Lookahead makes me slower.

[Meisen]

You can see my times in my sig, and they are all aquired using the "fast and choppy" method.


It seems that if i'm ever to get down to sub 20 solves, or faster, i need to be able to lookahead. Countless sources, both on this forum and elsewhere, tells me slow and steady is better than fast and choppy.

My problem is that my slow and steady solves are nowhere near as fast as my fast/choppy ones. They can be as much as 10-15 sec slower.

Granted i've just recently started to "look into" lookahead, so i am in no way good at it, but i still find it curious that my times are suffering to this extent.


When i started learning F2L "everyone" said: your times will suffer at first, but just stay with it, they will drop dramatically after a short while.

I've seen no such warnings when it comes to lookahead, but i sure hope the same applies here, cause if that is the case i can expect sub 20 in a few short months


Anyway, what i was looking for was some feedback from cubers that can relate to my situation

Btw, i'm using full fridrich with mostly intuitive F2L, if anyone was wondering.

 

[elcarc]

your moving too slow if your slowed down 10 seconds. its about keeping a steady upbeat pace, wich is essential to lookahead

 

[PCwizCube]

Well when you start to use look ahead, you have to turn very slowly in order to look ahead. Sure your solves time will get a lot slower, that's normal. Don't worry about that now. As you get better at looking ahead, start to turn slightly faster, but still at a consistent pace. Keep on gradually improving your turning speed until maybe it's like 2-3 turns per second. If you can do that with few pauses and at a steady speed, your times should be faster. If you practice an hour a day, it may take a week or two before you can even START to see improvement in your times, because you are GRADUALLY increasing your turning speed when you look ahead.

I have a question for you, how long have you been practicing looking ahead, and what is your consistent turning speed with it? Use a metronome to measure your turning speed. If it's below two turns per second, you should not be complaining at all.

As I've said in my Looking Ahead tutorial video, you should not be expecting rapid improvement from look ahead. You first have to get good at look ahead with a very slow turning speed. When you can increase your turning speed and still look ahead well, then you will start to see improvement (when your turning speed starts to reach 2-3 turns per second). You have to practice looking ahead a lot. The concept is simple, but it's not easy to get good at.

Off topic: Why do so many people learn full LL before getting sub 20? Haha just makes me laugh

 

[babyle]

Im around your times and the way I practice is doing two exercises. One which is the lookahead one you are doing and also doing the one look at two f2l pairs and then closing my eyes and inserting the two pairs. The closing eyes is rather hard and I rarely get it right, but it also focuses my mind on tracking it. These exercises work for me, but I have to do them more in order to get sub 20.

 

[Meisen]

I have a question for you, how long have you been practicing looking ahead, and what is your consistent turning speed with it? Use a metronome to measure your turning speed. If it's below two turns per second, you should not be complaining at all.

Hehe, i guess i should not complain then I'm having trouble at 1 tps, or 60 bpm. Somtimes i complete F2L at that speed, sometimes i can't. *ashamed for complaining*

Been actively trying to lookahead for about a week.

 

[JohnnyA]

It will get very slow at the start becuase your lookahead is hardly better than before and your TPS is far slower. However after time you should increase your lookahead ability and then you can gradually increase your TPS.

 

[PCwizCube]

I have a question for you, how long have you been practicing looking ahead, and what is your consistent turning speed with it? Use a metronome to measure your turning speed. If it's below two turns per second, you should not be complaining at all.

Hehe, i guess i should not complain then I'm having trouble at 1 tps, or 60 bpm. Somtimes i complete F2L at that speed, sometimes i can't. *ashamed for complaining*

Been actively trying to lookahead for about a week.

You have trouble keeping up with 1 tps? Ok, that's normal, keep practicing like that. When you can get up to 2-3 tps, you'll get much faster in your overall times. It might take a couple more weeks for you to achieve that goal with still good look ahead. Just be patient.

 

[JLarsen]

Look ahead, is something that comes when your recognition of simple patterns, and overall ability to process information is so solid, that once you see pieces, you can put them into place with such little thought that you don't even need to look. This is only obtained with a lot of practice, as to bring up the familiarity with your method, and the cube in general. You are simply trying to look ahead too far, and are not familiar enough with your method yet enough to look many steps ahead. It will come with time, and it will come naturally. You may not think you're looking ahead in your solves, but you are.

 

[Logan]

You should try Tetris.

http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?p=232596#post232596

 

[stevethecuber]

u should try the method people call 'slowly but surely'

 

[4Chan]

Uhhhhmmmm, from 25 til 17 average, i was quick and choppy.

Do whatever suits you.
(I cant go quick and choppy with my newer method, well, i could, but not effectively.)

 

[rubiknewbie]

Maybe your fast is really fast so slow and steady doesn't pay.

 

[Meisen]

You can see my times in my sig, and they are all aquired using the "fast and choppy" method.


It seems that if i'm ever to get down to sub 20 solves, or faster, i need to be able to lookahead. Countless sources, both on this forum and elsewhere, tells me slow and steady is better than fast and choppy.

My problem is that my slow and steady solves are nowhere near as fast as my fast/choppy ones. They can be as much as 10-15 sec slower.

Granted i've just recently started to "look into" lookahead, so i am in no way good at it, but i still find it curious that my times are suffering to this extent.

Conclusion: I guess i'll keep going fast and choppy, though it'll probably not be the best method to get better faster, it is the most fun in my opinion.

When i started learning F2L "everyone" said: your times will suffer at first, but just stay with it, they will drop dramatically after a short while.

I've seen no such warnings when it comes to lookahead, but i sure hope the same applies here, cause if that is the case i can expect sub 20 in a few short months


Anyway, what i was looking for was some feedback from cubers that can relate to my situation

Btw, i'm using full fridrich with mostly intuitive F2L, if anyone was wondering.

That first post is not as informative as it could have been, as my times in the signature keeps changing. I didn't think about that while writing that post.

On topic:

I've now gotten sub 20, but i'm still having problems with slow smooth solves vs fast and choppy solves. I just can't seem to find the perfect speed in the slow solves, so my slow solves becomes slow "fast/choppy" solves as i'm not able to keep the flow going.

If i am to turn as slow as needed to be SURE i get a nice flow, the times i get is at least 2-3 seconds slower than my fast choppy solves are.

Fast turning gets me a reasonable amount of 15/16/17 solves, but also quite a lot 23 ish solves :/

Slow/smooth gets me at best 18, at worst 25.

I find it hard to practise slow and smooth when i very rarely get (for me) good times with it.


My sub 20 avg of 100 was fast/choppy, i did an average of 50 with slow/smooth a couple of days ago, and got like 22-23.

 

[Shortey]

"Going fast and trying to look ahead is the new go slow and look ahead"
-Chester Lian

 

[shicklegroober]

I'm in the same situation except I'm working on sub 30.. anyway, it's hard to consistently look ahead and it's going to take a really long time to do it consistently. I think that although both of our times are slower while looking ahead, in the near future they will be noticeably faster. It just takes time. Patience is the key for speedsolving in my opinion.

 

[Weston]

Uhhhhmmmm, from 25 til 17 average, i was quick and choppy.

Do whatever suits you.
(I cant go quick and choppy with my newer method, well, i could, but not effectively.)

I'm still quick and choppy. lol