An important part of getting faster is dedicating time to improving particular parts of your solve and pointing out the problems in your solve like:too many rotations, bad algs, slow recognition,not doing enough in inspection,having trouble with algs at certain angles,AUF's, Blockbuilding, looking at algs while performing them instead of looking ahead, bad at certain fingertricks and pausing between fingertricks. By pointing out your weaknesses you will improve much faster than working out your problems with hundreds of solves a day.You should schedule times to fix your weaknesses and improve your method.For example, about 2 days a week I work on parts of my solve that i find need improvement and spend sometime thinking about how i should improve and what to learn next.
I learned in October 2010, but didn't actually practice seriously until February 2011. After realizing how much the LBL method I used sucked (words cannot describe how bad it was, the one of the rubik's website is 10x better) I decided to learn Fridrich around August 2011. By September I was averaging 30 seconds (big skip from 50 XD) and then kept practicing until now (15 seconds on average). I practice(d) a lot XD Hours a day went into cubing, but now I'm like 90 minutes at most :/ Likewise, if you spend an hour a day of serious practice, you should move down pretty quick. Make sure you know good OLLs and PLLs, that may add or subtract ~5 seconds from your time.
Speed cubing for 2 years,
Pb: 19 i think
Avg: 25
I practice once every 2 weeks for half an hour
(don't follow me as a example, I'm more of a cube hardware person)
i have been cubing a while now 2+yrs and i definately felt big barriers after sub 30. getting sub 30 took me about 6 months, sub 20 in another year, and now i sub 15 which is almost a year after sub 20.
my advice to you is take your time with F2L and make sure you are learning good LL algs. There are plenty of resources for good LL algs but dont get so stuck in your ways with any one alg; what works for one person might not necessarily work for you. with F2L, try to do many untimed casual solves. slow it WAY down!! intuitive F2L is great, but only if you are able to optimize it. watching F2L tutorials and tricks and tips is a great way to learn. Also, solve reconstructions are a great way. people who have sub 5 F2L usually have optimal F2L and you can learn a lot. you'll find that there isnt much 'secret' in what they do and fancy tricks are typically minimal. once you are comfortable with F2L and you are able to spot cases and execute them pretty much blindfolded, its all about lookahead, not necessarily speed. speed comes much much later in the game with F2L so make sure you arent trying to whiz through it. if you have 2-3 second pauses in between each pair but are zipping the pairs into the slots, youre doing it wrong! OK? lol
also, what helped me a lot was to branch out with cubing in general. if you havent already, pick up a big cube. just learning how to solve a 4x4 and 5x5 helped me dramatically in my times on 3x3. when i practice 4x4 and 5x5 a lot, 3x3 feels much easier for some reason. i think solving big cubes you slow down a lot due to lookahead being a bit more difficult and because of the physical hardware of the cube. so, when you get back to a 3x3, you take back the lookahead and apply it to your f2l and WHAM! insant gratification LOL (at least it seems that way for me... big cubes (or at least the lookahead skill i obtained from practicing them) changed my 3x3 almost as much as full PLL/OLL)
just remember that everyone learns at different speeds. the only way to learn is to solve the cube a lot until it is just second nature to you. there are members of this forum who were sub 20 in a matter of a month and sub 15 in less than half a year, but all of their free time was spent cubing. there is no point in rushing, you will get better if you practice and you will have your own personal growth factors. just HAVE FUN!
I practice whenever I can however I can. I started 2 1/2 months ago myself and average 25 secs. All it takes is dedication and support of friends.
The first things I learned were all the PLLs and the cross OLLs first, which took a week. I rushed it though and I ended up learning new Algs for certain PLLs and OLLs such as the double sune and the N and E perm.
When you start off, your dominate hand might be faster than your other hand. So if your right handed, your left hand might be tricky to use. What I did to improve this is to learn how to solve the cube with one hand with your nondominate hand. To me, it worked, and I noticed it alot because now I can do some mirror algs faster than the original alg.
To me I can do:
(y2) L U2 L' U2 L F' L' U' L U L F L2 U
faster than:
R' U2 R U2 R' F R U R' U' R' F' R2' U'
Just because I practice my left hand alot more now.
If you don't have a speedcube get one.
Learn fingertricks for your algs to make them faster and smoother. I use my thumb and pinkie alot now during my 2handed solves and I find it fast to use at certain situations.
A couple techniques I do is blind practice and experimentations. During my F2L, I would find my pair to solve and solve it blind. It helps alot as it teaches you not to look at the piece your solving during your real solve. If you find something you did cool and quick learn how to do it again and practice it. Sometimes accidents make you better.
I like to record myself on my phone alot. I do that to watch myself to see what I have to improve in. MY last recording was yesterday and I found out thatI need great improvement in my G perms and my Turn accuracy as my turns may overshoot themselves and make me slower or make me do the wrong turn later.
I practice everyday, hours and hours. I practice while walking, while sitting, while eating. Don't time your practice.
yeah i definately need to do more focused practice myself
my practice usually consists of just doing Ao100s, effective in just practicing execution but not so much in actually optimizing parts of my solve. It does help in giving me an idea of where usually my problems lie, which really right now i feel for me is EOLine into F2L block building. However, i don't really now that i know what i think i should work on more, i'm not really doing focused practice on that, which i know i should.
I learned to solve the cube at the end of 2009. I didn't practice much at that time, so the progress were very slow. It took me almost a year to get my first sub 60 single, and a half more to get a sub 60 average. Then I almost stopped cubing until around september 2011, when I started to learn the Fridrich methode and got my Lubix Fusion. I learned full PLL an 2 look OLL in one month and improved from 55 average to sub 30 by the end of the year. I took a three months break after that before I continued. My PB ao5 is now 20.57 and single is 16.64.
I learned to solve it in 2008, and I was such a noob I didn't know there was anything more than the beginner method.
I worked on the beginner method until my best time was 30 seconds, then I found out about CFOP.
I still went layer by layer, but I did OLL with 2 different sune (R U R' U R U2' R') algs, one for each hand. I learned about 70% of the PLL algs and then quit cubing for about a year and a half.
My average was about 40 - 45 seconds with a regular Rubik's brand storebought cube lubed with Vaseline.
About 2 months ago, I started speedcubing again. Since I was fresh, it was actually really easy.
Even though I had forgotten almost all of my PLL, I relearned it all in a week (even though I didn't have a 3x3, and I was simulating it on a 6x6).
Once I got a 3x3, it took about 2 - 3 weeks to learn OLL, then another week to learn intuitive F2L with a few algorithms. I cubed for a few hours every day, or just when watching tv, etc.
2 months ago, my new best time was 29 seconds, beating my 30 second time (beginner method). In 2 weeks, my best was 18 seconds.
It took me almost a month to beat that time with 16 seconds, and slowly down to 13 seconds a month after that. My average is usually about 50% longer than my personal best.
considering that your f2L is good, try spending some time on look ahead. It helps massively, especially to break the plateau. (Some literature on look-ahead is in my blog as well)
