Older cubers discussions

MarcelP said:
Yes, Mark, here is how I practise slow solves, when I have company of my kids and pets ;) I can not concentrate and go full speed. Instead I try to make solves smooth and without stops.. I think that is the best practise you can do..
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I often do slow solves while on the phone (and I spend a lot of time on the phone). I'm not sure it helps me much though. Maybe it does but it's hard to separate the effect of that from other practice. Generally though, I feel I need to concentrate to really improve. If I just solve, I revert to habits, patterns, rhythms and pace which are "normal" for me, and the more I do that the more I reinforce those things and make it harder to break or surpass them. To improve I need to force some kind of change, whether it's speed, smoothness, lookahead, reduced pause for recognition, fully planned cross, etc., and that always takes concentration.
 
sk8erman41 said:
Not sure what "paper" you use, but I used to use Andy Klise's beginner guide and this method is WAY easier
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Okay, I can solve the cube without paper.. Well... only the T and Y perm on a MegaMinx? I can not do that even if my life depended on it.. I still have to read that from the paper. But awesome video from Antoine.. I will sub him.
 
ThomasJE said:
How are things going Marcel? I haven't been here for ages because of exams, so you may have caught up with me. :p
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Hi THomas, NO.. I wish.. LOL I have made some good progress. I Ao100 in the low 21's (nice sentence huh?). I am very pleased with that. But the downside is that to get these averages you must do a lot of 17 and 18 to compensate the 28 and 29's.. So I know I can do 17's but I just can not do them all the time :) Last few days have been horrible with 22.xx Ao100's. But I recon I need some time of. I have been practising too much and it is working against me as I am loosing lookahead. How about your times? Have you gotten worse due to the studying? Or did the time off do you good (which does in some cases).
 
MarcelP said:
Hi THomas, NO.. I wish.. LOL I have made some good progress. I Ao100 in the low 21's (nice sentence huh?). I am very pleased with that. But the downside is that to get these averages you must do a lot of 17 and 18 to compensate the 28 and 29's.. So I know I can do 17's but I just can not do them all the time :) Last few days have been horrible with 22.xx Ao100's. But I recon I need some time of. I have been practising too much and it is working against me as I am loosing lookahead. How about your times? Have you gotten worse due to the studying? Or did the time off do you good (which does in some cases).
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I've only just started solving again, but I think that a break now and again can really help; I didn't solve much for about a month or two around the start of last year, and when I got back into solving I had a slight decrease in times. I've had a similar decrease in times in the past two or three days that I've been solving and I have had quite a few sub-17 solves today.

Sometimes you do need a break to relax. Any cricket fans in England will know about Jonathan Trott and his troubles with a stress-related illness. But you're doing well in the World Cup though :D.
 
After a longer break from the forums, yesterday I returned again to Marcel's Bar here.
Man, I had a lot to read :)

First of all, congrats to your great times, good improvement, and everything else.

A few days ago, I started again to time my solves. I think I didn't do any serious timed solves since my last (which also was my first) competition.
Only a few during ppp's (Pee Pee Pause) at work.

Here are some 3x3 numbers:
comp end of march:
25.83 avg of 5 with 23.02 best single (which was very surprising and good for me)

avg of 100 some days ago:
28.11 (σ = 3.90) including best time: 19.55, best avg5: 22.46 (σ = 0.85), best avg12: 24.92 (σ = 3.19), worst time: 45.65

avg of 50 yesterday:
27.62 (σ = 3.00) including best time: 20.06, best avg5: 24.40 (σ = 1.98), best avg12: 26.76 (σ = 4.30), worst time: 42.94

avg of 12 today:
26.12 (σ = 1.81) including best time: 22.32, best avg5: 24.61 (σ = 1.36), worst time: 29.95
(better than the last few, which are usualy around 28 seconds)

What I can see out of these number is, that I need to be more constant. Every now and then, I get times above 40 seconds, usualy because of messed up crosses, F2L pairs or OLLs.

I hope all your effort and improvement can motivate me to start practicing more again and maybe bring me down to constant sub-25.

Soooo, I'm glad to be back, moving on to practice cross+1
 
My 4x4 is especially lucky. No parity, easy OLL, PLL skip :)
It's still by all time PB

I am also quite happy with the Ao100 of 28, but I guess if I could get rid of the fails it could be around 27 - 27.5.
I had 6 sup-40 and around 20 sup-32 (I am unhappy with all solves above 32) which is 20% of all solves...
However, 22 solves were sub-25, which is nice.

This is how the chart looks like:
Ao100Chart.JPG
 
Here's something curious. I just re-timed all my OLL and PLL alg groups. My execution is 15% faster than last time I timed them all, which was February. So I thought hey, I've been hammering F2L practice since then, and hardly done anything on algs apart from warm-ups and a few PLL attacks. So my F2L must have improved by loads more, right?

But... pairs have only improved 16% despite 4000 solves in the last few weeks. Cross+1, the target of hours of dedicated blind practice and a new competition, improved by 13%. And my solves overall? Guess what... 15%. Which I guess means my recog and pauses are down about 15% too.

So despite lots of practice targeted at specific substeps, I seem to have improved pretty consistently right across all steps. Strange! :)
 
mark49152 said:
Here's something curious. I just re-timed all my OLL and PLL alg groups. My execution is 15% faster than last time I timed them all, which was February. So I thought hey, I've been hammering F2L practice since then, and hardly done anything on algs apart from warm-ups and a few PLL attacks. So my F2L must have improved by loads more, right?

But... pairs have only improved 16% despite 4000 solves in the last few weeks. Cross+1, the target of hours of dedicated blind practice and a new competition, improved by 13%. And my solves overall? Guess what... 15%. Which I guess means my recog and pauses are down about 15% too.

So despite lots of practice targeted at specific substeps, I seem to have improved pretty consistently right across all steps. Strange! :)
Click to expand...

I'd imagine a lot of hand speed comes with that much practice, and probably benefits your LL. I really need to get round to some good practice.

I've hardly cubed for a fortnight, and got my first PLL skip which didn't follow a terrible F2L today... 11.65! Couldn't believe it when I saw the timer. If my F2L was always that smooth I'd be averaging about 15 - just shows how much work is needed!
 
pipkiksass said:
I'd imagine a lot of hand speed comes with that much practice, and probably benefits your LL. I really need to get round to some good practice.

I've hardly cubed for a fortnight, and got my first PLL skip which didn't follow a terrible F2L today... 11.65! Couldn't believe it when I saw the timer. If my F2L was always that smooth I'd be averaging about 15 - just shows how much work is needed!
Click to expand...

@pip: time to change your sig.
@mark: 15% improvement sounds pretty good actually.
 
mark49152 said:
Have you really done over 22,000 solves this year? How on earth do you find the time with all those young kids?! :)
Click to expand...

Yes, I've counted every solve (though I may have misremembered a few of the untimed solves). Yeah, my days are busy but everybody needs some down time, right? So I figured it out:

22,000 solves in 6 months ~ 120 solves a day
1 solve takes about 30 seconds, real man's time (including scrambling, inspection, and solve)

- 20 min break in the middle of the afternoon when my three youngest are having naptime and my two oldest are playing nicely together ~ 40 solves
- 30 min down time in the evening after all the kids are in bed ~ 60 solves
- washroom breaks ~ 6 solves
- nursing sessions ~ 10 solves
- random single solves when I happen by a cube ~ 4 solves

Well, that's a rough picture of what a day could be like. Back when my twins nursed for an hour a session at 8 sessions/day, I could do 80-100 solves during that time besides other things like falling asleep in the recliner. :)
 
Yes, impressive indeed. :) 120 solves per day is not all that much. I do not think I do that all days but most days 120 is no problem.

Recently I have switched to csTimer. Man, I really love that timer. It forces you to wait before picking up the cube like a stackmat does. And all the options.. just love it..
My first solves of today.. nothing special, I feel that my look ahead is still improving. No frantic searching while doing F2L. LL still sucks major..
[video=youtube_share;QZ4L0RQKphM]http://youtu.be/QZ4L0RQKphM[/video]
 
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