I think my turning speed is holding me back.

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Zarxrax

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I've been cubing for a little over a year now, and I've been averaging between 30-40 seconds for the past 4-5 months or so.
I have gotten my f2l lookahead pretty good now. At least 75% of the time I know where my next pair is, without having top spend extra time searching for it. So, I don't really think that the advice of "go slow and look ahead" is going to help me much more right now.
Although I feel my f2 lookahead is pretty solid, my f2l is overall still pretty slow. But, my cross is also slow. And my last layer is pretty slow too. (I use full PLL. I started learning full OLL but got sidetracked and stopped).

Since ALL of this stuff feels pretty slow to me, my best guess is that its my turning speed that is the problem. Or if not, anyone else have any ideas what could be wrong with me?
If the problem is my turning speed, does anyone know how I could improve that? I use my fingers to turn the cube,rather than my wrists, so I don't know what else I could even do...
 
If you're stuck at 30-40 I would guess that the problem is in your turn efficiency (how easy it is for your hands to do turns), method efficiency (# of moves and/or rotations during cross and F2L), or possibly cube. If you can't consistently do single moves with one finger without locking up, you need a better cube.

Here's at the very minimum what you should be doing for turns:
- U with right index, U' with left index, U2 with index-middle trigger (whichever hand you prefer)
- R, R', R2 with right wrist, and L moves with left wrist
- F moves with thumb or index finger of whichever hand you prefer.
In most situations one hand (usually your non-dominant one) will be stationary and holding the cube, with just the index finger used. Using ONLY this, and no fingertricks at all, I can get an average of a bit over 20 seconds. I'm pretty sure you can turn as fast as I am when I do this. So if you can't get these times, and you're not physically handicapped in some drastic way, the fault isn't the turnspeed - it's some part of the way you solve.
 
It's not my cube, it moves great.
I thought it might be my turning speed for a few reasons:
- some people do certain PLLs insanely fast, like 1~2 seconds, while I probably take 2~4 seconds for the same PLLs.
- even if I try to plan my cross before I solve, my cross can take me quite a while to actually execute (5~8 seconds)

I'll record a few solves tomorrow. I've never tried recording my solves to examine it, so maybe the problem will be something obvious when I look at it.
 
2-4 seconds for a PLL isn't bad at all, especially for the 30-40 second range. I'm low 20s and I'm anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds on my PLLs. Most of the 1-2 second PLL people are sub20.

My guess would be what qqwref said about move efficiency. Just out of curiosity, what type of cube do you have?
 
I've got lots of different ones. F, F-II, D, Old A, Diansheng.
And for the PLLs, I just meant the ones that are typically the fastest, like H or U. It takes me like 4 seconds for my H perm, while I think some people can do it sub-1.
 
I have a suggestion! Make a prepared solve (about 65 moves) and practice it for a while and see how fast you kan solve it. That will give you a hint how fast you can make a solve with really good look ahead (and it will tell you if it is the turning speed or the look ahead who is the problem).
 
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That's a good idea. Something similar to that would be a PLL time attack. My best PLL time attack AVG of 3 is 1 minute and 32 seconds. On cubemania.org, that ranks me as #293 out of 313 ><
My 2x2x2 solves are also quite slow, averaging around 10 seconds with ortega method. Even if I do prepared solves on the 2x2, my times are usually only 2-3 seconds faster.

I made a video of 3 solves, and the first thing that I noticed, is that I'm apparently doing lots of cube rotations! That's something I can work on improving. Can anyone find any other obvious things in this video that I need to work on? I did have a bit of trouble with my f2l lookahead in a couple spots, but I don't think it amounted to more than a few seconds on each solve.

 
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I was fascinated because it looks a lot like I did a year ago or so. But one thing I did notice was that it looks like you're taking outrageously long to do the cross, and I see you say you recognize you have that problem. If I were you, I'd probably mostly work on the cross. Do blindfolded solves, make sure you can solve it in 8 moves or less always, give yourself long inspection times for a while, etc.

Then after that, maybe work on your cube rotations - yes, it looks like you do way too many of them.

Oh, and your PLL time attack is faster than mine was when I was your speed. I was more like 1:40.

Oh, and please do switch to a 2-gen U perm - it's painful to watch the one you use (I was also using that U perm when I was your speed).
 
Specific tips:
- for cross, move your hands faster - you're executing a known sequence, just get it over with
- stop doing F moves during F2L... you should never do those unless it saves several moves. R F' R F' type triggers are fine but don't ever do stuff like F U F'
- also, for F2L, as long as the corner and edge aren't in another slot, every case (except the ones where the edge is in place but flipped) can be done completely with 2gen, so you should usually have no rotations while solving a pair, and you should never have more than one to set it up
- don't do U2 as two flicks of the same finger or as a wrist turn, always use an index-middle trigger (or thumb-index, but that can come later)
- please learn a better U perm
 
I agree with basically everything Mike said. It seems your cross is just putting a piece in its correct position, and then doing the next piece, and so on. You need to find better solutions for the cross, without a doubt. Remember, you can put the cross pieces in, and not have them be permuted correctly, as long as they are correct relative to each other, and then adjust the D layer.
You certainly have too many cube rotations, at one point in the first solve, you do a y4 for sune. On Oll, I'd recommend just AUFing.
You should certainly learn 2gen U perms, and overall, your turning looks a bit awkward. I'd practice specific fingertricks.
But, your biggest problem is that awful music :)
 
Hmmmm....what I can see, you use your left fingers/hand to just holding the cube and let the right hand makes the job = a lot of R U moves but no L U moves. If you have a mirror case in F2L, you save a lot of time if you insert it with the left hand.

And all your d/d´/d2 moves confusing me, you did 8-9 of them in the last solve. Thats too much.

I had big problems with the cross in the beginning. Like other say, try to practice it separate, try to see the whole solution in advance, solve the cross blind, maximum 8 turns. Then speedsolve the cross blind. With only 2tps you will get a cross average under 4 sec, with practice.
 
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one thing i saw was how you hold the cube, I don't know how much this is your style, and how much its just a bad habit. It looks like how you hold your cube with your right hand, instead of holding your first three fingers at the top, try holding them at the back. It make U much easier as well as executing RU triggers.

another thing that you should work with, is the speed of your rotations. When you rotate the cube, you seem to take 4 years to do a y' rotation, just flick it with your hand it turns readily enough.

Generally how i rotate the cube is i put, either my left pinky or left ring finger under the cube, loosen the grip that my left hand has and shove the cube with your right finger.
 
Some good feedback, thanks everyone.
I guess maybe I do some of my f2l in a bad way which has led me to develop some strange ways of turning the cube in an attempt to optimize it :p
I'm not good at doing anything with the fingers on my left hand (its WAY slower than my right hand), which causes me to always do all the moves with my right hand. I guess that's something I should try to change.
I've spent some time trying to get my crosses better (I've made a thread or two about it before), but I guess I'll have to just keep working at it.

I've tried learning a different U perm in the past, but it didn't immediately seem to be any faster than the one I use. I suppose if I kept working at it though, it might be an improvement over my current one.

And Kyle, the music was just some new stuff I was listening to for the first time. Don't worry, it's not going into my collection :p

jms_gears1: WOW, I never even realized that I was doing that O_O
 
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