Sub 3 At 6X6?

[Jake - Speedcuber]

I NEED HELP - Can someone please give me tips on how to reach this goal in 4 months? I have a big cube comp soon, and want better 6x6 results than a stupid 5 minute single, and no mean. I average ~ 5:10 right now,

 

[CatSharked]

If you practice every day in those 4 months, you will get faster.

 

[Jake - Speedcuber]

What kind of practice would you recommend?

 

[Mike Hughey]

I'm not far from where you are, but I recently (just a few weeks ago) decided to finally seriously switch to the more modern freeslice method (I used to use AvG for big cube edges, which is the method that Mátyás Kuti and Erik Akkersdijk used to set world records for 5x5x5 way back in 2007 and 2008), and I have made great progress so far - I'm close to sub-4 with freeslice now, where I was closer to 6 minutes with freeslice a few weeks ago.

I would recommend that you watch the Kevin Hays Tuesday Tips videos:

focusing specifically on weeks 1 through 11 - the beginner tips - for the first few weeks, until you can get sub-4. Watch them multiple times and absorb them, and especially watch the sample solves. You might also consider watching some of his more recent ones - the ones after the advanced ones - since some of them have additional tips that seem like they're still useful even for beginners/intermediates.

And then practice like crazy. It seems most people recommend about 50% untimed solves where you focus on doing things correctly as much as possible, and then 50% timed. Once you are averaging sub-4, then start watching Kevin's intermediate videos, and keep practicing. I've been having some luck with the first half of this, and I bet you improve a lot faster than me, since I'm 60 years old and already set in some bad habits.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else know of more modern big cube speedsolving videos that are similar to Kevin's? His are great, but they are 2 to 4 years old, so I can't help wondering if there are other more recent ones out there.

 

[artless1der]

watch Kevin Hays' "Tuesday Tips" and also watch Feliks Zemdegs' "Cube Skills" big cube videos (both on YT
JPERM also has some good videos for big cubes (tho he admits that he got most of his info from their video sets, stull worth watching

Practice algs over and over on solved cubes (L2E, OLL and PLL parity, etc) and also do 3×3 stage solves, mixing in some parity cases before you do the 3×3 scramble

One practice technique I use is (still with a timer) scramble, then solve EDGES FIRST, then solve normally (ignoring edges) til its solved
This way you get edge-solving twice ×)

A primary key to getting faster is getting BETTER and that means work work work until things become more intuitive and practically second nature and all of that only comes with more time invested... GL!

 

[Isaiah Scott]

I use a edge pairing method that I invented and I average far sub 4

 

[artless1der]

watch Kevin Hays' "Tuesday Tips" and also watch Feliks Zemdegs' "Cube Skills" big cube videos (both on YT
JPERM also has some good videos for big cubes (tho he admits that he got most of his info from their video sets, stull worth watching

Practice algs over and over on solved cubes (L2E, OLL and PLL parity, etc) and also do 3×3 stage solves, mixing in some parity cases before you do the 3×3 scramble

One practice technique I use is (still with a timer) scramble, then solve EDGES FIRST, then solve normally (ignoring edges) til its solved
This way you get edge-solving twice ×)

A primary key to getting faster is getting BETTER and that means work work work until things become more intuitive and practically second nature and all of that only comes with more time invested... GL!

It also helps to do solves on bigger cubes (7×7, 8×8, 9×9) and doing so makes brain+eyes+hands do more work, so when you do solves on smaller cubes the amount of work required seems like a lot less and your times on 6×6 will reflect that

One more thing, and obviously cubers have different preferences, but newer hardware can help
Specifically, the X-man Shadow V2M is great and the new Moyu Aoshi WRM 6×6 is excellent

 

[Cubinginatree]

It also helps to do solves on bigger cubes (7×7, 8×8, 9×9) and doing so makes brain+eyes+hands do more work, so when you do solves on smaller cubes the amount of work required seems like a lot less and your times on 6×6 will reflect that

One more thing, and obviously cubers have different preferences, but newer hardware can help
Specifically, the X-man Shadow V2M is great and the new Moyu Aoshi WRM 6×6 is excellent

MGC too

 

[artless1der]

If you can, use more than one cube to practice and do drills on.
Centers take the longest so do centers on each cube, timing yourself. Then you have muktiple edge sokves to do after <⁠(⁠￣⁠︶⁠￣⁠)⁠>

Memorize all of the 5×5 L2E algs and play with different ways you can use them on 6×6

And then really drill them (and parity algs) over and over starting with a solved cube so you can easily see any mistakes you might make along the way