After a LONG break of cubing!!! - Need help with sub-18

[abr71310]

I'm a very... "streaky" cuber. Let's just say that to begin with.

I want to get a sub-20 average at TOS 2010, but I'm not quite sure how to go abouts doing it.

I've been doing slow-turning solves and it's helped little by little, and I'm learning roughly four OLLs per week (and will continue this way until the competition).

In the video I will post I averaged something like 20 at one point for RA of 5, but in the avg of 12 I got something like a 24.16.

MY SD IS HORRIBLE. I don't know how to improve my times simply because I don't know specifically what to practice.

In PLL time attacks I average roughly 1:15, and I haven't seen improvement since last November... so that's pretty much out of it.

I think it has to do with my last layer. I consistently average 12 - 15 seconds for F2L... it's OLL that usually slows me down.

If I learn OLL, am I pretty much guaranteed to get sub-20 by March 27th?
Notes, feedback and comments are appreciated.

Thanks guys! -- It's great to be back!

 

[ianini]

More practice. Slow down and look ahead for the next f2l pair.

 

[Daniel Wu]

Same thing as what ianini said. Also, I noticed that on the first solve, during PLL, you did an AUF, a cube rotation, then the alg. You should probably try doing U moves to position the PLL, solve the PLL, and then AUF. It avoids the cube rotation.

 

[abr71310]

Thanks guys.
Should I be learning F2L algs to improve my F2L efficiency, or just recognize them faster so I can do whatever I need to do on the fly and just make the entire solve smooth?

 

[Daniel Wu]

I would learn algs for some of your cases that you think are taking too many moves. Make sure you make you know how the alg operates though so it becomes somewhat not as much of an alg and more intuition. That way, you can still do the alg on the fly.

I wouldn't so much recognize F2L as I would try to antisipate it. Try to antisipate what your first F2L pair will be while finishing cross, antisispate the second F2L pair while finishing the first pair, and so on. I would go for smoothness over speed. If you try to slow down a little, eventually the smoothness will become faster and then it will be really fast.

 

[buelercuber]

i'm surprised you don't have rubiks stickers on that cube XD

20 ave is basically lowest you can get for not memorizing most plls and olls.
i ave 23, and i dont know most of the olls,
infact i use 2LOLL

so memorizing algs would deff help.

 

[abr71310]

Well for the record I know full PLL and almost 50% full OLL.
I know how the cases for F2L work but I hate the awkward last pair cases where they're beside each other and same front colours but the top colour is your cross colour

It angers me a little bit because I can do the case in sub-2, but it's the 2 part that I'm mad at. If I have "good" lookahead does this go away with doing different algs?