I find that after practicing for so long with little to show for it I need a distraction. I'm not really a drone or multi rotor pilot, but did purchase a larger aerobatic multirotor just to mix things up. It has created a new learning curve that is totally different from fixed wing. Some days I'll just throw it in the van with a handful of batteries and change it up. When I do take my gassers out the field I feel reenergized and able to enjoy practicing harder again on those 3D and IMAC maneuvers.

I day dream sometimes about airplanes, and I'll imagine certain maneuvers happening very slowly that I can get the grasp of them, or imagine maneuvers with an opposite rotation. This helped me get the grasp of rolling harriers and circles.

Another thing that I found helpful was to break down a maneuver, for me when I was learning rolling circles I learned to do them first with just elevator and a slow roll rate, gradually I added rudder until I was confident, and then from there I upped the roll rate.

Finally for me personally, and this might be the hardest or most melancholy tip out there, I'm not attached to my planes the way I used to be, this has become more of a secondary hobby. I don't try to crash my airplanes, but I wouldn't be terribly upset if I did, just more frustrated that I couldn't then try to sell/trade the plane.

Fly a Variety. Precision, 3D, warbirds, and scale can all be flown in different interesting ways to keep things exciting.

How do you practice when you have reached a plateau, forget about the regiment of practice for a while and just go out and have fun.

Bob

My #1 suggestion of how to get out of a rut is practice a competitive discipline. I do pattern, but of course there's IMAC, etc., for RC. I haven't heard of many freestyle or 3D competitions, but you can study the masters of this discipline on YouTube and copy their routines.

#2. Buy a cheap RC helicopter you can fly indoors.

#3. Practice in your head. Time and budget constraints limit my flying time to zero for around 6 months, and I don't have time to fly the sim much. So I fly pattern aerobatics in my head as I'm falling asleep or a frew minutes mins with a stick model.

I use practicing in my head- that is, imagine the airplane in the sky and what stick movements you're doing - for learning correct stick inputs on challenging maneuvers. A good challenge is to imagine flying a straight slow roll, using correct control inputs. (First I start with a 2 pt, then a 4 pt. roll, then a slow roll). Then go try it on the sim and see if it makes a difference.

Try to fly the plane in a different style. For example I am trying to get rudder skills down so I am practicing some 3D. You might try practicing some traditional aerobatics to push your brain into thinking a different way and then go back to 3D.

Colton I think hit the nail on the head, you have to keep changing things up, and a Trainer causes you to think radically different.