Need some MORE help with sub-20...

[abr71310]

After Justin broke sub-20, I was left alone in the dust to rot and DIEEEE (figuratively speaking, he's just gotten so much better than me that I have no way of realistically catching up before September...) without any form of figuring out what to do or how to break an average of sub-20.

As my current signature says, I've come close to sub-15 singles but not quite... (that was a non-lucky 16.03... best F2L look-ahead EVER...)

So I've come back for help, since I haven't been on this forum in DECADES (okay, well, a month, but only because I've been lazy and neglecting a LOT of things lately). I've taken the liberty of doing an average of 12 to try and get some tips / extra help on how to finally break sub-20, since you guys have watched my progression since ~1min averages were my "awesome" solves.

My current knowledge:
14 algs for F2L, rest intuitive.
(basically random look-ahead, I sometimes see all the pairs, i sometimes see NONE)
23 OLLs / 57 (Working on it... it's really discouraging but 2-look is nice too...?)
Full PLL

Scrambles are posted in the desc. of the youtube vid but for the sake of this thread I'll post them here with my times. PLEASE DON'T LAUGH TOO HARD, my inconsistency is embarrassing, especially since TOS 2009 was a month ago and I haven't really seen much improvement.

Cube: Type A II

[youtube]uYZ3mNODR-w&fmt=18[/youtube]

Statistics for 07-31-2009 02:10:14

Cubes Solved: 12/12
Number of Pops: 1
Average: 23.59
Standard Deviation: 2.93
Best Time: 18.88
Worst Time: 28.34

Individual Times:
1. 22.96 F U2 R' U2 F L U2 B F' L2 R' D' U' B F2 U2 F' U B' F' U' B F' R' F
2. 24.88 R2 B2 D2 U L' R' F2 D2 L' U R F2 D R' D' U2 B' R' F U' L R2 B' F' R
3. 26.29 F2 R D2 B' F' L2 R D' U' R' B' D2 U' L' D2 F L R B' F2 R' F R' D' R
4. 28.34 B' D2 L' B D2 F' L' D' L' R' D2 U2 B' F2 D U2 B U' R' F L D2 L R' U'
5. 23.94 D B F2 L' R U L B' F' L U' B F2 U' B2 F2 U2 L R B F R2 U B F
6. 21.23 F L' F' L' U B' F' L R2 B2 D2 U' B F2 D B2 F' D U' B U2 R F' R2 D
7. 18.88 B D' U' R U' B' L2 R D' U L2 U2 L' R2 B' F R D2 R' F D L D2 U' B2
8. 22.48 B F L B' L D' L' R2 F2 L R' F L' D2 B F U' L R' B' D' U2 B F' D2
9. 27.60 R2 D' L U' L R U' F D2 U' L' F2 R2 U' B' F' R2 F D' F' R' U B F' U'
10. 19.94 R U' L' D2 L' D' U' L2 R2 U2 B F2 L B2 F2 R B' F2 D F D' U' F U R2
11. 20.80 R' B2 F D' U' R U' B' F U2 B L R2 U L R' B' F2 U2 B' F' R F' R' U
12. 25.78 U F' L2 R2 F' D2 B2 D' B D U' L2 R B2 F U B2 F2 L R2 F2 L R D F

 

[Tiw]

OH Yeah^^
I had the same problems, sometimes sub 15 and the a time like 25.46 sec
I think the best tip I can give you is: Keep practicing, learn more about F2L strategies and read this:
Quote of Chris Hardwick, helps me a lot:

This is something that I have a lot of experience with. I was stuck with a 22.0 second pb average for about 2 years, my junior and senior year of high school. I felt like I was practicing a lot at the time, and it frustrated me that I did not improve despite my perception of hard work to overcome.

In hindsight here are some things I did terribly wrong:
1) In those two years I didn't learn anything new about 3x3x3 speedcubing. I did practice bigger cubes, other puzzles like square-1 and clock, magic, etc. But I didn't learn anything new for 3x3x3 speedsolving. The fact that I was learning to solve other puzzles gave me a false sense of security that I was also learning to improve my 3x3x3, not true!
[/qoute]
2) When practicing I only did solve after solve after solve after solve after solve after solve, ad nauseum. I did nothing to try to experiment with other approaches or other methods. I didn't use metronome solving, I just simply solved, logged the time, scrambled and solved again until my hands got sore and I couldn't solve any more. I call this passive practicing. You are practicing yes, but I was re-enforcing my bad habits and not trying to improve them. This period made it very hard for me to break some of my wristing bad habits away to more Nakajima style finger solving only.

3) I did not improve my algorithm sets. I had some terrible speedsolving algs that I was using regularly and did not recognize that I should try to improve them.

----------

Here are the specific changes I made at the end of my rut to get my first ever sub-20 average.

1) Stop Rushing on F2L
If you're stuck in the low 20's I guarantee that you solve F2L too quickly to look ahead. I'm not saying that it's a possibility I am saying absolutely, 100% for a fact you turn faster than you can look ahead. Please try to realize this is true because it will help you speed up tremendously! This one allows for lookahead and allows you to go faster. I still struggle with the perfect balance for this to this very day. It's paradoxical, I know. But seriously, If you go at 80% speed throughout your solving you will get faster times more often than not than if you go 100% speed. Trust me on this. It is one of the biggest changes I made to my solving that allowed me to go sub-20 on average for the first time.

2) I learned X-cross
At this time I was experimenting with Petrus block building, and decided I liked it but did not want to completely give up Fridrich F2L. So I decided to combine the two together and do Petrich for a while. This is building a 2x2x2 block, then immediately finishing the cross edges after that. This approach was told to me by Heath Litton in about 2002 which is where I got the idea. I noticed that sometimes I could literally do the 2x2x2 and the cross at the same time, and thus this gave birth to me trying to purposefully build an X-cross rather than just do it when it was easy to see. So in this sense I was experimenting with an approach that worked for me. I don't have the same turning speed as the pros, so I try to make up for it by making my solving more efficient than most. I now do Xcross on nearly 40-50% of my solves because I practice it all the time and try to refine my technique for it.

If you do have godly turning speeds, then try the "fast and choppy" technique. Maybe you need to solve your pairs in a finger tricky frenzy madness, but then slow down just as you do the insertion to facillitate look ahead. I noticed when hanging out with Daniel Beyer that his turning speed is crazy fast. So I forced him to solve this way for an average and his F2L times actually improved. So you might want to consider this if your turning speed is already very good.

3) Update your algorithms all the time. I don't mean learn new ones so much as learn better ones. I've had lots of times where someone told me about an alg for a case that was "awesome!" but when I tried it I did not like it at all - it just did not fit my style. In this case, learn a different alg. Just because people say "dude this alg R0x0rS!" doesn't necessarily mean it's a good alg for you. Learn algs that you like, not that other people say are popular or fast.

One important thing to note here, learn algs that are fast, not that feel cool. For example I used to use the 17 move Y perm, because it just felt amazingly cool. I now use the 13 move alg because I am faster using it. It was tough for me to change, because I really loved the feel of the 17 move PLL alg, and I was pretty fast with it. However I was more consistently fast with the 13 move version. My goal is to solve quickly, not such that it feels cool, so I changed.

 

[JLarsen]

That is a great quote. More people need to read that.

 

[jms_gears1]

can single posts be stickied?

 

[PCwizCube]

Ok I watched a few solves and I can already see problems.

Your cross is... not that good. It takes you like 3-5 seconds to solve it. It should be more like 2-3.
It seems like while you're solving the cross, you're looking at the cross pieces, looking where they should go and stuff.

What you should do is practice the cross blindfolded. Take a scrambled cube, and try to memorize the ENTIRE solution to the cross. If it takes you a minute, or ten minutes, go for it. Take as long as needed until you can memorize the cross solution. Then solve the cross with your eyes closed. You want to do this a lot of times. And get it so your inspection time (memorizing the cross solution) is below 15 seconds.

The point of this exercise is so that when you're solving the cross normally, you can just execute the moves really fast because you already know the solution and you don't really need to think about it that much. So that exercise gives you a faster cross. It also does something else very important. Errr... that might be a little bit advanced though, I might tell you later, because there are other things you need to work on.

Your look ahead in F2L is not that good either. You solve a pair and then you look around for another pair which takes you a second or two. What you want to do is you want to while solving a pair, don't look at it. Instead, look at the next F2L pair you will solve. That way, once you solve the first pair, you can immediately move onto the next one, and do this for all your F2L pairs. Now there's one problem: you have to do a lot of looking and that takes a long time. To solve this, you must turn very slowly so you can actually look ahead. You want to turn so slowly that you NEVER stop turning in your F2L. You can practice this by using a metronome and doing one move every time the metronome beats.

Turning slowly without pauses sounds really stupid, I know, but it's faster than turning faster and having lots of pauses.

23 OLLs is not at all discouraging. I'll tell you why. I average 15-17 seconds and you know more OLLs than me (yes I use Fridrich)
Your PLL recognition is kind of bad too. And your PLLs are a little slow. That just comes with practice.

 

[brunson]

For PLL recognition I wrote this: http://brunson.com/drillsergeant/

Choose "Use only PLLs, No OLLs" and click "Drill", then try to recognize the case without rotating the cube. If you solve cross on white then you probably want to change the color scheme to ywgbro.

 

[Brilliantsam]

23 OLLs is not at all discouraging. I'll tell you why. I average 15-17 seconds and you know more OLLs than me (yes I use Fridrich)
Your PLL recognition is kind of bad too. And your PLLs are a little slow. That just comes with practice.

I know all 57 OLLs fluidly, I use the full fridrich method and my average is 24 seconds, so that is certainly not discouraging!
I have exactly the same problem with my f2l and cross etc. Although I know what the problem is, it's gonna take a hell of a lot of practice to correct it and get sub-20!