Just another one of those threads by OH beginners

[blah]

Okay, today I decided to do OH seriously for the second time. The first time was a couple of weeks back but the burning passion for OH only lasted two hours or so But this time it's really serious, because I went through the trouble to prepare a ridiculously loose cube that pops very frequently when I scramble it with two hands, and I just did an average of 100, no kidding.

Actually, it's an average of 100 F2Ls only, so don't be shocked or anything I didn't bother doing LL because firstly, I'd probably get serious algorithm amnesia, and secondly, I didn't think I could last 100 solves if I had to include LL.

I think LL can wait, when I get a consistent sub-20 F2L then I'll go for LL. Is sub-20 F2L a good goal? In fact, is this even a good approach to improve quickly in OH? I think the general rule is that LL is more important than F2L (tell me if I'm wrong), but then again, LL is all about execution speed which can easily be practiced by spamming mindlessly. F2L, on the other hand, requires concentration, lookahead, minimizing cube rotations (I feel this is especially important for OH after my excruciating experience of 100 F2Ls) and y'know, the usual stuff that makes it less braindead than LL. So I wanna get a decent F2L before I move on to do something about my LL. Tell me if this is a bad approach.

Here's what I got:
Cubes Solved: 100
Number of Pops: 0
Average: 33.56
Standard Deviation: 5.67
Best Time: 20.48
Worst Time: 49.81

Is this a good time for F2L? For a total beginner who only started today, who just started using his pinky for all R and R' turns (I used my ring for R and left index for R' the last time). None of them were lucky, and I think one of them had an accidental unplanned x-cross, but that was a pretty screwed up solve that ended up being more than 40 seconds. The 20.48 wasn't lucky or easy, just very very smooth.

I'll mention some of my thoughts after this. First off, my left hand can't type properly now 'cause it's shaking violently.

And there's the lockup problem, here's what was going on throughout the 100 F2Ls: the fast solves were the ones where I went slow, but it wasn't for me to look ahead better, it was for me to make sure I do every turn accurately so I don't get lockups, which is imo the main thing that's slowing me down, I imagine myself getting sub-25 without all the stupid lockups. It's locking up because I'm doing a lotta over-turns and under-turns because the cube is so loose and smooth, the faces just slide out of place for no reason. Should I tighten it? Only problem is I'm afraid it'll kill my fingers if it's any tighter.

Also, small hands seem to be a problem, when I try UR' with left index pushing, my entire hand goes over the cube such that my pinky can't reach the R face anymore. But U with index and R' with pinky feels very slow.

And I have something like a 0.5 second lag between every turn, is this normal? So assuming every turn takes about 1 second, RU'R' would take 1 + 0.5 + 1 + 0.5 + 1 = 4 seconds, literally, am I normal? Is it the usual practice practice practice for this problem?

 

[Johannes91]

I think the general rule is that LL is more important than F2L (tell me if I'm wrong)

I think the opposite.

just started using his pinky for all R and R' turns (I used my ring for R and left index for R' the last time).

There's nothing wrong with the way you used to do those moves.

It's locking up because I'm doing a lotta over-turns and under-turns because the cube is so loose and smooth

I'd recommend getting used to loose cubes and just learning to turn accurately. Scrambling is a good way to practise that IMHO.

So assuming every turn takes about 1 second, RU'R' would take 1 + 0.5 + 1 + 0.5 + 1 = 4 seconds, literally, am I normal?

If it really takes that long, it's not normal.

 

[Lofty]

After going to Nationals and testing out the OH cubes of a few other good OH cubers I learned mine wasn't near as loose as theirs so what kind of cube you use is personal preference.
Actually just about everything in cubing is personal preference... Generally I think its better to do R' with either your pinky or ring but Rama has demonstrated you can be very very fast without using this.
If your hand is shaking violently I think you might have done too many...
And I think F2L and LL are both very important. I couldnt really pick one or the other as more important. If i had to pick it would be F2L tho. What is important is getting your fingers able to properly hold and turn the cube. Maybe you should just practice fingertricks over and over to get your hand used to performing them.
And there should be no pauses between turns...

 

[blah]

I rested for about half an hour and I did another average of 100 F2Ls, again. So I did 200 F2Ls in 3 hours on my first day, it's addictive.

Now my hand's so dead it's not even shaking anymore, it can't Guess this is another advantage of using my non-dominant hand, I can still write after superintense OH cubing

This time the average was much more consistent than the previous one, standard deviation down by almost 2 seconds, but the average was slightly slower, 33.93 Thinks it's the fatigue. I am so gonna get RSI soon.

@Johannes and Lofty: I think I read somewhere that the limiting factor for OH speed is mostly LL because most people can do F2L OH as fast as they do it 2H, but LL is the thing that's much slower in OH than in 2H, is this true?

@Johannes: Okay it doesn't take that long anymore after a bit of practice, now it's slightly more than 2 seconds for RU'R'

What is important is getting your fingers able to properly hold and turn the cube.

@Lofty: Bingo! You've identified my main problem. Is it normal for me to be unable to do R and U' at the same time comfortably? I'm putting quite a lot of strain on my fingers to do something as simple RU', and I can only do R' (with pinky) if I "detach" my index from BLU completely, which means I have to sorta readjust my hand position if I need to do a U or U' after R', that's where the lag is coming from, I think. Is it a hand size problem? Anything I can do about it? I've tried gripping with thumb and middle only, leaving the ring free to double trigger R2; tried gripping with thumb and ring only, leaving the middle free to double trigger U2; tried gripping with thumb, middle and ring, sucked; tried "freestyle", which means I keep adjusting my grip to suit the situation, and the cube dropped a lot; I'm despondent

Is it better to grip the cube tight or loose generally? I've dropped it quite a lot Mainly while trying to do cube rotations, and while trying to do D' with pinky, so now I just do u'y instead of D'

And I think my cross takes 10 seconds or something like that Normal?

I know it's a lotta questions, but please try to answer them as comprehensively as possible, because I don't want to start off doing wrong things and getting into bad habits, took me a long time to change my bad habits for 2H, and I still can't get rid of many of 'em, so I wanna start OH well, thanks.

 

[Lofty]

Ok first off stop solving OH!!! You are going to kill your hand unless you have a beastly hand and a nice cube. I dont even do 200 in 3 hours and I do a lot of OH.
And I think im just an odd case because I dont ever do 2H but I can do my OH F2L in about 12 seconds and I know sub-10 is definitely possible. But then again my 2H F2L isnt really sub-10 so im just a weird case.
I find it myself difficult to keep my index finger planted on BLU and turn R' with my pinky, i can however do it tho I wouldnt do it in a solve. You cant turn both sides at the same time so if you keep your finger near the side you want to turn by the time you can turn the side you can move that finger to the proper side.
How you grop the cube a lot depends on your preference again. I grip the cube with both ring and middle and dont really do any double triggers. A lot of cubers do the ring pinky R2 trigger tho. and some do the U2 double trigger. But you do need a variable grip on how tight you hold it. If its a 2gen alg you can grip really tight and then turn as fast you can with the good secure grip but if you add other turns you may have to turn the cube slightly to do other sides.
As for D turns I dont do them. If i must do them I just do a half cube rotation and use my pinky. and a 10 second cross is pretty long lol.
keep practicing and find your own style.

 

[blah]

Thanks for all the advice Lofty I wanted to ask about the 2-gen thing but you answered my question before I had the chance to ask

By the way, I just did another average of 100, and shaved 4 whole seconds off yesterday's times, so now I have a sub-30 F2L average I dunno if my standards are too low, but sub-30 F2L on my second day only feels good And I've just learned the U perms, slightly above 4 seconds for each of 'em, is this a good start?

 

[Dene]

blah: Yes that is a good start.

But you're right at the end of your first post: the key is just more practise. Don't overdo it though.

I think, when you're learning it is useful to get your F2L down first because that is where you have to improvise algorithms and learn useful tricks.
Later on LL becomes important as you really want a sub8 LL optimally, and that takes a lot of practise on each algorithm getting it perfect. (I average 17ish seconds F2L, and 33ish seconds overall! My LL is bad!)

 

[blah]

Since there's no OH accomplishment thread, I'll post my ridiculous achievement here. You won't believe it, even I don't.

This is only my second day working on OH, and beginners' luck was on my side (luck is an understatement, but I couldn't come up with a better word). I was at the Monday Contest, and I broke my PB 3 times in 5 scrambles And 2 of them were sub-40 because they both had PLL skips. One of them was 42.xx, no skips, just plain easy. I didn't bother to calculate, but I'll probably get a sub-45 average of 5 on my second day of OH, that's setting the bar a little too high for myself, I think I won't be breaking my PB for a long long long time to come

 

[fanwuq]

Blah, that's just like me about 2 month ago!!!
After DC open (I had really disappointing results, my hands felt numb and weird), I practiced OH for about a week. I quickly got back down to a 50 second average, then a 45 average. I also did PLL time attacks like crazy. After like 2-4 days, I got my first sub-40 single, it was 34.9x! I didn't expect to beat this in a while. Then, the next day on the bus, I did 20 solves (average was about 42). 4 PB singles. It went to 34.xx then 33.xx, then 32.xx, then a 31.00 which was a PLL skip that I worked for.
After that, my cube has not been lubed for a while, and it's a bit stiff and hurt my hands. So I stopped practicing. If it weren't for that, I expected a sub-40 average the next day and sub-35 (perhaps even sub-30) average at least before the end of the summer. But I just suddenly lost interest and gained extreme interest for BLD. I got quite satisfying results for Corners, but not edges. Now I'm not quite sure where my interest is again. (Maybe linear FMC?) I hope I'll return to BLD or OH again, because I'm not reaching any of my summer goals yet!

 

[blah]

Sweet. I rested my dead hand yesterday, did only BLD, and probably a few 2H solves. And today I got a sub-25 F2L average of 12 I hope getting sub-20 wouldn't be as hard as my 2H experience

 

[Tim_Likes_Cubing]

I'd say that doing 100 OHF2Ls in a row is pretty non-beginner-ish (well maybe that's just me).

 

[blah]

200 actually with a half hour break in between each 100. I dunno, but I'm theoretically a beginner since I started "seriously" less than a week ago.

 

[blah]

Revisiting my old thread, because I didn't want to start a new thread for this (and also because it's a little relevant)...

3x3x3 OH F2L - 1 September 2008
Cubes Solved: 100/100
Average: 24.37
Standard Deviation: 3.30
Best Time: 18.07
Worst Time: 31.58

3x3x3 OH F2L - 23 September 2008
Cubes Solved: 50/50
Average: 21.03
Standard Deviation: 2.49
Best Time: 16.26
Worst Time: 25.75

3x3x3 OH F2L - 24 September 2008
Cubes Solved: 60/60
Average: 20.10
Standard Deviation: 2.34
Best Time: 14.70
Worst Time: 25.20

3x3x3 OH F2L - 25 September 2008
Cubes Solved: 90/90
Average: 20.00
Standard Deviation: 2.95
Best Time: 12.40
Worst Time: 26.24
Best average of 12: 18.36
Best average of 5: 16.49

And this is honestly all the "proper" training I've done in the past month, I didn't do anything in between the 1st and the 23rd because of exams, then the past 3 days have just been inexplicably amazing. (But I just couldn't break that 20.00 barrier for "long averages" )

Maybe I should start learning LL algs. (I mostly do 2-look OLL because I get OH amnesia on most of them, and my only sub-5 PLLs are both U's (both 2.xx) and one of the J's (4.xx) yep I can't even sub-5 on H or Z or A )

 

[Neroflux]

oh no. i just got owned.

 

[blah]

Update: (Seriously, why is there no OH accomplishment thread? Should I just create one?)

Sub-5 singles on the following perms last night: both A's, F, H, both J's (sub-4), nice R, T, both U's (sub-3), V, Y, Z (sub-4). That's more than half the perms in one night Now I'll get these PLLs fast first before I work on the others, is sub-4 for all of them a good goal?

 

[Lofty]

hmm I don't even know what a good time is. sub-4 is definitely good. Maybe sub-3 Ideal but not even I am there yet. Maybe Tomy can do it tho.
Edit: everything is sub-3 but E and G... sub-3 single on E tho. G not quite. U's sub-1.5 A's sub-2 J's and Z's so close to sub-2

 

[fcwy1]

blah, can give a whole breakdown of ur OH solve.
you're improving fast.