Long, slow progress

[EvilGnome6]

View attachment 4762

Here's a chart of my progress over the last 6 months. I'm finally on the verge of breaking through to a sub 30 average which I didn't even think was possible when I started. Speed and dexterity have never been my strong suit and I'm older than the average speedcuber (I'm 41). My progress is still looking pretty consistent and I'm curious where I'll plateau. Has anybody else taken such a long time to get to sub 30 and finally gone on to get to sub 20 or lower?

 

[newtonbase]

I'm 42 and after a year I average around 40. Progress was pretty good to start with but my son was born in May so I haven't been able to practice properly.
I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. I'm sure 20s is attainable if you put in the work.

 

[Rocky0701]

It took me about 6 1/2 months to get sub 30 from around a minute and a half. Then it took me about 6 more months to get from sub 30 to sub 20. Now about a year and 4 months into cubing I am sub 17

 

[Berd]

I started in May this year, and am on the verge of Sub 20. Then again I am a 16 year old with plenty of time Hahah [emoji39]

 

[EvilGnome6]

It took me about 6 1/2 months to get sub 30 from around a minute and a half. Then it took me about 6 more months to get from sub 30 to sub 20. Now about a year and 4 months into cubing I am sub 17

Ooh. That's exactly the kind of story I was hoping to hear. Thanks for chiming in.

 

[lerenard]

You're progress looks almost exactly the same as mine, we even started at the same time. I'm 19, so no worries, you're keeping up with the young people (unless I'm slow too o.O)

 

[sneaklyfox]

Hey, you should check out Marcel's thread. A bunch of us (mostly above-average-age cubers) like to hang out, talk about cubing, share our progress, learn new stuff together, etc.

 

[tx789]

I started cubing in early 2009. I didn't get sub 30 until mid 2011 and didn't get sub 20 until late 2013 (around October I think). I started when I was 11, now I'm 17. So you can see I improve really slowly. I am averaging 18ish now but my singles vary greatly. My slow improvement may be did to inefficient practise.

Spoiler

Those I didn't really start learning CFOP and start improving significantly until the week before my first comp in July 2010. The week before that comp I went form 1:04 to a 54 second average. By the end of 2010 I was averaging low 30s. Also I didn't learn F2L until I was trying to get sub 30.

 

[mark49152]

I'm also in my 40s. Took me about a year to get sub-30, then I had a burst of progress and got to around 21-22 in a few more months without further plateaus. That's a tough one though, and I'm still stuck there.

 

[Rocky0701]

Ooh. That's exactly the kind of story I was hoping to hear. Thanks for chiming in.

Good! The biggest tip that I can give you is not to do meaningless solves, and instead practice the parts of your solving that you are having trouble with. Look ahead as much as you can.

 

[Owen]

It took me approximately 4 years to get a sub-20 average.

 

[obelisk477]

Lol. You think your progress is long and slow? I took ~4 years to get sub-20, and just hacked off another 4 seconds in the past 6 months. I'm basically sub-16 now.

EDIT: And I'm 24. Alot of older people I've noticed (and 24 is older in the cubing world) that have a problem with getting faster struggle with TPS, while younger people struggle with lookahead because they think turning fast and looking cool is where its at.

 

[RicardoRix]

We're are a bit similar I'd say that your progress of the last 6 months is my progress over the last 18 months.
I had played guitar for the previous 20 or so years and thought that might help a lot with dexterity but not so much it would seem. My 100 move time and PLL times are very slow (2-3 seconds at best, probably average about 5 seconds.)
I'm 41 years old. I practice for a few hours, on average 3-4 times a week.
I really wanted to track my progress like you have done, but I've used cubemania to record my times and I can't see anyway of extracting the data to csv or excel or anything.

So I joined here in July 2013:
GLOBAL average was about 50-60 seconds.

In Nov 2013 I attend the UK Championship and got a average of 52, but had 2 really bad solves, my median time was 44 on that day.

From a post I made in March 2014 How do you compare to other cubers your age?
GLOBAL average: 39

Recently (unexpected) I just got my first global average under 32. I have been hovering about 33-34 for a few months.

I can't wait to break the 30 seconds barrier. That's my goal.

 

[Ingo]

I'm 45 years old and it took me around 1 year to get from sub-40 to sub-30.

 

[Jrpg15]

I'm 17 and it took me a total of 2 years to get from 1:30ish to sub 15!

 

[NewCuber000]

You're doing fine, as long as you practice the right things (Look-ahead, efficient F2L algorithms for difficult cases, etc) it should be possible for you to get sub 20. I should ask, are you using a rubiks brand? That may be your turning speed problem right there. But if you turn consistently enough in your F2L (Speeding up for the last layer) You should get sub-20 no doubt.

I'm 17 and it took me a total of 2 years to get from 1:30ish to sub 15!

Hey, you're the guy from Atlantic Fall Open with the awesome pyraminx average. I was there, the guy who was 6th place in 3x3 and probably looked like I was experiencing a 9.0 earthquake from the nerves

 

[EvilGnome6]

You're doing fine, as long as you practice the right things (Look-ahead, efficient F2L algorithms for difficult cases, etc) it should be possible for you to get sub 20. I should ask, are you using a rubiks brand? That may be your turning speed problem right there. But if you turn consistently enough in your F2L (Speeding up for the last layer) You should get sub-20 no doubt.

I definitely need to keep working on look ahead and efficiency. My TPS isn't terrible but the pauses are what's keeping me from breaking through to sub-20. Here's a video of me doing a 26 second solve at a recent competition:

I have all the hottest cubes (ZhanChi, WeiLong, AoLong, ShuangRen, etc.) but my main is currently the SuLong. I like the light weight, blocky feel and easy turning and I get my best times with it even though I don't think it's the "best" cube.

 

[stoic]

I'm 41 and I was just checking back on my progress when I joined the race to sub-30 thread. It took me 9 months to get from 44s before I graduated from that thread.
(Now moved to here; I found it a great discipline to participate weekly.)
Finding time to cube isn't easy so - yeah, I know all about long, slow progress.

 

[ComputerGuy365]

It depends on the person. Some people develop faster than others. Look at people such as Alex Lau + Kevin Costello. They have not been cubing that long yet they are world class. Some people however, including myself progress much slower. After restarting cubing and learning advanced CFOP, It took me approximately a year to get from 1:30 to sub 23. Keep practicing, you'll get there. Try to turn a little faster if you can. Especially on PLL's.

 

[cmhardw]

I definitely need to keep working on look ahead and efficiency. My TPS isn't terrible but the pauses are what's keeping me from breaking through to sub-20. Here's a video of me doing a 26 second solve at a recent competition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07g7Hzaz3I

Hi Evilgnome!

I think your assessment about pauses is spot on after watching your video. Try solving your F2L with a metronome set to 60 beats per minute. Do 1 turn every beat. It'll be harder than you think at first, but the more you try it the easier it gets.

Think of the numbers, if the Fridrich method averages fewer than 60 turns, then you only need to solve at 2 turns per second to get sub-30 consistently. Try some metronome solves to see how mind numbing that fact is. Getting sub-20 requires only 3 turns per second, or slightly under that.

Your algorithms in your video are performed at well over 3 turns per second, but then you have a long pause after to identify the next case. Your OLL and PLL phases are fine for the moment because you do want those to be done in bursts anyway.

To get sub-20 you have to train your muscle memory to learn that 2-3 turns per second, sustained over your entire F2L, can actually be (much) faster than "going fast" or turning quickly. Once you learn how to solve without pauses then you can work on increasing turn speed and be doing both. What separates you from a pro right now is that a pro can look ahead at the turn speed you are doing. You will get there, but right now you need to work on learning how to look ahead at slower speeds before you can increase the speed.

Keep one thing in mind: "look ahead" is thrown around a lot on here and is sometimes this magical unicorn of a technique that is hard to nail down what it is. Look ahead means to execute your solve at a relatively sustained turn speed with no pauses. Like any new technique, learn to do that at a slow pace before you can transition to doing that at a faster pace.