pipkiksass
Veteran
What follows is especially relevant to beginners, but I guess to anyone who feels like they're stuck at a certain barrier and just aren't progressing. My hope is that this post will help to quantify the effect of slow-turning practice, and encourage some of those who (like me) have stopped improving because beginners don't want to go slow, we wanna go fast!!!
A little about me - I started cubing late last year. It took me 3 months to get down to sub-30 doing purely timed solves. I bought a Zhanchi, got some new algs, did lots of solves, and my times gradually decreased by another couple of seconds.
Then I hit my personal plateau - 26/27 seconds. For 6 weeks I solved as fast as I could, and never improved. Not one bit.
Then I went on holiday, and took a substantial break from timed solves. Occasionally in the past, I'd spent an hour doing some slower solves. This time, I dedicated 12 days to working on my F2L efficiency and cross planning, something I'd been meaning to do for ages. Not just an hour here and there - all my cubing was untimed.
My first session after the break was the start of a revolutionary few days in my cubing career: a PB Ao50 by over a second. After no progress for 6-8 weeks, it felt awesome. The following day I beat ALL my PB averages, including taking another whole second off my Ao50!
Ever since, PBs have been falling like dominos. Here's my new PBs, and progress in the last fortnight:
Just to illustrate how long I was stuck on my plateau, take a look at this pretty graph of my averages:
Notice that, for the whole of March and April, and most of May, my PBs hardly dropped at all. Then you can see this week at the end, as the times suddenly drop!!!
So here's the thing - when you first start cubing, there's so much ground for improvement that doing just timed solves will yield results, as you develop your own personal interpretation of whatever method you choose to use. The thing is that timed solves will (IMHO) only ever improve the consistency, not the efficiency of that method. What I mean by this is that, when the timer is running, you can't think outside the box. A great example of this is learning new algs (especially 1-look OLLs) - if you're doing an untimed solve, and come across an OLL you recently learnt the 1-look alg for, you will more than likely use the new alg. If you're doing a timed solve, and come across the same OLL, you will often start the 2-look alg, then think "d'oh, I knew the 1-look alg for that case"! Any bad habits you've developed won't change if doing timed solves - you'll just get more efficient at solving using your current personal method.
When you go slow, your brain has the time to think - "this is the F2L case I use the beginner's method for, but actually if I U', then sledgehammer, it can be inserted with R U R', cutting out a cube rotation"; or to start looking ahead to the next pair (something I still struggle with); or to use that 1-look alg/new, more efficient alg you've been trying to learn. You improve the general efficiency of your personal method, and can work on exorcising bad habits. When you subsequently go back to the timer, your personal method is more efficient than it was, and will need practicing to make it more consistent. Again, you'll see improvement at this stage, for the same reason that beginners will see improvement: you aren't getting "better", you're just getting more consistent at what you're doing, as it becomes intuitive. The new tricks you've learnt pass from your conscious to your unconscious brain, and the finger movements become muscle-memory.
My advice to those struggling to improve is a combination of the two bits of advice that are constantly thrown about in the "help me get sub XX" threads: go slow and practice, practice, practice. But, because this advice is counter-intuitive, it often gets ignored. I'd highly encourage people who have plateaued to listen to these two bits of advice, but also to remember that it only works in that order - you need to go slow first, in order to learn how to improve the efficiency of your method, then practice in order to make these improvements automatic.
As I said above, new cubers don't want to slow down. We're so used to rapid improvements that we're constantly looking for quick-fixes. Maybe, if you're stuck at a plateau yourself, and have been told to "practice" and to "slow down", but (like me) don't have the patience to do so, this attempt to quantify the effect of slow turning might encourage you to put away the timer for a while. I'd like to hope that the graph above is proof of just how much difference it can make.
Thanks all, and happy cubing!
A little about me - I started cubing late last year. It took me 3 months to get down to sub-30 doing purely timed solves. I bought a Zhanchi, got some new algs, did lots of solves, and my times gradually decreased by another couple of seconds.
Then I hit my personal plateau - 26/27 seconds. For 6 weeks I solved as fast as I could, and never improved. Not one bit.
Then I went on holiday, and took a substantial break from timed solves. Occasionally in the past, I'd spent an hour doing some slower solves. This time, I dedicated 12 days to working on my F2L efficiency and cross planning, something I'd been meaning to do for ages. Not just an hour here and there - all my cubing was untimed.
My first session after the break was the start of a revolutionary few days in my cubing career: a PB Ao50 by over a second. After no progress for 6-8 weeks, it felt awesome. The following day I beat ALL my PB averages, including taking another whole second off my Ao50!
Ever since, PBs have been falling like dominos. Here's my new PBs, and progress in the last fortnight:
Ao100 - 24.61 (new)
Ao50 - 23.36 (-3.45s)
Ao12 - 22.47 (-1.56s)
Ao5 - 19.81 (-2.81s)
Single (non-lucky) - 14.48 (-3.05)
Ao50 - 23.36 (-3.45s)
Ao12 - 22.47 (-1.56s)
Ao5 - 19.81 (-2.81s)
Single (non-lucky) - 14.48 (-3.05)
Notice that, for the whole of March and April, and most of May, my PBs hardly dropped at all. Then you can see this week at the end, as the times suddenly drop!!!
So here's the thing - when you first start cubing, there's so much ground for improvement that doing just timed solves will yield results, as you develop your own personal interpretation of whatever method you choose to use. The thing is that timed solves will (IMHO) only ever improve the consistency, not the efficiency of that method. What I mean by this is that, when the timer is running, you can't think outside the box. A great example of this is learning new algs (especially 1-look OLLs) - if you're doing an untimed solve, and come across an OLL you recently learnt the 1-look alg for, you will more than likely use the new alg. If you're doing a timed solve, and come across the same OLL, you will often start the 2-look alg, then think "d'oh, I knew the 1-look alg for that case"! Any bad habits you've developed won't change if doing timed solves - you'll just get more efficient at solving using your current personal method.
When you go slow, your brain has the time to think - "this is the F2L case I use the beginner's method for, but actually if I U', then sledgehammer, it can be inserted with R U R', cutting out a cube rotation"; or to start looking ahead to the next pair (something I still struggle with); or to use that 1-look alg/new, more efficient alg you've been trying to learn. You improve the general efficiency of your personal method, and can work on exorcising bad habits. When you subsequently go back to the timer, your personal method is more efficient than it was, and will need practicing to make it more consistent. Again, you'll see improvement at this stage, for the same reason that beginners will see improvement: you aren't getting "better", you're just getting more consistent at what you're doing, as it becomes intuitive. The new tricks you've learnt pass from your conscious to your unconscious brain, and the finger movements become muscle-memory.
My advice to those struggling to improve is a combination of the two bits of advice that are constantly thrown about in the "help me get sub XX" threads: go slow and practice, practice, practice. But, because this advice is counter-intuitive, it often gets ignored. I'd highly encourage people who have plateaued to listen to these two bits of advice, but also to remember that it only works in that order - you need to go slow first, in order to learn how to improve the efficiency of your method, then practice in order to make these improvements automatic.
As I said above, new cubers don't want to slow down. We're so used to rapid improvements that we're constantly looking for quick-fixes. Maybe, if you're stuck at a plateau yourself, and have been told to "practice" and to "slow down", but (like me) don't have the patience to do so, this attempt to quantify the effect of slow turning might encourage you to put away the timer for a while. I'd like to hope that the graph above is proof of just how much difference it can make.
Thanks all, and happy cubing!
