Tips to learn Full OLL in 1-3 days

Vince29

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May 20, 2014
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Hey Guys, from what i know, many people struggle to learn full oll, even in a long period of time. When i learnt full oll in 3 days, other cubers i knew just went.. WOAH!? I average around 12 seconds but something tells me sharing my method would be helpful to you guys. So here is the 3 day plan with around 1-2 hours of learning and 1 hour and practice per day. I suggest doing it on long weekends :P

Requirements: You should know full pll and a decent knowledge about your method and working of the cube. I would suggest learning full oll at around 15-20 secs(avg) but at least 30.

Day 1: Learn all the olls that are just easy trigger compilations or just really short and easy to remember. I personally just watched this whole series(Just 3 videos) only and it turned out to be sufficient. Since they are easy algorithms you wont forget them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-x3FjK2jz4

Day 2: Go through the list of all olls and seeing for yourself which are the cases that you get most commonly. Common cases may not be same for all since common cases depend on scrambling style and solving style. Since these cases will pop up alot, you will naturally get more practice with them and hence you wont forget them.

Day 3: This day is actually quite easy since you have so few olls remaining that you don't know, that you can learn them all in one day.

Tips:
1. Learning (Visual and Algorithmic)
Knowing full pll actually helped alot while learning full oll because i had a bit of practice learning lots of algs in one day. The structure of how i learnt the algs was that first i used to execute the algorithm without looking at the cube but by looking only at the screen. This was just personal satisfaction that the oll worked :P. Then I execute the oll while alternating between the cube and screen and 90% of the times i would just remember the flow of the algorithm and how my hands looked while i was doing the oll and hence i would consider the algorithm learnt and i would never have to 'MEMORIZE' the notations of these algs. But this is not the same with all people. Some people can easily memorize algs(I suck at that though). Although for the remaining 10% i would have to memorize the algs. And the easiest way to memorize algs is to break them up into familiar movements. As in, You divide the alg into sets of moves that you usually perform together in say plls or f2l etc. There may not always be triggers in the oll algs, in which case this method is helpful. But I still find it easier to remember the 'flow' of the alg as you do it and store it in the visual memory, kind of how you visualize you cross in your head during inspection, but a little differently.


2.Practicing
While learning these algorithms I usually learnt the algorithms in the morning before going to school and then when i came home, i would start cubing normally. Then, if i got a case that i learnt in the morning but didn't quite remember, i would quickly look it up. With a decent amount of solves you should get enough practice for most of the olls. Then at night before sleeping, i would test myself to see if i remember all of them, and i would practice the ones that i didn't. In this way you can ensure you will remember all your algs.

3. Choosing the right alg
There are many sites where you could get oll algs, but to choose which alg is the right alg for you, you need to try all the possible algs for all the cases and see for yourself which one would be better for your learning and execution style. I originally learnt olls from Bob Burton's site but as i progressed i saw a few of my olls getting really fast and a few of them really slow. So i had to eventually switch my algs to something that suited my turning style better.

I did the mistake of learning full oll when i averaged around 25 secs, And it took really long for me to get sub-15. I can't impose a limit to when you learn but can share my experience and hope it will help. I hope this post helped :)
 
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Common cases may not be same for all since common cases depend on scrambling style and solving style.

Please explain. What do you mean by scrambling style? Everyone should use random state scrambles. What do you mean by solving style? Like using edge control during the last slot?
 
Please explain. What do you mean by scrambling style? Everyone should use random state scrambles. What do you mean by solving style? Like using edge control during the last slot?

See, you do not always use scrambles from websites.And however random it may seem, when you scramble by yourself there is a pattern which differs from person to person. And by solving style I mean how you would solve a certain cross case or a certain f2l case, and yes it does effect your olll. If you want to see, sit with your notebook and track how many times you get each oll case, you will see a few olls being considerably high in number. Tell one of your friends to do the same and compare your results, you'll know what I mean.
 
If you want to see, sit with your notebook and track how many times you get each oll case, you will see a few olls being considerably high in number. Tell one of your friends to do the same and compare your results, you'll know what I mean.

If both me and my friend completely disregard orientation when doing f2l we should both get sune roughly 1 out of every 54 solves, oll skip roughly 1 out of every 216 solves, etc.
 
If both me and my friend completely disregard orientation when doing f2l we should both get sune roughly 1 out of every 54 solves, oll skip roughly 1 out of every 216 solves, etc.
Yes but the should gets and the do gets are completely different. Solving style effects the consistency of olls. When you do your last pair in a certain way that is different from others, it changes the oll you are going to get. For example when i was learning full olll, i would usually get the awkward shapes, the W cases and the P cases. But my knowledge of f2l was different from my friends and if both of us were given the same case, we would solve it differently and that would result in different olls. This applies not only for the last layer
 
Yes but the should gets and the do gets are completely different.
Not really. Not in this case.

When you do your last pair in a certain way that is different from others, it changes the oll you are going to get.
Agreed, but that doesn't make certain OLL cases more likely to show up over others unless you're taking into consideration the orientation of the edges when deciding how to insert that last pair. Lets say you and your friend use the exact same moves up until the last pair needs to be inserted, then to insert it you use R' F R F' while he uses U R U' R', the two of you will of course get different OLL cases, but neither of you is more or less likely to get a W case than the other (or any other OLL case).
 
Wow - this must be why I always get OLL parity on 4x4. It's all down to my solving style :)

Seriously, apart from that silliness, this doesn't seem a good idea to me. OP recommends 6-9 hours to learn 48 algs. That's about 11 minutes per OLL - 4 mins to learn and 7 mins to practise. Your chances of retaining all that in memory are pretty slim, and why would you want to learn them so intensively anyway?
 
Well its just tips to do so. I did it and people that i knew seemed to want to be able to do it so i figured i would just share how I learned full oll so that if anyone wanted, they could probably take something useful from it.
 
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