Cubing 'Exercises'?

[hic0057]

I thought about some training/exercises that people could do a couple of times.

LU solves (most people are far better at RUing then LUing)
RDing
Juggling? (Improves peripheral vision which could help with looking ahead)
Two sided PLL recognition (there should be a tutorial somewhere helping with this)
With finger push ups.. maybe trying normal pushups but instead of flat hands on the grounds have fingertips.

 

[Cube Equation]

I am currently attempting to improve my F2L. So this thread should be useful. One exercise that I find useful is to solve the F2L OH. Not only does this improve my left hand dexterity (which is extremely limited), it also forces me to slow down and look ahead.

 

[Hershey]

I am currently attempting to improve my F2L. So this thread should be useful. One exercise that I find useful is to solve the F2L OH. Not only does this improve my left hand dexterity (which is extremely limited), it also forces me to slow down and look ahead.

Or you could just practice OH cubing in general and stop practicing 2H (not many people would like this though).

 

[Cube Equation]

Or you could just practice OH cubing in general and stop practicing 2H (not many people would like this though).

I prefer 2H solving. It's just that my lookahead is virtually non-existent.

 

[nickvu2]

Flashcards for learning algs and case recognition. I've been training with Anki everyday for about a years now and swear by it.

 

[majikat]

I recently have been timing each of the individual steps of my solve to see which one seems to be taking longer than I think it should, then focusing on improving those steps.
Using Roux, I discovered that I was pretty good with the first two blocks, but the CMLL algorithms were often taking me 4 seconds or more, and sometimes the LSE would take a long time too...so I worked on all the algorithms as well as improving the speed and especially the smoothness of the last step, and dropped like 3 seconds from my average in only a week or two.

 

[tozies24]

I have an exercise that doesn't require practice at all!

So the past two days I decided that I wasn't going to time myself at all. I still solved by cubes a little bit, but without the timer there, there was no pressure to be fast.
Today, I have been doing some solves, and I am ridiculously fast. I consider myself to average about 17, but right now I am closer to about 15.5 to 16. I broke my personal best of 5 and 12 by a decent amount.

The reason this works is because your brain can recover and build up those cells that you used before. If you keep practicing, the cells never get back to full strength.

 

[5BLD]

Tozies, thats a very good point. Im gonna try that.
(yes yes i know im not meant to say that ill try it but this post WILL be worth something

I find experimenting with advanced/new techniques one handed helps a lot.
Because you have lower TPS it gives more room for opimisation without killing your solve like it might in 2H.
For example i can be just as fast colour neutral one handed as opposite neutral, whilst 2H im like sup-17 colour neutral but sub-12.5 partial neutral.
Also i can do 2.5 look LSE and im still just as fast OH whilst two handed i get recog problems. KCLL is easier to do OH too.

 

[Mnts]

I prefer 2H solving. It's just that my lookahead is virtually non-existent.

My Look ahead exist only in OH, 2H I still have trouble with look ahead, so my difference between OH and 2H times are very low.

 

[Vinny]

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.

This is absolutely true. Whenever my hands feel cold, I realized that warming them up doesn't really do much. What I do if my hands are cold is warm them up (obviously), but while I am putting them in some warm water, I stretch out my fingers, hand, wrists, and I sort of keep moving my fingers around to actually get the muscles warmed up.

 

[Cheese11]

Flashcards for learning algs and case recognition. I've been training with Anki everyday for about a years now and swear by it.

Why would flashcards be any better than having a sheet of paper with all the algs?

 

[Litz]

Why would flashcards be any better than having a sheet of paper with all the algs?

Anki uses a SRS (spaced repetition system). It works great as a transition from thinking/recalling the algorithm to muscle memory if you want to learn loads of algorithms since you can easily memorize tons of things with it (you'll be able to do the algorithm slowly from your head while it gradually transitions into muscle memory). If you do the algorithms over and over you'll place them in your muscle memory pretty fast though, so I don't really use it for cubing.

I've been using it for years daily to memorize vocabulary though and it does work. If anyone's interested in memorizing tons of stuff (maybe letter pair lists for BLD?), have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

 

[MWilson]

Here's an exercise that has helped me a lot. Inspect cross normally, and pick a corner to track. Not so unusual, but the trick is to track it as your last F2L pair corner, rather than your first. That is, track it during the cross, while looking ahead to the first pair and insert that one. Continue to track that corner but look ahead to the second pair, then third, the whole while keeping track of that corner but not using it even if it becomes a good case. Then, once that is natural, follow the last two corners you will use in F2L, while looking ahead to the other pairs. As you're solving the second pair, look ahead to which of the two corners you've been tracking will be better to insert as your third.

For clarity, during the inspection you are choose (randomly, don't worry about it) a corner to follow as your fourth F2L pair, not first. Track that corner during cross and first three F2L, using it last. Graduate to two corners when that becomes easy.

 

[devagrawal09]

Some popular finger exercises -
Do (L'ULU')*6 , (L'DLD')*6, (RUR'U')*6, (RDR'D')*6
These exercises with appropriate fingering help a lot for speedcubing. Try to do these within 3 seconds.

 

[pdilla]

General finger exercises have been around forever. I remember learning a bunch of them when I got into magic.

With tutting being a rising fad, there are plenty of videos on YouTube for them.

 

[MrMan]

With tutting being a rising fad, there are plenty of videos on YouTube for them.

That is epic !