[Unofficial] 3x3 Average of 5 - 11.29 (Tips please!)

a small kitten said:

A If you just solved crosses, you'll get a lot more cross practice than if you did entire solves in a certain period of time.

Click to expand...

Yes, but you'll get a lot less f2l, oll, and pll practice than if you had done solves. Plus, you won't be practicing the transitions and recognition.

I totally agree with Jskyler91 (as always). Follow his golden advice. The idea of turning fast and getting good times is quite pleasing, but in the long term, it just wont help. Perfect your technique, then only go fast is what i would say. I dint do this, i m stuck at a barrier now, and now its gonna suck much more to slow down and get things right, but i have to

drewsopchak said:

Yes, but you'll get a lot less f2l, oll, and pll practice than if you had done solves. Plus, you won't be practicing the transitions and recognition.

Click to expand...

I remember hearing Feliks say in his how to get faster series that individual cross timing is bad because it doesn't help F2L transition.

jeff081692 said:

I remember hearing Feliks say in his how to get faster series that individual cross timing is bad because it doesn't help F2L transition.

Click to expand...

yeah. Feliks didn't practice individual steps.

a small kitten said:

Are you sure? If you just solved crosses, you'll get a lot more cross practice than if you did entire solves in a certain period of time.

Click to expand...

I agree, think about this in terms of studying for a test, do you only study the things that you know or do you focus on those things which you don't know? The more prudent studier makes certain that he fills in his gaps before he studies as a whole.

drewsopchak said:

yeah. Feliks didn't practice individual steps.

Click to expand...

I seriously doubt this, what he said was TIMING YOUR CROSS is virtually pointless because it is so isolated that it doesn't really reflect anything. I agree with this as a "fast cross" doesn't mean very much, now a fast x-cross, that is something really special and useful. Also, even if Felik's didn't practice crosses exclusively he certainly did slow , untimed solves seeing as how he says you should do so in his how to be faster videos. Also, a lot of why Feliks is fast is because he is Feliks, just because he naturally picked up cross doesn't mean we shouldn't practice it if we haven't. The reason he probably practices it less is because it IS NOT A WEAKNESS FOR HIM. He also recommends practicing different ways to do f2l rotationless, which means he more than likely did practice just f2l. I am sorry man, but just solving and not practicing is not the best way to reach your full potential.

EDIT: I am not saying you can't still be fast by doing this, but I believe you will end up much faster if you get as close as you can to perfect in all parts of your method first. Speed, lookahead and transitions can all come with time and ARE something you practice by solving, but your method itself requires individual time to perfect.

I dont know why people are not agreeing , perfecting individual parts of your solves is neccessary for good times, its obvious .

And I remember what feliks said. No point in practicing your cross because it wont help. However your cross should be decent, like his average 1.1 seconds. (if you are that fast at cross, that obviously means its not a weakness and u should work on other things. i.e going into the 1st pair from the cross). He also said that once u have a decent cross, timed solves of cross only are useless, but timed solves of cross+f2l1 are very important. I also remember he posted an 2.12 avg12 of cross+f2l1 (which is awesome no doubt), but that good cross+f2l1 lookahead and transition just cant come from solving and solving. You have to practice looking ahead into the 1st pair seperately. . For example, do an average of cross only, let it be x. then an average of f2l1 only with cross solved,let it be y. Then do cross+f2l1, ideally, at the Level of faz, it should be x+y, or something less than x+y+0.2. If you can get it, its not your weakness, and you should not do cross+f2l1 solves. Otherwise, its must. Similar work on all transitions and having decent fingertricks can make sub10 quite easily achievable.
And most people just do normal solving and solving over and over again, if that was it, everyone would be as fast as Feliks. Technique of practice is crucial, though he might be unconsciously having a good technique, but there is a difference.
Similarly, finger tricks, Do you learn better finger tricks from solving over and over? I dont do U2s and D2s and M2s(proper ones) in my solves. Now i can turn as fast
as i want with U+U or M'+M' but they make most of my plls suck . OF course i will have to devote times to my weaknesses, start slow with good fingertricks all over, and then reach a good level where i can sub1 the A ,H,Z perms like i can sub1 the algs without double turns(U,Jb,T pll)
Jskyler91, you rock man, is there no fb page or anything like badmephisto? You are my favourite cubing teacher.

Akash Rupela said:

I dont know why people are not agreeing , perfecting individual parts of your solves is neccessary for good times, its obvious .

And I remember what feliks said. No point in practicing your cross because it wont help. However your cross should be decent, like his average 1.1 seconds. (if you are that fast at cross, that obviously means its not a weakness and u should work on other things. i.e going into the 1st pair from the cross). He also said that once u have a decent cross, timed solves of cross only are useless, but timed solves of cross+f2l1 are very important. I also remember he posted an 2.12 avg12 of cross+f2l1 (which is awesome no doubt), but that good cross+f2l1 lookahead and transition just cant come from solving and solving. You have to practice looking ahead into the 1st pair seperately. For example if your cross average is x .
And most people just do normal solving and solving over and over again, if that was it, everyone would be as fast as Feliks. Technique of practice is crucial, though he might be unconsciously having a good technique, but there is a difference.

Jskyler91, you rock man, is there no fb page or anything like badmephisto? You are my favourite cubing teacher.

Click to expand...

I completely agree. And no, just the Youtube right now, but I am glad someone appreciates my work. I know I often go against the grain, and I am not afraid to point out where I think the cubing community has been looking at something wrong which causes many people who are very set in their ways to dislike me; but I only do so to make me and this community more informed and hopefully faster overall. It's good to hear that someone understands why I do the things I do. I might do a website, but I am not very good at programing so I am not really sure how to go about doing so.

Please try to stay on topic... but anyway if I were to practice a specific part of my solving, which would you all most suggest?

What are your splits?

Riley said:

Please try to stay on topic... but anyway if I were to practice a specific part of my solving, which would you all most suggest?

Click to expand...

just practice.

Maybe some bad advice abd definately a hard thing for everybody to change, but perhaps consider becoming color neutral.

Wow, thank you so much for reconstructing even though I didn't provide scrambles! I really, really appreciate it. Looks like I should mostly improve on LL, I have a bad habit of doing a U2 without even looking yet. Thanks again.

By the way I think I recall Felix saying in one of his videos that he doesn't recommend practicing just cross alone as that makes you forget about look-ahead and such, but if I remember right he did suggest practicing OLL, PLL and such on their own apart from full solves.

This is an interesting thread. I would have thought it would be much more efficient to do full solves (i.e. it would minimise the amount of time you're spending scrambling compared to solving). Also I thought if you worked on individual parts that you'd not be practicing the transitions between them which is also important. However maybe it's the case that focusing your mind on one section at a time may be benefitial.

Turn faster and get some better algorithms.

1. Make a video of yourself solving.

2. Look at the video to identify trouble spots like pauses, slowdown, or high move count when it didn't seem necessary.

3. Look up information on what you could do better in terms of method and finger tricks in that area.

4. Practice that information specifically until it becomes natural. This could be a more efficient cross/xcross, less rotations in F2L, better LL algs/fringer tricks, multi-slotting, PLL prediction, whatever.

5. Practice tons of full solves until that specific thing becomes a natural part of full solves.

In other words, who cares about your transitions between "steps" if you're transitions are fast but your method is poor.

Video is the best way to figure out what specifics you need to improve on, whether it be transitions to eliminate pauses, method to lower move count/rotations, or just finger tricks to increase turn speed potential.

The best argument for deliberate practice I think is that when you get to a point where the most general thing you can improve at is actually something specific, you need to practice it on it's own to practice it much at all. For example, you really need to improve at thing X, but thing X only shows up in 1/10 solves. You will end up either not noticing it in time to make use of it (maybe it's a multi-slotting scenario) and waste it, or pause and have to think about it because you are not familiar with it on it's own yet. The pause might only be a second, but even a moment of pause means you stopped looking ahead and transition will be poor.

If a musician who has been playing a particular piece for weeks is having trouble with one measure, they would be wasting their time playing the whole four minute piece just to improve at one second of it. They would much more likely practice the phrase that the measure is contained in. At the same time, why grind practice on it at all unless they're sure that the hand movements they're using are practical. Breaking it down first might be the best option before practicing something sub-par.

Think of it like this: Getting fast means making the whole process feel natural and flow quickly. This is a matter of experience, so the best way to get better at what you already know is to grind solves. In this scenario, what you already know is key.

[A] EO double x-cross, multi-slot last two pairs, and ZBLL with poor transitions. (not realistic, but to make a point)
Regular cross, single F2L pair solving with zero LL influence, OLL, and PLL with great transitions.

I would rather be doing [A] because that would mean all I need to do it grind solves to improve transitions. If I were doing , what the heck is constant solving going to do for me?

Studying increases potential, solving reaches it.