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Efficient Practice Limit per day

How many hours is good a day

  • Even a break wont differ your times

    Votes: 4 8.3%
  • 30 minutes

    Votes: 7 14.6%
  • 1-2 hours

    Votes: 27 56.3%
  • 3-4 hours

    Votes: 6 12.5%
  • 5-7 hours

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 8+ hours

    Votes: 3 6.3%
  • Other, please comment

    Votes: 1 2.1%

  • Total voters
    48

Akash Rupela

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The Thread title might not be clear, so i would like to elaborate on it. Suppose we dont practice for sometime, and then hold the cube, its often that our average has fallen a bit and it takes quite an effort even to get to our normal average.
But on the other hand, I dont think practice in cubing is like simple mathematics. For example a person cubes 2 hours a day for 100 days. Another person cubes 10 hours a day for 20 days. The first person will have more improvement (at least from my experience, of having been on either side of the coin).
So how much practice do you think should be done daily, if we have plenty of time, but also dont wish to waste our time doing useless practice. I mean like Feliks said somewhere he practised half hour a day for a long time(thats my warmup time lol). I mean it might depend person to person. And this thread in no way asks how much do you practise. Its about how much should one practice, to get the best out of himself, and at the same time not waste his time stupidly solving and practicing.

Additional Details: I m a hardworking type cuber. I cube around 5-6 hours a day on an average( on good days its 9-10, when i m a little busy, its 1-2). But recently i have this feeling, i might be wasting time by giving this much time if 2-3 hours produces the same result, in which case i will start with some new hobbies too
 
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Czery

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I think the reason times get better after we don't practice is because our muscles get stronger...
But I may be wrong.

I think this really depends on how you define practice.
My practice really isn't regimented. I cube when I'm in the car, on a bus, waiting for someone or just killing time so I don't really have a cap to my time. I just practice whenever there is time.
 

Noahaha

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I have this bad habit where I only focus on one thing and everything else gets worse. But what do I care, if that's what I find the most fun at a specific time?
 

Ickathu

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I said 1-2 hours. For me, I probably do each cube for no more than 30 minutes per day, but I usually do several different puzzles throughout the day. My favorite events are 4x4, Pyraminx, OH, 3Bld, and 3x3 or 5x5 or 2x2, so I usually do 3 or 4 of those each day, and sometimes do other cubes (6x6 is fun, MBLD, 7x7, sq1).

Then again, this is only serious practice. Each morning I usually do a few 3x3 solves, then do some 3x3 or OH throughout the day, during lunch, etc, and then at karate after I do one class and am waiting for the rest of my family in the next class (1 hour) I idly practice 3x3 while talking and such.

I have this bad habit where I only focus on one thing and everything else gets worse. But what do I care, if that's what I find the most fun at a specific time?

I have that too sometimes. I'll be doing pyraminx or 2x2 or something fast and easy and look up and it'll be 1 hour later and I'll have done 100-150 solves lol
 
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Escher

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The short answer is: depends.

The marginally longer answer: some concepts in cubing require immersion. Some do not. Those that do tend to be skills gained through experience, such as lookahead. Those that don't tend to be those that involve small changes to technique or new alg sets/fingertricks, where short bursts of practice and repetition and compartmentalising get the job done better than just a 5 hour drilling session.

I know the way I got good at f2l and lookahead was absolutely just down to immersion, with a wide variety of different activities within that.
 

pdilla

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I see what you are trying to ask here. But it would be pretty hard to find a general optimal practice regime. You would have to factor in the individual person's ability to learn, spacial awareness, etc.

But it does seem that as we look around at all of the great cubers out there, somewhere around and hour or two per day seems to work the best.
 

Czery

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That is all personal. Generally though, I practice ALL events once a week (Sat/Sun). This takes me up to 3-4 hours but that's the only cubing I do throughout the week.


Which muscles?

Well, definitely the intrinsic muscles inside the fingers. Probably the hypothaner muscles and interossii (?) muscles that are located along the finger and metacarpals/carpals...

I'm not a myologist so I'm not actually sure...
besides
I don't know the actual names of the muscles... :fp
 

retep

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In my experience it is the quality of the practice that makes the difference. If you practice 10 hours a day it is nearly impossible (in my experience and opinion) to be efficient that entire time, for probably 5+ hours of that you are just solving for the sake of solving and you really start losing focus on what you are actually doing. Shorter (but still reasonably long, like 20min-1.5hours) practice sessions are almost always far more productive and efficient. Each time you practice for your short amount of time you go in refreshed and it isn't as hard to back up and think what was really good/bad about your last solve, instead of getting into that "just cubing for the sake of it" feel/mindset.

Also think of it like a busy day (pretty sure we have all had those...), you feel far more productive and tend to hate all the things that "waste your time". If you don't have as much time available you are just naturally more productive and efficient. If you are only solving for like 20 minutes a day you may feel slightly improvement or at least learning with each solve, whereas if you are practicing 10 hours a day you are more likely just developing a habit of solving the way you already are, your times may become a bit more consistent but you will probably feel like you are at a plateau and progress is minimal.

Hopefully something in there made sense, I was having a hard time trying to communicate my thoughts (English has always been one of my worst subjects because of this, despite having better grammar and spelling than 98% of people I know...).
 
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Well my times are improving quickly and I'm giving myself about 30 mins/day to practice. Even when I am practicing it is usually just casual solving while giving part of my attention to something else. I rarely will force myself to sit down and practice something I'm struggling with because of how difficult it is for me to find the time.

But I would even say another factor could very well be how good you are. I only switched to CFOP in December so it's still possible to improve even with the casual practice. I average 23 seconds atm (26 a month ago) but I bet this would not be a sufficient investment for a 15 second cuber.
 

Thorsten

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I've a question:

What is so hard about making the answers of a poll exhausting and exclusive? (For those who want to read something about that: mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive ; google it!)

For your example it would be:
up to 30 Minutes or < / = 30min
30min up to 1hour

and so on...

What shall i vote for if i practice 45minutes? Or 2 and a half hour?

Come on guys it isn't that hard...just read one time through your poll....
 

JianhanC

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For tricking, spaced practice is better than massed practice. Cubingwise, I do an avg100 per day and really focus on lookahead. I get burnt out but there are improvements.
 
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stoic

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I'm lucky if I get 30min a day now

Me too; and I've NEVER done an Ao100 in one day.
(Probably why I only average ~32s)

In my experience though, there are certain things (based on my low level of practice time, but cubing every day) that take time to develop. It takes me about a month or more before a new alg is sufficiently burned into my *long-term* memory that I can recall it with ease, regardless of how much I might have drilled it in the first couple of days of learning it
 
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FinnGamer

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I think anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours helps, I do an ao100 a day in 3x3/2x2 and a Ao5 for 4x4/5x5 which takes about 2 hours. But I have spring break now and can practice more
 

jskyler91

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First of all, how long have you been cubing Akash? Just curious your progress to practice to time cubing ratio.

As to your poll I would say cube more if you can/ want to and cube less if you aren't in the mood. I say you should cube for one hour minimum a day if you want to keep improving really quickly (for me at least), but that hour does not and IMO should not be all at the same time. I think cubing at three different times of the day is a really good idea. In the morning I usually (haven't been cubing lately, but rather learning new cubing related stuff) do an average of 100 solves. These are slow solves where I do not time inspection and I just warm up my hands and mind/ get down any new algs I have been working on. Sometime midday I do another average of 100 where I go normal speed and try to focus on looking ahead properly. Then at night I do another average of 100 going at full tps and the best lookahead/smoothness i can do. This is all after first doing my warmups which I made a vid on. I also generally end the night by trying to learn something new/ practicing anything I struggled on in the day. This whole process usually takes around 3 hours max.

On the weekends I usually do this and really focus on learning new things/ checking things off my to do list, so I cube more. If I am having a bad day I practice looking ahead more and not tps as much, If I am having a good day I practice tps more and looking ahead less. This whole process works very well for me.
 
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