Do you have bad solving days? How do you deal with bad times?

I get this all the time when I am about to 'improve' I get ao5 much better than my ao100 out of the blue, then they happen slightly more often, than all of a sudden my ao100 is what that a05 was. I always improve in sudden jumps as apposed to gradually. It just goes to show that it's all in your head.
 
Yes, if I'm doing sim and I get a low 9 average or something and post in the accomplishment thread, it distracts me and I blink for the first time in like 10 minutes. Then when I go back to sim I start averaging 11
 
I'm hoping this is the right forum.

So I normally average 23-24 seconds, with my previous ao5 PB being 20.24 and ao12 being 21.xx (normally get about 5 sub 20 singles in an ao100)

Then I get a 17.19 ao5 and 18.53 ao12, without any skips. (Unless you count skipping half of 2-look OLL for some of them)
After that it was back to normal, or slightly worse. I mean, it's not that amazing, but it's a significant jump.

Anyone else had something similar happen and figure out the cause?
It could've been that I had easy cases, but it seems unlikely that many times in a row. Maybe I just got pumped from getting a few good solves in a row.

Nice! This has happened to me quiet a while. I was averaging like 16-17 seconds and then I average 14 seconds in all three rounds in Carnegie Mellon! It could be just your mindset but this has happened to me before. It is very hard to explain.
 
Uh, do people really not understand the gigantic amount of case variance there is? Maybe somebody needs to try and create some kind of variance calculator for cubing (perhaps sim based) so you can easily see the degree.

After doing 500-1000 solves a day for months back in '08/'09, I've come to the opinion that avg12 is a very bad format for reviewing 3x3 ability, and incredibly bad for 2x2. If I want to know how good someone is, I want their best avg100 if not more.

5, 12, or even 25 solves is far too little to really judge with 3x3, imo.

I'm pretty sure a long while ago I got a 2.3ish avg100 that was sub UWR and had an insanely high number of easy cases, and I posted the scrambles to show how crazy I thought they were. Something like 8-9 easy LL skips and a ton of great CLLs with simple layers.

In your case and your speed, it could be either way. I would prefer to think that that is what your capable of, and if you just lost a few mental 'double-checking' barriers you could instantly be that fast :)
 
Not to the same extend but once, I had 3 16.xx solves in a row (I was averaging around 20 at that time). Never got a single 16 in competition so it was really awesome.
 
I agree with Escher. Looking at the variance of ao5, ao12, ao100 in people's sigs, it's pretty obvious that the shorter samples aren't representative of consistent performance. Really they indicate potential rather than achieved performance. An ao12 might be more representative if it were done on demand like ao5 in competition. The "best ao12" type features in timers only indicate potential, not performance.
 
Yeah, I just got in the zone like two days ago and got a 12.5 ao12. I also sometimes seem to get so many EPLL skips in an average, they just keep coming. I had 3of5 in an Ao5 before.
 
It's true that sometimes these things just happen spontaneously. But one time for me I got two sub 14 NL solves consecutively (both PBs at the time) and they were the first two timed solves of the day. Shortly after those solves, my times steadily declined into my usual average of 18s.

Right before I did the solves, I had just practiced for two hours doing metronomed f2ls. I'm almost positive that my f2l was much faster as a result of using better lookahead, and then my bad habits crept back in as I timed myself. So it can definitely depend on what you were doing right before the solves too.
 
Do you ever have one of those days?

Some days it feels like your cubing level has completely dropped.
But there are other days when it feels like you're better than you actually are.

Well at least I like to be positive and say that my cubing level has gotten better, I guess some people might think of that as their normal level and they just have LOTS of off-days.

And not just like you've gotten better for the day, but maybe you're just really lucky that day!

Does anyone ever have extremely great cubing days? Better than your average great day? How often does it happen and how much better is it than your normal day? Share a story if you want.



Usually on one of these great days I'd break at least 1 PB (ao5, ao12, ao100) but today was something different.
I hadn't cubed at all for 3 days (didn't even pick one up) and then suddenly today it's like I suddenly made a huge improvement.
So my average of normal days was about 12.8-13.0, with good days being around 12.6, however I had one day I was 12.5.

I started the session averaging about 13.2, expecting I wouldn't be doing so well. I locked up a lot but my first 2 solves were a PLL skip and then an OLL skip.
After about 40 or 50 solves, I started getting sub-10 solves again, in fact I got quite a few.
At some point I got 2 consecutive sub-10 solves, the second one, 8.58, breaking my 2-month-old PB of 8.72.
That continued on to become a PB average of 5 (from the old 10.99 to 10.76)
which continued to become my new best average of 12 (old 11.63 to 11.54).

But I wasn't finished. I broke my new PB of 8.58 (PLL skip) with another PLL skip, 8.48.
And later I broke that again by 0.01 (8.47 NL). That solve had a double x-cross, which marks the first time I could actually get a PB when trying to pull off special moves.

It took a while to roll out the bad solves from the beginning of the session, but after a total of about 150 solves i managed to break my PB average of 100 (12.50) by 0.01 (12.49).

One day and all my records were broken. The hardest one for me to break in the past, the single, was broken 3 times.
 
Re: Do you ever have one of those days?

Seems like you're in the zone today. Great! This happens to me too. I average 26 but sometimes I cannot get my avg below 29. I just stop and continue after an hour.

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