I've heard so many people talk about how not practicing 3x3x3 makes them better. It makes me so jealous. That never happens for me. If I practice like crazy on 3x3x3, I'll start to get very slightly better - it will make a difference - but a couple of weeks off and it's as if I never improved at all. What I find so very frustrating about 3x3x3 speedsolving is that it seems to take so much constant, steady practice, and I'm just not interested in doing that, even if I had the time. I'll do it for some weeks at a time and improve occasionally, but then I always seem to regress again when I slack off with the practicing. So I never really improve anymore.
Mate, I can relate so much to this. You may recall my race to sub 20 7(?) years ago when you ran that thread. I have been sat on some huge plateaus over the years since. My progressions to ~18s was quite consistent but very quickly my progression stopped.
What I firmly do believe now is that repeating complete solves alone may work for some but for others it may not. Solving, especially if you have for years, becomes such a sub conscious task. Have you ever said to yourself before a solve "I'll do X here" and the solve is over and you never did?
For me progression comes from challenging what is automatic, what is norm and doing various forms of practice that breaks that subconscious thought. Whilst this may sound like overthinking, sometimes that is needed.
Rowan Kinneavy (
@Escher ) did a post many years ago about practice where can be found here
https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/threads/how-to-practice.27870/. This is such a great starting point and was the basis for how I have practiced in recent years.
If I was to give specifics for the more mature cuber I would say do some sessions of the highest TPS you can, the times will be bad but in time it will help, we older folk have a natural tenancy to turn slower and this is on top of being told to slow down and lookahead. We really do turn slower than we can. If you have not done anything on X --> 1st Pair that will net you loads of improvement. I do some casual solves where I may inspect for >1m even if just trying to predict where one corner will end up. Loads of exploratory solves where time is not important looking for where you might rotate where you don't need to. Explore some COLL and WV even if you don't learn the all the algs.
It may not work for you Mike but for me anything that breaks that subconscious repetition works for me.
I have just hit globally sub 14.5 now, some good improvement recently but I am now racing Ron to sub 12 in comp. I still need to find a lot more improvement
Always happy to help in any way I can, there is life in our old hands yet...
