Cubing "Stamina"?

[4Chan]

When I lose track of time, and practice for copious amounts of time, my fingers get sore. It reminds me of weight lifting at gym, or running laps around a trail. I then usually stop cubing for the day, and let my fingers heal up. Rarely, I'll just keep cubing, and it's sore the next day as well.

How long can you practice before you have to stop?
I want to compare myself with the rest of the forum.

 

[Edward]

I can practice all day lol. I don't know how your fingers could get sore =/.

OH on the other hand (omg). I cant do more than an a25 OH before I stop in pain.

 

[Muesli]

I know I've had enough when my head starts to hurt.

 

[miniGOINGS]

My hands never get tired... I could do it all day...

 

[dillonbladez]

i could cube all day, but when i get bored with F2L, i stop. (rarely happens)

 

[iSpinz]

I. Hurt. On. Magic.

 

[Zarxrax]

During the winter, when I drive in my car, the heat blowing on my fingers causes me to get blisters. So, during winter maybe it can be tough for me to cube for long amounts of time. But... normally... I don't think I've ever encountered my fingers being sore. But, maybe I'm just not fast enough yet.

 

[4Chan]

I know I've had enough when my head starts to hurt.

Me too!
My head starts hurting and getting dizzy.
Then I get nauseous, quite literally sick from cubing.

 

[dannyz0r]

Haven't had a break for about 2 months so I dropped from being able to go for 5 hours to about 30 min.

 

[ianini]

I can cube for about 1 hour before my hands get tired.

 

[V-te]

All day... but something tells me that if I'm not in pain, then I might not be practicing enough.... Scary thought. I shall continue till the pain begins!

 

[Ryanrex116]

I can cube on 3x3 for about 2-3 hours i think.

Its less time for big cubes. Its more for 2x2.

 

[tkcube1]

My hands don't get tired, but my mind seems to wipe out after 2 hours and I can't do my f2l fast anymore so I stop. Or if I'm just really tired.

 

[Daniel Wu]

3x3 I can do about 200-250 before I get tired.

I just did averages of 5 of 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5 and I started 6x6 but stopped after 2 solves...

 

[blizzardmb]

I can probably do an average of around 200 on 3x3 before my hands get tired. For 2x2, it's around 400, and for big cubes, probably an average of 50. Once I get tired, I just practice going slow or learn some algorithms.

 

[Weston]

I just stop cubing when I get slow.
Like for example, two days ago, in the morning was doing REALLY good in OH, I got a sub 19 average. Then I went and practiced 2H and then I was doing really well in that. (sub 13) and then suddenly I was getting 14 averages 2H and 23 second averages OH. So I just went and watched the simpsons.

 

[Litz]

Physically, all day. Mentally, not really. I just stop when I start getting sleepy since I start losing focus and it's pointless to train then.

 

[JTW2007]

My hands don't get tired, which is strange, because I might just be the least in-shape person... ever. Jeremy Fleischmann turned me onto the "do ten H-Perms as fast as you can" game. I assume that would help endurance.

For the record, my best for ten H-Perms is about 10s.

 

[miniGOINGS]

"do ten H-Perms as fast as you can" game

I think I should do that with every alg I have to learn/get fast at untill it's like sub-20.

 

[blah]

It's completely pointless and in fact counterproductive to do so many solves with bad habits. If your purpose is not to let new concepts/ideas/methods/algorithms sink in, doing >100 solves is pointless in my opinion. It only gets you even more used to the bad habits you already have.

The purpose of practice is to get into good habits - to get them to become second nature. If you don't have such a goal in mind, practice is not going to help you a lot. For instance, if you're going to do U3 or U4 or even U5 moves to recognize PLL everytime, doing 500 solves is only going to make you more dependent on that bad habit as you get more and more used to doing it.

You always need a goal in mind for each practice session. Tell yourself something like "this practice session, I'm going to make sure I don't pause for more than 1 second between each F2L pair" or "this practice session, I'm going to make sure there is absolutely no pause between my cross and the first F2L pair." Keep reminding yourself of that throughout the session. Like I said, the purpose of practice sessions is to get yourself to improve, consciously. In my opinion, sitting there cubing mindlessly and just hoping that you'd improve is a waste of time. Sure you'll improve that way too, but you should also know that having a clear goal in mind and always being conscious about it is definitely going to make you improve more than just cubing mindlessly.

The final goal of practice is to get you to have no faults in your cubing form and technique so that you can reach your maximum potential without having to think about it; so that good cubing habits becomes second nature; so that you don't regret doing an unnecessary cube rotation that made you slower by a split second; so that you don't regret doing an unnecessary AUF that made you slower by a split second; so that everything about your cubing practices are as humanly optimal as possible for the scramble you were presented and you have no "regrets" about the way you went about solving it. In other words, the purpose of practice is to get you to do a solve and NOT go "it could've been faster if I..." when you're done.