You just need to play for fun for now because the early ranks are the best.

Only advice I’d give is to turn camera shake off, put your camera settings on something like 110 fov, 270 distance, 110 height. Also if you play on controller bind boost to LB or RB you’ll thank yourself down the line.

You just have to play it a lot

Go sit in freeplay and practice hitting the ball around. There isn’t really a guide to improve, more or less just some things most players learn at certain ranks.

Play 1v1 or play free play so you can hit the ball more. Do beginner training, watch YouTube videos for beginners.

Devote daily time to practicing. Car control should be your bread and butter. At bronze I would mostly be practicing in training packs and free play. Just go in to free play and practice hitting the ball around and following it with good touches at speed. You will quickly get used to how your car moves. Playing games is also helpful but you will see the biggest improvements from the constant repetition you can get in training.

Just play and have fun at your rank. You'll naturally improve. More fun that always wanting to improve out your rank and treating it like a job.

Get a structured training program, spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day running drills for the basics of the game. I can give you mine if you want. I started in season one, went from gold to diamond in one season. Now my goal is getting champ this season, and I contribute it all to a structured plan.

Focus on the basics, watch your replays and critique yourself, watch pros play, and be consistent. You got this

Keep at it. putting the time in is the surest way to get better

A good thing to learn early on is rotations and gamesense. Also not playing on autopilot. Learning these thing early on will help you so much down the track and I wish you the best of luck in your ranked climbing.

Honestly, spending a lot of time in freeplay is one of the best ways to get better, especially for beginners. Just take it slow and focus on the absolute basics. Things like driving into the ball and hitting it across the field while trying to make it go where you want it to go, trying to slowly dribble/control the ball when it's in front of and on top of your car, learning how to get strong power shots off a bouncing ball. Even things like just driving around the field and smoothly jumping onto/off the wall, drifting to quickly make your car face a different direction, learning to half flip, learning small boost pad pathings, and just jumping in the air and trying to not let your car fall onto the ground. You can do things like jumping from one side of the field and trying to aim for a specific spot on the opposite wall. All these little drills will train your muscle memory and get you more familiar with how to control your car and the ball, which is fundamentally what the game is about.

There’s definitely ways you can speed up the process of getting better. However, the biggest thing is just time spent playing the game. Getting used to your car and how it moves, whilst simultaneously learning game sense. I wish you luck, very kind of you to be doing this for your boyfriend.

The most important thing is to just have fun together. Try to get better if you want, but don’t get burnt out on it playing solo.

It's not you, the game is actually hard. Getting the timing right to hit the ball is a challenge for someone new to the game. To progress fast you need to put time in daily.

Here's an eight week plan for you.

Week 1

Look up a tutorial about game settings. Go in freeplay or a bot match and just focus on hitting the ball and making it go where you want.

Week 2

Once you can do step 1 consistently, focus on improving your game sense: watch YouTube tutorials on back post rotation, double commit, cutting in, corner strategies. Different videos have different interpretations so watch more than one to get a rounded understanding.

Week 6

Now you know how to hit the ball and where to be, the next step is to learn how to hit the ball with power. Look up powershots.

Knowing how to be in the right place at the right time and being able to hit the ball with purpose will make you a great teammate regardless of how new you are to the game.

The final piece of advice, take your time with each step. Don't expect instant improvement it takes weeks, months and years.

You're great for doing that.

Just get good No but seriously. Learn to quickscope

Plays 3s so you are not afraid to try things you are not fully confident doing because in 1s or 2s just one miss will most likely cost you a goal and it will make you hesitant. You shouldn't be hesitant if you are trying to get a better hang of the game.

Practice makes perfect, there are no shortcuts. Just gotta keep practicing.

Will suggest checking out some positioning and rotation tutorials though. Gregan's tabletop tactics is the best.

It’ll just come in time dude, there’s no real way to kind of fast track your skill at the game other than just playing

Spend a lot of time in freeplay/training modes. Work on your ground game first and then go from there.

Play more

Learn how to rotate. Then sacrifice a lamb on a mountain top.

School of hard knocks... the more mistakes you make the more you learn.

Ist called training

It's mostly time put in and how you learn from your mistakes. Don't ballchase or cut in front of teammates, learn how to rotate and get comfortable handling the ball and shot accuracy. I have 600+ hours and I hit diamond a couple months ago. There's a crazy high skill cap so don't let slow progression get to you, good luck!

Spend the time you do have focusing on ONE thing to improve at a time. Before going into every game tell yourself you’re going to focus on hitting the ball HARD.

After you feel like you’ve improved at that, focus all your playtime on improving your recoveries, then whatever you want after that. Fast aerials, half flips, 50s, patience, positioning, etc.

Maximize your limited playtime in this way and you will see improvement.

I'm only diamond 2, but I'll play a couple games with you on mic if you like and see how I can help

What device are you on ? Just stick to training. Focus on shooting and basic aerials in gold

Just have fun. I’m gold too and I just play 30 mins now and then after work to chill. Tbh no one in the higher ranks actually sounds like they enjoy the game judging by the posts on here!

it takes a long time to get better, and a long time for the things you’ve practiced to start kicking in. play matches, have fun; but focus on the mistakes you’re making and try to improve them. if you notice your shots are weak, maybe 10 minutes of a shooting pack every couple days will help.

It sounds like you're quite a way from learning air dribbles right now, since they are really a combination of lots of fundamental skills that it sounds like you currently don't have. 

First step is hitting the ball in the air. Do the aerial training packs that come with the game. Move up when you can hit every ball into the net. 

I’m not a grand champ or anything but I use the custom training packs available. Specifically two. 1.Uncomfortable Saves and 2.Shots You Shouldn’t Miss

They got me to plat playing with randos.

do you play fps on keyboard? if so, maybe try it for rocket league. can't hurt to try it for a little bit. maybe you'll discover something more

Look at the kevpert YouTube videos. Those are good. Get some coaching if you need to or want to.

Training packs and drills. YouTube is the place for videos. Don't sleep on the drills that people recommend, either. Even the simple ones helped me learn

Maybe check some youtube videos and play the training maps over and over again. This could help. I only play casual and it's mostly fun.

Just peaked in diamond, coaching videos helped me a lot to understand rotation( Razmeltor helped me a lot but it is in french), also installing bakkesmod was a big step for me in training

One thing i do now, and for me this is the most important when i want to play on ranked, i go for a training with training packs on saves, redirect and shots,i train for maybe 15 min and it helps to connect my old head with my old hands lol

Also,in 3vs3 at you level, doing nothing and letting your teammates go full berserk in attack will often lead to a win, this is really boring but i got to plat 1 to plat 3 and D1 in a few weeks with this

all depends on you and how you grasp the game. camera settings are very important. rotations and back post rotations specifically are all important. you do not need to be super mechanical and flashy to rank up. youtube for tutorials and training for free play and training packs for specific shots will be your best friend. and most importantly enjoy the game and ignore all the toxic people :)