625

A good habit to get into is using aerial on both sides, for most players there's one dominant arrow direction that we like to use more often than the other, this is a short term solution. In the long term, it's much better to be comfortable with air roll in both directions, so we recommend being careful about that when you first start, make sure you're air rolling according to what makes sense for the given aerial not just what you're most comfortable with. If you can get 80 or more on this pack you're ready to move on to level 5.

Level 5: How To Do Sudden Aerials in Rocket League?

Sudden aerials are the most important aspect of aerials to master at a high grand champ or supersonic legend level. For most of players up in this area of ranks, it's hard to pinpoint a particular mechanic that they can improve the most, it feels like they're decent at everything because they have to be in order to get here in the first place. 

Sudden Aerials Trainning Pack: F001-A333-AAEB-2786

But with this training pack, in particular your mind will be blown by how much faster you could be on aerials. For this pack, you need to make sure you're following these exact rules in order for it to serve its purpose:

1. On each shot start by turning off ball cam to see which pad you're lined up with, you'll be perfectly lined up with it. The first rule is that you need to drive directly at that pad before turning toward the ball, once you touch that pad then you can jump or turn or whatever you want.

2. Your first touch on the ball must be on or before that last beep on the counter in the top left, so turn your sound up if you need and listen to what comes first, your touch on the ball or the last beep of the counter. Keep in mind that the last beep actually happens when it's transitioning from two seconds to one second, not one to zero. 

If you follow both these rules on every shot for this pack, it should force you to be as efficient as possible with every single aerial. Your power slide, double jump, the angle of your touch on the ball all need to be perfect in order to follow these rules and still score it. It'll really expose how far you really are from perfecting your aerials.

In high level games, it happens often that you need to react and jump for an aerial from an awkward spot, those situations are where aerials are usually furthest from being perfected and this pack will help you perfect them better than any other, if you follow those two rules.