How Do You Practice?

[TheNextFeliks]

Please don't point to the How To Practice thread. I didn't see any similar threads.

How do you actually practice? Do you just do solves? Or what? I am trying to figure out better ways to practice and a lot of you are faster than me and probably know better ways.

I mainly just do solves. Not much else. I do PLL attacks for warm-up also. Sometimes I'll do like cross blindfolded but mostly just solves.

 

[penguinz7]

I mostly just do solves, sometimes practicing F2l or PLL's only, and i'll do relays with a bunch of different cubes.

 

[Escher]

Solves are absolutely fine until you reach a certain point whereby it'd be more efficient to focus on the smaller things, for most people I would say that would be around 15-16 seconds. Personally speaking one of the things that helped me the most by far was scrambling 2-gen then solving the rest of the f2l blindfolded - I did it an absolute ton and made my recognition for multiple pairs way way better... You can come up with a ton of ways to practise yourself though - just take a step or some combination thereof and add some extra difficulty to it, like solving blindfolded or while trying to achieve economy of hand motion, or picking some number of moves and trying to always keep below that.

 

[RageCuber]

Don't practice hard, Practice smart
Good luck.

 

[TheNextFeliks]

Solves are absolutely fine until you reach a certain point whereby it'd be more efficient to focus on the smaller things, for most people I would say that would be around 15-16 seconds. Personally speaking one of the things that helped me the most by far was scrambling 2-gen then solving the rest of the f2l blindfolded - I did it an absolute ton and made my recognition for multiple pairs way way better... You can come up with a ton of ways to practise yourself though - just take a step or some combination thereof and add some extra difficulty to it, like solving blindfolded or while trying to achieve economy of hand motion, or picking some number of moves and trying to always keep below that.

I actually average 16-17. I'll try that 2-gen f2l thing.

 

[mrtomas]

Well, I've been cubing for a year now. And just doing solves over and over again got me sub13. It depends on the person i think.

 

[rj]

I drill PLLs in bed. Otherwise, I just solve.

 

[mark49152]

You won't find many pro football players who train only by playing football. Using a variety of practice techniques not only helps with targeting specific weaknesses, it also makes practice more interesting.

 

[TDM]

Well, I've been cubing for a year now. And just doing solves over and over again got me sub13. It depends on the person i think.

I've been cubing for a year now, and doing solves over and over again only got me sub-17 The 2-gen then F2L thinks sounds cool, it'll be even more useful for me since I use ZZ. I'll try it and see how it goes.

 

[Millet]

I really like practicing OH, to get better look ahead for 2-hand. It has really helped my with my ZZF2L. I also practice algorithms somewhat daily. Writing everything down in an Excel sheet with comments and recognition really helps. I also try to analyze what my weakest link is, and practice that especially. Currently it is definitely EO-line and to a lesser extent ZZF2L.

 

[Ninja Storm]

I really like practicing OH, to get better look ahead for 2-hand.

^^^^^^thisthisthis

OH forces you to slow down and solve quickly with good lookahead and recognition, not good TPS.

 

[jeff081692]

For F2L I realized that all my cases came down to a R U R' insert or a R U' R' insert in the end. So my goal is when I get to the last 3 moves of each insert to be able to instantly predict where the next pair will end up allowing me to turn at a faster speed and not have to track.
This is very similar to doing 2 F2L pairs BLD the only difference is that the first pair must be one of the basic 3 move inserts that I wrote above.

During solves the easiest things to predict is when you know that you can do an algorithm and a corner will stay unaffected. The more I solve the more I am able to predict the orientation of a corner during a normal solve. And then there are times where I do a case and at full speed I could tell where a corner would end up but not the orientation thus making me have to turn a little bit slower to look ahead when if I instantly knew the orientation I could full speed into the that pair.

So by setting up lots of different pairs of F2L cases with the first one being a 3 move insert I know I can drill the difficult look ahead cases into my head.

Once I master 2 pairs with 3 move insert into the FR slot then I will practice them from different angles like having the first pair be R' U R.

And during solves if I spot a case I am having trouble with I will note it in a google doc and practice to get more familiar with that sequence until it is extremely easy for me.

 

[cuberman7744]

What i usually do is just practice look ahead on f2l by slowing down, and never stop moving so it flows.

 

[SolveThatCube]

I just do solves really, and sometimes do it in slow motion to practice look-ahead.

 

[Escher]

I actually average 16-17. I'll try that 2-gen f2l thing.

I hope it helps you, but the real key to improvement is finding a mode of practise that really benefits you at the time. Identify your weaknesses, and try and find a creative way around them

 

[bronycuber1013]

avg's of 100 on every puzzle that i do.

 

[c4197f]

Generally start with slow solves. I've found that this really helps.

 

[Rubiks560]

I just do straight solves.but I know I shouldn't :/ haven't improved much.

 

[maxcube]

Unfortunately I mainly just mindlessly solve over and over again. Every month or two I'll try to learn a few more OLLs. I actually have improved a second or two doing this, over time.

 

[kcl]

I just solve. A lot. It's gotten me great progress so I don't think I'm gonna change it XD