How to Get Faster using the Fridrich / CFOP Method

**Chrisandstuff** · 07-21-2012

Originally Posted by Sad 4u

ok so imgoing to try to keep this short, but forgive me if i babble off topic. About 3 weeks ago my f2l finally sped up, and i learned full
pll. i average about 33 seconds since then, and i cant seem to get faster. i practice alot, and by alot i mean a good 75 or more solves a day. my breakdown goes something like this: cross: 3-5 sec f2l: 14-18 sec oll(2 step): 5-6 sec pll: 3-4 sec. im not really sure what i should focus on improving, but i feel like my f2l may bea bit slow, since i do pause alot. i was tying to learn look ahead for a weekor two,but to no avail. if anything it seems to make me pause more, and go seven hundred times slower. i was also thinking of lsarning full oll, but that wouldtake a while, plus the max it'll do for me now is 2-3 sec anyways. what do you guys think? also what are your breakdowns for those of you who average about the same as me?

Sad 4u I just recently broke sub 30 and heres how my solves use to break down before sub 30

Cross+F2L around 20 seconds (plus or minus a few)
OLL+PLL around 10 seconds

now that Im sub 30 my break down is more like this

Cross+F2L around 15-17 seconds
OLL+PLL around 8-9 seconds
Ive gotten a couple sub 20 solves both were thanks to a pll skip and ive had up to a 20.91 single without a pll or oll skip. My biggest word of advice is your lookahead I know I had problems with it too(and I still do) but you need to either learn to look ahead alot better or get better at just tracking your next step.(I tend to relly on a fast tps while semi-tracking my pieces if I could look ahead better im sure I could break sub 20)

get all of your PLLs down to sub 3 seconds for execution at least (the only ones I currently cant consistently sub 3 are an N perm and a R perm and I can sub 2 a good chunk of my PLL's and not one has been sub 1 yet)

Also try to get you transfer from one step to the other to be smooth too. Cross to F2L should easily be able to just flow into one another and F2L to OLL should flow easily too OLL to PLL there could be problems with recognition but just try to flow from one step to the next as good as possible.

Anyways thats all the advice I can think of giving you lol. Good luck and I hope you can break through that road block I know it took me about a month break from cubing to break sub 30 barrier.

**Penguinstorm300** · 07-21-2012

Originally Posted by Sad 4u

ok so imgoing to try to keep this short, but forgive me if i babble off topic. About 3 weeks ago my f2l finally sped up, and i learned full
pll. i average about 33 seconds since then, and i cant seem to get faster. i practice alot, and by alot i mean a good 75 or more solves a day. my breakdown goes something like this: cross: 3-5 sec f2l: 14-18 sec oll(2 step): 5-6 sec pll: 3-4 sec. im not really sure what i should focus on improving, but i feel like my f2l may bea bit slow, since i do pause alot. i was tying to learn look ahead for a weekor two,but to no avail. if anything it seems to make me pause more, and go seven hundred times slower. i was also thinking of lsarning full oll, but that wouldtake a while, plus the max it'll do for me now is 2-3 sec anyways. what do you guys think? also what are your breakdowns for those of you who average about the same as me?

Looking at you average 2LOLL and PLL times, I would say they seem fine to get to sub-25. The cross should be done under five seconds consistantly, and I would recommend you practice it on the D face as I remember myself solving cross on the U face instead until I averaged 23 seconds. Transition by then is quite difficult.

So far, I haven't learned any stuck piece cases. For F2L, I would practice move efficiency (try to get full F2L including cross under 35-40 moves), and also practice turning slower and looking for other F2L pieces while solving the current one. It is also helpful to be able to recognise different cases during F2L faster, but this will come naturally.

So here is my personal breakdown of a solve to get sub-30:

Cross: 5s
F2L: 15s
2LOLL: 5s
PLL: 4s

**Pokerizer** · 07-23-2012

Ok so I was laying in bed watching badmephistos video on practicing f2l and I think I have been doing it wrong and that is why my times have not been increasing as fast as I hoped. When I practice I try and do f2l
Without any cube rotations, this means I'm using my thumbs... Is this completely wrong? I know they are slower than using my fingers but am I losing a lot of speed using them instead of rotating the cube?

**Penguinstorm300** · 07-24-2012

Originally Posted by Pokerizer

Ok so I was laying in bed watching badmephistos video on practicing f2l and I think I have been doing it wrong and that is why my times have not been increasing as fast as I hoped. When I practice I try and do f2l
Without any cube rotations, this means I'm using my thumbs... Is this completely wrong? I know they are slower than using my fingers but am I losing a lot of speed using them instead of rotating the cube?

I suggest you use as many cube rotations as you like at the beginning while you are learning how to do intuitive F2L (that's what I did). Once you get used to pairing up corner and edge pieces and can do it without any problem at all, try rotating the cube less. Almost all top cubers still rotate during F2L to get better finger tricks. Once you are trying to reduce F2L rotations, don't do any moves that are hard to do, for example, I don't do any 'B' moves. F2L should normally give good finger tricks (R, U, some Ds and some Fs) so practice with your fingers and you'll get used to the moves.

Note that when you start off practicing F2L, your times will be worse than what you had with Beginner's method. That's normal. Just keep at practicing F2L and you'll start noticing big improvements.

**Pokerizer** · 07-24-2012

Originally Posted by Penguinstorm300

I suggest you use as many cube rotations as you like at the beginning while you are learning how to do intuitive F2L (that's what I did). Once you get used to pairing up corner and edge pieces and can do it without any problem at all, try rotating the cube less. Almost all top cubers still rotate during F2L to get better finger tricks. Once you are trying to reduce F2L rotations, don't do any moves that are hard to do, for example, I don't do any 'B' moves. F2L should normally give good finger tricks (R, U, some Ds and some Fs) so practice with your fingers and you'll get used to the moves.

Note that when you start off practicing F2L, your times will be worse than what you had with Beginner's method. That's normal. Just keep at practicing F2L and you'll start noticing big improvements.

I've been doing F2l for a while now but now im working on speed, I'm comfortable pairing and placing from any angle but I think that using F and B moves have been slowing me down alot. My ao12 is almost under 45 secs.

**drogg** · 07-24-2012

Any people who have been doing F2L for a while and are starting to feel comfortable with it but still are not seeing great improvements in your times please remember that you have TWO hands! It is easy to reduce cube rotations by using your non-dominant hand to insert pairs and begins to drop your f2l times quite quickly (although not by a huge amount).