Look-ahead: The act of finding, tracking, or even planning what your next step will look like in some capacity, whether that be having a complete picture of what the next case will be in its entirety before/during the case you are currently solving, OR, a partial picture of what the next case will be before or during the case you're currently executing
Said simply, it's actively focusing on the next step, while your hands execute the current step with muscle memory
Why do cubers often struggle with look-ahead?
Look ahead is one of those topics often talked about by YouCubers of various skill levels, usually with a lot of emphasis on the fact that "look-ahead is a mindset broo, you gotta wait for it to CLICK!"
Often times you'll hear them say that it's because "you don't do enough slow turning practice" or "you turn too fast" or the classic suggestion of doing more "metronome practice!!!"
I think sometimes that can be the case, but for the vast majority of cubers it's a complete ******** suggestion for advice. In fact, for 99% of cubers it's a terrible suggestion and usually just leads to people turning fast-then-slow-then-fast, which isn't exactly how fast times look when you watch Feliks and Max, who, believe it or not, pause sometimes
(BTW this email will be within the context of 3x3 F2L, however many of the overarching ideas apply to other events and steps)
anyway... I don't blame these YouCubers for pandering this advice, because unfortunately the people who get popular on cubing social media aren't exactly pushing the boundaries of high level speedcubing as much as they're busy take pretty videos and using a e s t h e t i c transition effects
And on the surface, it does *feel* like good advice. However rarely do I see this advice lead to improved look-ahead
So, what does coach Jay think about look-ahead then?
In my humble opinion, poor look-ahead is a symptom of inefficiencies in F2L
"What kinds of inefficiencies Jay?!?"
There's a lot of them, however by far the most important of them are
1. Your F2L solutions are too "intuitive" and you can't look at two F2L pieces, close your eyes, and then solve them with utmost confidence that they'll be inserted correctly. Solve this by drilling your stuff more
2. Similar to #1, even though you can solve some pairs with that level of confidence, your solutions are so bad that you end up moving all sorts of pieces around the cube from multiple slots and it's a chaotic mess to track anything.
A good rule of thumb is that 80% of your F2L pairs should be around 7-8 moves long, with the remaining 20% being either lucky 3-4 move inserts, or slightly unlucky but still fast 11-12 movers
If this is your problem, learn new good stuff from algdb
3. Even if your solutions and confidence are on point, your y/y' rotation choices aren't on point and you're constantly filling up the front and right slots instead of making the effort to fill your main "blind-spot" slots (BL is the worst slot to have unsolved, followed by BR, then FL, then FR. If you're a left dominant solver then it would be the L/R reflection of the slots I just described)
Solving this issue is just a matter of making better decisions with your y and y' rotations. Whenever you have a y or a y' rotation you HAVE to do, there's almost always a correct answer
Now, if any of that sounds like how you currently solve 3x3 F2L, my suggestion would be to not even worry about look ahead and instead address the roots of your inefficiencies at the micro level
If you're efficient enough, then working on the mindset switch where you're not looking at what you're currently solving, and instead looking around the cube for new information, ain't a bad idea
Also, don't strive for pauseless solves
Seriously
You're going to have solves where pieces get stuck in certain blindspots or where a brief pause is useful in order to take advantage of something that will save you turns
You can pause during F2L and still have good look-ahead
Inversely, you can have F2L where you "never pause", but because your turning is fast-then-slow-then-fast, your look-ahead is shitty as far as I'm concerned
Bottom line, screw metronome practice and whoever though it was a good idea in the first place
Dang narrow minded pseudo-intellectuals living in the world of theory instead of the world of experience
