New to speed cubing

Someone might have already said it, but try planning out at least some of your cross before the solve. Don't just immediately start solving it without looking around. To start out, try planning out solving one or two cross pieces before starting the solve.
 
Shaun;

Cross
From looking at your solve it seems like you should actually solve the cross and first layer on the top considering your few mistakes when putting the corners in seemed to be because of the colour recognition which I believe is easier to see from the top... But if you like solving it on the bottom, just keep practicing and get better recognition with the colour scheme of the cube and try practicing the cross by scrambling --> trying to memorize as many cross pieces as possible when inspecting --> solve. Also try to get your move count when solving the cross to under 8 moves consistently :). When I first started my cross was pretty bad also but it got good really fast when I started considering lower move count > speed.

F2l/4Look last layer
If you decide to learn f2l be prepared for your times to go up dramaticlly for a while... I personally learned 2 look oll and pll before f2l which improved my time slightly, though even this took 2-3 days of practice before my times were equal to my beginner solves. I suggest just learning intuitive f2l first then move to oll/pll, but either way works ok. I find that f2l just takes more thinking, oll/pll more memorizing to start but easier once you feel comfortable with the algs. The problem with f2l is that it'll take a fair amount of time to get better at, it took me a week (on holidays) to get my averages down to the same as my beginner method (which was around 50 seconds at the time.) Though I think my main problem was that I cared about time at that stage so would rarely practice f2l, when I did improvement came quite quickly though :). Within the next week or two I got my averages down to sub 40 and since haven't cubed that much (the past two weeks.) But am still improving :).

So yeah, the best way to improve is practice, get better at recognition (through practice) and practice more. :).

Edit: I also don't believe lubing your cube is necessary for quite a while, it doesn't improve your times that much anyway in my opinion, though getting a speed cube probably will :). However if you do want to lube your cube, go with Lubix/Jigaloo/Crc silicone spray/maru lube etc... There's plenty of good lubes around, I personally just recently lubed my cube with crc because it's what I could find in stores.
 
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I got some liquid wrench silicone at the store. but read some posts and will not use it. however now my dad wont return it and wont let me get crc.
what should i do? my new cube is coming in two days! im very frusturated. :(
 
I got the same silicone originally and don't use it it doesn't help at all and if anything it makes your cube worse! Jig-a-loo and CRC work much better because they don't have petroleum distillates in it, also even though Liquid Wrench says "Silicone Spray" it only has 5% silicone in it.
 
Liquid Wrench made my Rubik's 3x3 pretty damn awesome. Just saying. I still don't recommend that you use it in a good cube though.

What is the new cube that you're waiting for? Many cubes are very usable out of the box without lube as long as you're not like sub-13 or better
 
Hi Im Shaun. I just got into speedcubing. i can solve using the beginners method in about 1:20. I am now looking to improve my speeds. I want to learn F2L. also i tend to spend alot of time on the cross. If anyone has any good guides to F2L (intuitive or not)
or cross. Or can help me solve my problems please post back. Thank you!

I'd say get your time down to a minute before going on to F2L
 
Before transitioning into F2L, you might want to look into Keyhole.
Also CRC is a good choice, and the Alpha-V is fine without lube anyway as long as you don't tension it horribly or turn roughly.
 
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I have been working on my f2l for a day or two now. should i post a video of a solve using f2l? i would like some tips on how to improve.
 
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