• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

How to practice

RoXas

Member
Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2
Location
Santiago, Chile
Congratulations! It was very motivating to me read this :) I only have 5 months practicing... I still have to learn more things but read this was very great!!!
Good job! :D
 

stoic

Premium Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2011
Messages
1,016
Location
Northern Ireland
WCA
2013DEAR01
Just finished reading a book I got for Xmas, and I think it has a lot of relevance here: "Bounce" by Matthew Syed.
The author is a former table tennis champion, and sets out to discuss "The myth of talent and the power of practice".
Particularly noteworthy is the story of Laszlo Polgar, who attempted to dispel the notion that talent is innate using his own children. In his own words: "People tell me the success of my daughters was pure luck...they say it was a coincidence that a man who set about proving the practice theory of excellence using chess just happened to beget the three most talented female chess players in history. Maybe some people just do not want to believe in the power of practice."
And another quote - among many - that caught my eye: "Purposeful practice may not be easy, but it is breathtakingly effective."
Like I say, a great read and recommended.
 

RicardoRix

Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2013
Messages
130
WCA
2013LEIS01
In the same vain as the last post and the original post, I would recommend the book, "The Art of Learning" by Joshua Waitzkin. A US child chess prodigy that beat Grandmasters at the age of 10, and later turned his hand to "Push Hands" (a form of martial art) world championship.
 

mafergut

Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2014
Messages
2,893
Location
Spain
WCA
2018GUTI13
YouTube
Visit Channel
In the same vain as the last post and the original post, I would recommend the book, "The Art of Learning" by Joshua Waitzkin. A US child chess prodigy that beat Grandmasters at the age of 10, and later turned his hand to "Push Hands" (a form of martial art) world championship.

It is curious, though, that for such a talented child as Josh, who also counted with the best chess trainers money could buy, he did not reach GM category and completely abandoned chess at around FIDE 2400 ELO. Maybe he lacked determination to succeed or maybe, and only maybe, talent also plays a significant role at top level. In wich case, the people thay claim Lazlo Polgar was lucky to raise such a talented bunch of woman chess players would be right. I tend to think Josh in the end lacked the determination to reach GM level, much less world top class level (around 2650+ / 2700 ELO, which looks like not much higher than 2400 but, believe me, it's A LOT.
 

Escher

Babby
Joined
Jul 23, 2008
Messages
3,374
WCA
2008KINN01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Just finished reading a book I got for Xmas, and I think it has a lot of relevance here: "Bounce" by Matthew Syed.
The author is a former table tennis champion, and sets out to discuss "The myth of talent and the power of practice".
Particularly noteworthy is the story of Laszlo Polgar, who attempted to dispel the notion that talent is innate using his own children. In his own words: "People tell me the success of my daughters was pure luck...they say it was a coincidence that a man who set about proving the practice theory of excellence using chess just happened to beget the three most talented female chess players in history. Maybe some people just do not want to believe in the power of practice."
And another quote - among many - that caught my eye: "Purposeful practice may not be easy, but it is breathtakingly effective."
Like I say, a great read and recommended.

Yeah, I read Bounce around the same time as writing this post (so long ago now!), and I think it has incredibly important lessons for anyone with ambition - in pretty much anything. I think it's incredibly important not only for skill acquisition, but also in having a healthy attitude towards life, success, and helping others achieve their goals in a positive manner.

Achievement is a bit of a tricky one, its very easy to look at 'crowning events' as a discrete thing - consciously or not. It's rather harder to communicate the wealth of information involved in taking ones own portfolio of failures and working on them, than to take a simple expression of them (like winning some competition) and say 'hey this person is skilled'. I think it's quite a shame that the cultural understanding the West (I won't comment for cultures I have no experience of) seems to have of practise etc. This pdf received a lot of attention recently - and I think that's an utter shame. What kind of information are we learning about individuals when we use an achievement based framework that most likely gives us less than half of their input into a given system!

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf

Quite a lot of people have posted regarding about talent - I think it's a real moot point in this age and not worth a great deal of thought in most contexts. I think its quite the Pied Piper for many of us interested in practise. The word normally refers to such an incredibly, incredibly messy set of information, and lots of this information is based on processes we don't fully understand individually, let alone in relationship to one another, and thus also to the individual as a whole. If you follow my thinking, it's kind of like claiming someone is 'creatively intelligent'. It may express itself in an aesthetic or productive manner but I challenge you to break it down without contradictions when applied to a wide set of people who could qualify! It's kind of a tautologous concept until we know more about the brain and the mind.

Better to focus on gaining self-awareness, and nurturing a healthy, forgiving, structure of improvement.
 

Speedysolver

Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2015
Messages
28
YouTube
Visit Channel
Hello guys I am cubing 1 year and 8 month got now 11.34 avg of 100.I want wo get sub 10 if it is helpfull i know full pll and i think 35 or more oll algs.I heard that slowturning helps but ho often should i practice it and should I completely stop turning fast and always turn slow if yes then when i should increase my tps.Hope for some good tips.
PS:Sry for my english.
 
Joined
Sep 19, 2017
Messages
221
Location
India
WCA
2017BAIS01
YouTube
Visit Channel
Instead of doing only slow solves everyday, try doing a session with slow solve at the pace in which you can look ahead comfortably and then do another session of solves with your fastest turn speed, challenging your look ahead.
 

pglewis

Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2016
Messages
1,268
Location
Cincinnati
WCA
2016LEWI07
For me the emphasis is smooth solves not just slower turning. The problem: I often out-turn my lookahead during F2L leading to burst-y solves where I solve an F2L pair quickly, pause, find the next one, etc. If I just practice slower without changing my habits it's of little benefit, the key is to focus on being smoother while turning slower. I try to turn slowly enough to find my next pair and cut out the pauses. With practice, the speed I can turn and still do that with minimal pauses should increase. Pauses are the biggest enemy.
 
Top