What times do you average for 3x3 speed?

What times do you average for 3x3 speed?

  • Total voters
    169
AvGalen said:
not me though, and I am doing an average of 12 every day since january AND learned the G-Perms. I DID get a crazy sub 18 3/5 and a nice sub 20 10/12 but I am normally still doing 21 average. And I don't think anyone can call me a noob.
(am I the only one that is soo fast on bigcubes and so slow on 3x3x3?)
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You know very well that if you spent at least an hour and a half almost every day just practising 3x3 then you would get sub17 in no time. Same goes for Mr. Hughey so don't try pulling that one out on me either :p .

Hiero: If you care about the slower cubers then go and make a poll. The main reason I show little interest in them is because I know what it takes to get sub20 (sure it takes a good amount of practise, but really nothing compared to what it takes to get down even further; once you get to sub16 (if you ever do) you will realise exactly what I mean). I also know that slow people have such inconsistent and steadily increasing times that any results are going to change within a week. So what's the point of asking?

But if you care so much no one is stopping you from making your own poll. Just bear in mind there is a maximum of 10 options.

EDIT: Oh I also wanted to point to the interesting results we currently have, with a lot more cubers than there have been in the past pushing to the 13~ barrier.
 
If you are going to spend an hour and a half every day what would you do? Finger tricks, new or specific algorithims or just solve after solve?
 
Hiero said:
I think the reason people who are under 20 seconds display such immaturity and little compassion for anyone else is probably because of the average age of speedcubers. Teenagers and 20 year olds are still in the mentality of "let me show you how good I am and how much you suck", instead of "hey, let me share my wisdom with you". The mentality of a young person is if they are at 20 seconds, then anyone over 21 seconds sucks, if they are at 15, then anyone over 16 seconds sucks and so on.
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I think actually right here you did a good enough job of showing how much you suck without anybody else saying so.

Just to make it clear however...
You seem to have forgotten that the majority of knowledge the speedcubing community has is based upon a bunch of 16-20 year olds in the early 1980s and a majority of the further advancements (i.e. improved algorithms, improved fingertricks, expansion of the community (thanks pjk), some BLD methods) have been made by yes, 16-20 year olds.

You've been to one small competition. Did you cube much with the people there at all? The idea that these 'teenagers and 20 year olds' don't care about sharing knowledge is ridiculous and it should take half an hour with 99% of them to realise how wrong you are. At least, that's my experience with every comp I've been to so far.

It's hilarious that you automatically assume that fast cubers 'must be nerds' and 'need to show their [social] dominance', clearly you talk to little/none of them. Sure it's a 'nerdy' hobby to get good at but it shouldn't take long in the community to realise that speed and levels of social problems do not correlate whatsoever.

There is little point being offended with this thread. In fairness to Dene, 'sub 20' used to be a bit of a holy grail and measuring that against nowadays standards makes sense.

In the most basic sense of looking at the 3x3 speed event only and deciding what is at all fast, then yes, anybody who is over 20s really "doesn't matter". It's just a fact of a competitive sport that people who are not (yet) in the top 5-10% of a region/the world are not 'important' because they aren't pushing any boundaries.

This isn't designed to 'put people down' or 'crush their aspirations' because fast people aren't good character models. If you want to be fast badly enough, then you'll just do it. What x,y,z says shouldn't come into the picture.

Also I checked the thread again before posting - what Dene said^
 
AvGalen said:
not me though, and I am doing an average of 12 every day since january AND learned the G-Perms.
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No offense, but if you're serious about sub20ing you should be making sure you know algs (which you can do kinda quickly) for all of OLL/PLL, and then you should be specifically practicing lookahead and smooth turning, rather than just doing a dozen solves a day and hoping it will help.

Hiero said:
It seems like the point of this thread has turned into how arrogant fast speedcubers are. Instead of encouraging the rest of the community, it's time to degrade anyone who is not as fast as you are.
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Uh huh, no. First, people only even brought that up because slower people are complaining that they don't fit into this poll (when they shouldn't). And second, everyone who doesn't have some kind of dexterity problem (like missing a hand, or being over 60) can do sub20 with practice. If you haven't, it's not that you as a person suck, but it generally does mean that you don't really understand high-level speedsolving. The difference between 20 and, say, 13 or 30 or 60, is that it's pretty fast but you can break that barrier with skill and practice alone - you don't need crazy tps, just some moderate lookahead and decent algs.

Honestly, if you are stuck at over 20 seconds, it means you are doing something wrong. That's all there is to it - unless, again, you have some kind of serious dexterity problem, you can't have perfect technique and good tps and still be well over 20. It just doesn't happen. So that's why the fast people think the >20 people aren't serious speedcubers. It's not that you suck and should be excluded, it's that you're basically a casual solver who hasn't put the same effort into optimizing your solves that a lot of other people have.


By the way, to people like AvG who are wondering why they are fast at bigcubes/BLD/whatever and not 3x3: you have to apply a different strategy in 3x3, because higher turnspeed is necessary. (Not all THAT high though - a consistent 3 tps will get you under 20 easily.) In bigcubes and BLD you can learn a handful of algorithms and get near the top with intuition. Not so on 3x3. It's important to work on fluid solves and lookahead, to decrease your pauses. I used to be really good at bigcubes and really bad at 3x3 too (I thought sub-15 would be impossible for me not too long ago, and that was after already improving a lot), but I've worked on 3x3 a lot since then and I've improved a lot too. You just have to spend the time, and practice the things that need improvement.
 
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Dene said:
You know very well that if you spent at least an hour and a half almost every day just practising 3x3 then you would get sub17 in no time. Same goes for Mr. Hughey so don't try pulling that one out on me either :p .
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No, it really doesn't. I had at least a month towards the middle of last year where I practiced an hour and a half almost every day, and I didn't improve at all - not even the tiniest bit. (I would show you my CCT records of my daily averages of 100 from that time, but CCT ate them.) I'm quite convinced the problem was that my practice wasn't the right sort, so I'm sure it was my fault, but I don't really know where I went wrong. After talking to Chester about it this weekend, I figure I'm going to do more with videos in the future and see if it helps, both watching other people's videos and taping myself and watching mine. I have a feeling I just have some really stupid habits that I'm reinforcing instead of fixing, and I need to find them.

And a little more on topic, I'm totally fine with this poll; it makes sense that we have a good poll to see how the groupings work out for the sub-20 folks. Perhaps we can have another one in another year and I'll actually be able to pick something better than 19+.

And Arnaud, I used to think of you as the best good big-cube, bad small-cube solver out there. Then I met Myles. Myles is awesome!
 
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Today I got my first sub-17 Ao5 =)

BTW, I usually practice by steps.

Sometimes I practice Cross + F2L, other OLL and PLL.

For example, I try to solve Cross and F2L in less than 11 sec. stopping timer and scrambling again after I finish. Or maybe I give myself a 5 sec limit for OLL and PLL and everyday I notice some improvement.

Just practising didn't seem to help much.
 
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Mike Hughey said:
I'm quite convinced the problem was that my practice wasn't the right sort, so I'm sure it was my fault, but I don't really know where I went wrong. After talking to Chester about it this weekend, I figure I'm going to do more with videos in the future and see if it helps, both watching other people's videos and taping myself and watching mine. I have a feeling I just have some really stupid habits that I'm reinforcing instead of fixing, and I need to find them.
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Specifically made a thread for people whose practice wasn't paying off :)
Not sure if you saw... But yeah what Dene said, put up a video and explain how you spend your time practicing 3x3 and people can critique :)
 
Escher said:
Specifically made a thread for people whose practice wasn't paying off :)
Not sure if you saw... But yeah what Dene said, put up a video and explain how you spend your time practicing 3x3 and people can critique :)
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I did - I read it right away, and I've read it several times now. It is a very inspiring article, and I know it has some very good ideas, but I must admit it seemed a little too vague for me to feel like I really knew what to do. (Although I did get some ideas of how I might improve my practice, so I still think it helped somewhat.)

Perhaps I should post this there instead of hijacking the thread here, but I wonder if you could go through several days of practice and give examples of specifically what someone might do, showing how it matches the principles you give. If you do it for yourself, unfortunately it will probably seem way over my head; I wonder if you could do it from a perspective of someone who's averaging about 20 seconds instead (if you can manage to think that way).
 
Mike Hughey said:
I did - I read it right away, and I've read it several times now. It is a very inspiring article, and I know it has some very good ideas, but I must admit it seemed a little too vague for me to feel like I really knew what to do. (Although I did get some ideas of how I might improve my practice, so I still think it helped somewhat.)

Perhaps I should post this there instead of hijacking the thread here, but I wonder if you could go through several days of practice and give examples of specifically what someone might do, showing how it matches the principles you give. If you do it for yourself, unfortunately it will probably seem way over my head; I wonder if you could do it from a perspective of someone who's averaging about 20 seconds instead (if you can manage to think that way).
Click to expand...

Sorry about the vagueness, an unfortunate side-effect of wanting it to be quite general and not having enough willpower to make it huge... Thanks for the props though :)

Yeah, I'll be away for a week but afterwards I'll be happy to give a concrete example (2-3 day routine?) for 3x3 practice, I'll post it in that thread. I'll do my best to target advice for people around 17-20s, I do remember very well what it was like to be fighting against the 20s barrier :)
 
Escher said:
Yeah, I'll be away for a week but afterwards I'll be happy to give a concrete example (2-3 day routine?) for 3x3 practice, I'll post it in that thread. I'll do my best to target advice for people around 17-20s, I do remember very well what it was like to be fighting against the 20s barrier :)
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Thanks -that would be GREAT!
 
After looking through my cube history (Graphy-qq and other timer) I have improved in the past 2 months 10-12 seconds, This has gotten me practicing more.
I usually average 20-24 and get plenty of sub 19. (they seem like slow solves too)
 
Conclusion: According to people that are already fast, it is easy to become fast as well. According to people that aren't fast already it isn't so easy. Maybe learning 100 algs and practising 1.5 hours each day just is considered totally normal by the fast people but it just isn't normal for me. I call that hardcore dedication.

(I also remember lots of people saying that you didn't need to learn OLL in order to get sub 20. OLL was only needed to get sub 12, until that time it was all about F2L)

I DO agree that it is easier to get sub20 now than in the past because tutorials are better, algs are better and cubes are better. But saying that getting sub20 is easy is just not true!

(also, for a competition it is MUCH more important to know the variation of times for slow solvers than for fast solvers. It doesn't matter if you need 15 or 16 seconds, but it does matter if you need 30 or 90 seconds. But that is not what this topic is about, just responding to some posts)
 
A small tip (though highly useful) for solving.

Learn COLL, you don't have to know the algs for COLL, but learn recognition. It helps my PLL recognition IMMENSELY for all edges oriented cases where I can *know* for a fact what type of PLL it is.

I do not believe an hour of practice a day is needed. In a typical week I do one average of 100, then maybe a bit of untimed solving to improve lookahead and get more flow in my solves. Less then 10 timed solves perday, though one ao100 a week (that's only if I'm feeling like it too!)

You can't generalize fast people as the ones who learn mass algs and practice daily..because taht sin't always the case.
 
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