Cubing 'Exercises'?

[StachuK1992]

The recent thread by jskyler91 got me thinking.

Usually, when we get a new user joining the forums or IRC and they ask "how do I get faster?" we mindlessly tell them to 'go practice.'

I think this recent thread shows quite well that there's much more that you can do beyond 'just practice.' There are specific excercizes that can be performed to practice lookahead, turnspeed, etc.

We, as a community, need to compile a very good list of these. I found that the example from yesterday's thread helped a lot of people; we need information like this to be available fairly easily. At this point, we'll contain it in this thread, but as it grows, we'll move things to the wiki.


This all being said, give me some excercizes, hopefully that work for any puzzle/method.

Some ideas
-Time attacks, to practice algs
-http://cube.crider.co.uk/coracle.html
-Turbo-Tracking (also, try this BLD!)
-sexymove bursting
-Go slow and look ahead (I had to)
-Go fast and look ahead (yup)
-Focus on corners rather than edges, or other way around. Basically, change your focus.
-Know /exactly/ what your algs do. This helps predict PLLs, and many other parts of cubing. It's like predetermined look-ahead.

I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Give me them.

statue
[PS - don't spam this thread with "the above would be cool, let me try it!" Go try it, then respond. Unless something actually helped you, don't waste the space. I will delete your posts."]

 

[Kirjava]

Off topic - I actually thought that 'Exercizes' was an American spelling for 'Exercises' until I looked it up.

On topic - practising individual parts of your solve seems to help people. Like focusing on LSE alone or F2B or w/e.

 

[Escher]

Someone could make a wiki page on practice using ideas from this thread and the write up from mine, 'go practice' turns into 'go read this comprehensive page of stuff you can do'.

Also, solving f2l in 3 looks is fun, as is Phil Espinoza's 2 pairs BLD exercise (same thing really).

 

[Jostle]

Someone could make a wiki page on practice using ideas from this thread and the write up from mine, 'go practice' turns into 'go read this comprehensive page of stuff you can do'.

Also, solving f2l in 3 looks is fun, as is Phil Espinoza's 2 pairs BLD exercise (same thing really).

Could you explain this?

 

[Escher]

Could you explain this?

Literally just solve cross, inspect/predict two pairs, close your eyes, solve both pairs, open eyes, yay.

 

[Jostle]

Oh, yeah that helps lots. It's good

 

[Stefan]

Nice idea and it should be helpful, but a thought about the background story: I think most people provoking a "just practice" answer are still quite slow, can't/don't even tell us their status, and really benefit most from the probably best exercise - simply solving a lot. People who are already fairly fast and properly tell us their current status (not just "I average 30 seconds") already get better answers, but this list you're building could help there.

 

[jskyler91]

I think that it is also important that people realize not only how to practice properly but how to make sure your hands are at their fullest potential. Most people think that all they need to do to warm up is to do a bunch of solves, but this isn't really the best, or safest way to achieve this goal. Not only that, but it only makes your fingers warmed up, not stronger or faster. In other words you aren't really getting better at solving, just reaching an acceptabel plateau and then assuming your good. I am going to make a video on this, but I just thought I would get people thinking about how important being properly warmed up can be. If your fingers aren't reaching their full potential, then neither can you.

 

[Cubetastic]

Maybe finger pushups to get good strong fingers for oh?

 

[jskyler91]

Maybe finger pushups to get good strong fingers for oh?

Nice, Lol, I actually have specific exercises for OH as well. They are pretty simple though, just triggers and double flicks.

 

[DRAGON_RYU]

metronome perhaps?

 

[Hershey]

Literally just solve cross, inspect/predict two pairs, close your eyes, solve both pairs, open eyes, yay.

This really does work, I tried it earlier this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvctUcyagI&feature=channel_video_title

 

[CubicNL]

metronome perhaps?

I think it should be added, I used it a while to make myself solve at a certain speed.
It's handy if you don't know how slow or how fast to go.
You can find out what's the best speed for yourself and then gradually increase the speed if you think you 'master' a speed.
It helped me I think.

 

[5BLD]

Do lots of slow solves without allowing yourself to hesitate.
Then contrast that with doing fast turning and trying to keep up.
I find doing these exercises in this order really helps me.

Funnily enough for me, doing CMLL time attacks tends to give me jerky hands in solving so I don't find time attacks helpful.

 

[Cubetastic]

Actually, there hasnt been any real training that I find has helped, i found i got to 30 second average really fast now but nothing can help me improve to get to lower times, I guess I'm going to have to learn full pll.

 

[5BLD]

Work on your F2L and lookahead. Learning full PLL honestly won't make you much faster...

 

[chris410]

Practice finishing the cross without looking. For F2L, practice locating the next pair prior to the current pair insertion.

OLL/PLL practice recognition and use some of the trainers to help focus in on learning/executing them such as:

http://brunson.com/drillsergeant

*note: this would make a great iphone app!

 

[MaeLSTRoM]

Work on your F2L and lookahead. Learning full PLL honestly won't make you much faster...

Actually it really will. about 2-3 seconds at least.

 

[5BLD]

2 secs at most.. Which ain't an awful lot.
My recommendations (to cubetastic) are for you to work hard at your f2l while gradually learning PLL.
In my experience 2 look PLL isn't too much slower than one look.
F2L on the other hand is a skill to be developed...

 

[Litz]

I don't do any exercises nowadays but I did try many of them in the past.

The only exercise I ever found helpful was solving f2l with a metronome. I usually recommend this to a lot of cubers with times around 20~25 seconds since those cubers tend to burst all the pairs with almost no (if any) look-ahead. Back when I was struggling for sub20 with just normal solves, this exercise made me cross it pretty fast and changed my whole cubing style to what it still is today.

Obviously this is simply what worked for me so it might not work for others, as what didn't work for me might work for them. I think if a fast cuber has problems with cross/f2l transition it wouldn't hurt to try solving the cross BLD. However, by the time this makes any difference most cubers already solve it BLD without thinking.