Alright, I should make a video on this by now. Anyway, here we go. I have two recommendations that completely revamped my playing and boosted me to the next level. First, speedflips. Sounds hard, but trust me it's worth it. Speedflips teach minute powerslide, air roll, and (most importantly) flip cancels. These three things drastically improve your recoveries, which boosts your overall speed. They also increase your control in the air. The next big thing I found helped was wavedashes. These also help your recoveries and speed, but have the added benefit of working on ground car control. If you add those two things to freeplay and some solid training packs, you'll reach Plat (and hopefully Diamond) in no time. 😉👍

I can play with you

how do you drop from diamond to gold? Did you take a break?