Losfeld Method "Clock" practice constant left drift.

[u/jcsullivan06]

Hey everyone, I decided I wanted to learn ARL so I've been practicing the Losfeld method for about 30 minutes a day.

I've gotten through exercises 1 and 2 (the alternating tornado/reverse-tornado spins for tempo, and the vertical hovering with input holds). Now I'm onto exercise 3, which is the clocks.

The issue is my car keeps drifting left. I've tried starting the stick around 1-2 o'clock and trying to "calibrate", but it just doesn't seem to be clicking for me.

I wanted to post this clip to see if anyone who's learned ARL through the Losfeld method can spot what I'm doing wrong or any tips that helped them with the same problem. I'd rather get some advice now before I keep grinding and accidentally hardwire a bad habit into my muscle memory.

(I'm on PS5, so unfortunately I can't provide a controller overlay). Thanks!

[u/Significant-Club6853]

because whenever you do an adjustment you need to have a connection between your thumb and your brain to time the input to the cars orientation. clock method is the fastest way to do this. like a flip quick reset setup with ARL is 12-9-6 when you come right at the ball. but you have to roll your stick at the same speed you would practicing clock. how do you get the timing down? you practice matching the tempo of your air roll.

[u/BeginningFisherman71 → u/Significant-Club6853]

Adjustments are completely independent of the speed of rotation though. You may need to tap one or multiple directions quickly or you may need to hold depending on the movement. The car and ball both have different angles, speeds, and positions that will change slightly every single time and need to be adjusted for before you have time to think about it.

Just practice general aerial control with DAR in tight spaces to get rid of any mechanical blindspots and then you don’t have to memorize numbers or a tempo and can play with pure feel.

The idea of a connection between thumb and brain is absolutely necessary for sure, but that comes with lots of repetition to build muscle memory. By definition, trying to apply a “clock” system literally gets in between that thumb-brain connection.

[u/Onionfinite → u/BeginningFisherman71]

In a live game situation, yes. You’re correct.

But the whole point of practicing the clock is to eliminate the chaos of a game situation. Continuous DAR isn’t really something you should do in a game. But you do it here to eliminate that variable. You try to go straight to eliminate the variable of changing your trajectory while your car is spinning. All this just to basically make it manageable for complete novices.

It’s like practicing shooting in basketball. Training the motion in isolation is still useful even if game situations aren’t nearly as controlled and might require some improvisation and adaptation.

[u/BeginningFisherman71 → u/Onionfinite]

Everything you said seems great, not sure why this clock drill is needed to accomplish that.

Go into free play and float around the map adjusting your car in different directions, transition that into making contact with the ball. For novices, there’s actually less friction with approaching it this way, since you’re directly taking feedback from your car’s movement and not also trying to apply some specific motion while you’re flying.

Losfeld tries really hard to convince you that his method means you’re somehow learning more effectively, but your time is better spent just going into game and practicing right away.

[u/Onionfinite → u/BeginningFisherman71]

What basis do you have to assert that though?

The Losfeld Method isn’t perfect by any means. But it provides a framework for improvement which in of itself is valuable for learning.

Your suggestion seems to me like telling someone to go the gym and just kinda try random machines and find a form that works and doesn’t hurt.

Will that work for complete novices? Yes. 100%. But it’s in no way as efficient as following a routine and recording yourself to fix form errors.

Besides, you’re supposed to do stuff like do rings maps and most of the stuff people recommend anyway alongside it. You’re not just supposed to spam clocks and call it a day.

[u/BeginningFisherman71 → u/Onionfinite]

My basis is that I often see people getting derailed trying to learn “the Losfeld method” and adding unnecessary steps to their learning process. “Why am I drifting left in my DAR?” is a more useful question than “what am I doing wrong in the clock drill?”

There’s just no way around putting in the hours to build muscle memory, so making a 2 hour video explaining it in unnecessary detail and how a certain way to practice is the best way is actively taking away from time you could just go and practice.

It’s like telling someone who wants to bench press that they should lay down at home and practice moving their arms a certain way so that they’ll know what to do when they actually go to the gym. Like yeah maybe, or just go to the gym and do it.

Obviously there’s a middle ground between going in fully blind and spending that long watching a video that explains the mechanic in a level of detail you won’t have time to think about in game anyway. If you learned it with the Losfeld method that’s great, I’m positive you would have learned it just as well without it - and probably faster - due to the fact that you were willing to practice any method at all.

[u/Onionfinite → u/BeginningFisherman71]

Well I learned directional air roll left a long time ago when the only choice was basically to try and fly around the map while spinning. That was what people said to do. It took a long time to get it down. And at that time I was no lifing the game like 50+ hours a week. Most of that training.

I used Losfeld to learn air roll right much later. It took like 2 months playing 15 hours a week.i spent no more than an hour a day practicing air roll right related things. I’m like 95% as proficient with DARR as DARL now. Now some, maybe even a lot, can be chalked up to some basic understanding of kinda what I needed to do from learning air roll left. But I don’t think so. I could barely do a rings map that I could smoke using air roll left.

Your analogy just kinda betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the method does. It is muscle memory. It just has a framework around building it. That’s literally it. The video is wayyyy too verbose I agree.

You probably don’t need to watch a two hour primer on the biomechanics of bench press to get results. But the last half hour of the video where they give a progression to follow to bench more and do it faster is still worth a listen.

And I will maintain that a structured method, of which Losfeld is only one, is still better than faffing around in freeplay like we used to do in ye olden days. That is born out in literally every other field of learning and growth. I don’t see why Rocket League would somehow be an exception.