this might be a weird question but i feel like most people i talk to just go out and fly whatever they feel like and call it a day. which is fine i guess but ive been trying to actually get better in a more deliberate way and im not sure the best approach.

background: i fly a avata 2 and an air 3, been flying about 2 years, comfortable enough but i plateau'd kind of hard maybe 6 months ago. my footage looks okay but nothing exciting and my manual control in the avata feels sloppy still especially when trying to do anything cinematic rather than just going fast in a straight line.

ive started doing this thing where i pick one maneuver and spend the whole battery on just that. like last week i just practiced orbit/circle around a single tree the whole time, adjusting speed and radius. it felt kind of tedious but i actually noticed my smoothness getting better by the third battery. is this kind of deliberate practice thing something people do or am i overcomplicating it?

also curious what maneuvers people think are actually worth getting good at vs the flashy stuff that looks cool but you never actually use

no youre not overcomplicating it at all, thats literally how you get better at anything physical. the orbit practice thing is a really good one because it forces you to coordinate yaw and lateral movement simultaneously which is actually one of the harder things to make look smooth. most people can fly in a circle but making it look like the camera is perfectly locked to a subject the whole time while the radius stays consistent is genuinely hard.

i do something similar, i have a few "drills" i run through when i first get to a spot before i start any real shooting. stuff like slow controlled reveals, smooth stops without that little bobble at the end, and practicing my jib-up moves. the stopping thing sounds basic but a clean deceleration from speed to a hover takes a surprising amount of finesse especially in any wind at all.

as for whats actually useful vs flashy ? i'd say mastering the split S and smooth yaw spins are genuinely cinematic when done right, not just for FPV tricks. the stuff that looks cool on youtube but you never use is probably like the really extreme dive bombs, unless thats specifically the content you make.

i do the single-focus battery thing too, felt dumb at first but yeah it works. the one that helped me most was just practicing slow precise movements in sport mode with reduced rates ? sounds backwards but it forced me to be way more deliberate. though tbh in the avata specifically i spent a lot of time just doing slow proximity passes near the ground because thats where i kept panicking and overcorrecting. getting comfortable with how close you can actually get without flinching changes everything