A Question About Progressing

[cubersmith]

So I was wondering.. I have been stuck at 23/24 seconds for a long time. Is it possible to improve on this without practising my lookahead or is it entirely necessary to practise F2L alone.

Thanks

 

[David1994]

2look OLL or full OLL??

 

[cubersmith]

2look OLL or full OLL??

2 Look OLL, Full PLL

 

[Jorghi]

I don't use lookahead that much.. Instead I just practice the images in the f2l wiki to lower my move-count, cross on bottom. Then I lowered cross move count, and when I got my cross skills good I practiced preserving pairs found in inspection while solving the cross, I can do that in about 10 moves. After 2 weeks I lowered my time from 35 to 28 seconds.

 

[TheCubeMaster5000]

Practice... practice... more practice.... maybe a little more practice... I was also stuck at around 22-23 seconds for a while, six months in fact.

Then all of the sudden this summer I started to do some loooo00000oooong training sessions, including slow turning f2l, PLL drills, memorizing new algorithms, and solving the cross on the bottom. I'm still getting there, but in my case it seems like practicing certain aspects of solving really helped me out.

 

[cubersmith]

Practice... practice... more practice.... maybe a little more practice... I was also stuck at around 22-23 seconds for a while, six months in fact.

Then all of the sudden this summer I started to do some loooo00000oooong training sessions, including slow turning f2l, PLL drills, memorizing new algorithms, and solving the cross on the bottom. I'm still getting there, but in my case it seems like practicing certain aspects of solving really helped me out.

Thanks

 

[MCcuber96]

drill your pll algs until they're all sub 3, learn full oll, and then practice your cross/F2L

 

[uberCuber]

drill your pll algs until they're all sub 3, learn full oll, and then practice your cross/F2L

Erm, I suggest practicing your F2L before learning the entirety of OLL. Full OLL is not necessary for fast times; smooth F2L is.

 

[JLarsen]

Erm, I suggest practicing your F2L before learning the entirety of OLL. Full OLL is not necessary for fast times; smooth F2L is.

Agreed. You can put it off now but eventually there will be little algorithms you can learn to shave your time, and the only thing with major flaws left to work on will be your look ahead and F2L. Is it neccessary to practice only F2L right now? Definitely not. There's no doubting that you'll improve learning full OLL. Is it the most practical way to improve? Will it help you the most in the long run? No. That's why people emphasize it so much. Because people tend to learn algs faster then they really need to and ignore key principals that are really slowing them down.

Edit: I'm averaging about 17 on 2 Look OLL and I've heard of people averaging in the 12s with it? I'm putting off OLL later so that I have that easy route to improve my times later. It helps me actually improve upon the meat of my solve rather than mindless algorithms.

 

[MovingOnUp]

Erm, I suggest practicing your F2L before learning the entirety of OLL. Full OLL is not necessary for fast times; smooth F2L is.

Okay, then how exactly would you suggest going about doing this? Could you link to some cases/things that you think would improve F2L and are considered more advanced that fast cubers use?

 

[uberCuber]

Okay, then how exactly would you suggest going about doing this? Could you link to some cases/things that you think would improve F2L and are considered more advanced that fast cubers use?

Here is how you improve F2L: Practice looking ahead.

I could link you to hundreds upon hundreds of F2L-related algorithms, and I'm not going to. They aren't necessary. Aside from some random ZBF2Ls that I felt like looking at for my own reasons, I have never implemented into my solving a single F2L algorithm from the Internet. You can figure out all you need just by experimenting and practicing.

 

[cubersmith]

Agreed. You can put it off now but eventually there will be little algorithms you can learn to shave your time, and the only thing with major flaws left to work on will be your look ahead and F2L. Is it neccessary to practice only F2L right now? Definitely not. There's no doubting that you'll improve learning full OLL. Is it the most practical way to improve? Will it help you the most in the long run? No. That's why people emphasize it so much. Because people tend to learn algs faster then they really need to and ignore key principals that are really slowing them down.

Edit: I'm averaging about 17 on 2 Look OLL and I've heard of people averaging in the 12s with it? I'm putting off OLL later so that I have that easy route to improve my times later. It helps me actually improve upon the meat of my solve rather than mindless algorithms.

Thanks alot, but can I get better by just doing solves and not focusing on a particular area

 

[uberCuber]

Thanks alot

He's a panda, not an alot! :O

can I get better by just doing solves and not focusing on a particular area

Yes, definitely, as long as you are actually concentrating on lookahead while "just doing solves."

 

[Escher]

You could probably easily break the barrier if you got your cross 2s faster and OLL/PLL average 1s faster.

Being better at finding cross pieces will probably make your f2l that bit faster (you'll develop better lookahead and preinspection skills) and being a little faster at LL will increase your general turnspeed ability and thus turnspeed during f2l.

My recommendation for now is to do untimed solves for a month, concentrating on improving those two areas.

 

[cubersmith]

Yes, definitely, as long as you are actually concentrating on lookahead while "just doing solves."

Thanks man.

 

[cubersmith]

You could probably easily break the barrier if you got your cross 2s faster and OLL/PLL average 1s faster.

Being better at finding cross pieces will probably make your f2l that bit faster (you'll develop better lookahead and preinspection skills) and being a little faster at LL will increase your general turnspeed ability and thus turnspeed during f2l.

My recommendation for now is to do untimed solves for a month, concentrating on improving those two areas.

Awesome, thanks. I will do just that. Look forward to seeing you on saturday