Two paths of MBLD improvement : adding more cubes or shaving off time

[abunickabhi]

In my limited understanding, there are two ways to get more cubes added to your multi as we improve in BLD skills and time management.

1. Add one/two more cubes after sub-houring X cubes
Pros:

• Good competition practice as we do not exceed the hour too many times
• We get a good estimate of one hour time limit
• Incremental progression with less fails

Cons:

• Less ambitious
• Less old-style practice
• We have to tinker with memo review system after adding cubes as we need to manage memo/exec time better
• Tough to compare attempts done with different number of cubes, no apple-apple comparison

For example, I can do 22 cubes sub-hour now, so I can try 23 cubes in my next attempt and try to get it sub-hour as well

2. Do Y cubes (over the hour) and try to get it sub-hour by doing the attempt faster
Pros:

• Always a fixed number of cubes, so constant information for our brain
• We are sure about what number of cubes we wish to attempt in our ideal MBLD attempt
• We have more time to memo the cubes
• Fixed memo review system, as we do not have to worry about more cubes or changing our pack configuration
• Variance of memo and exec times will be less as we have constant number of cubes, which leads to easier analysis and statistics

Cons:

• Need to get more cubes
• More mental effort if we choose a lot more cubes than we are capable of, to sub-hour
• Less official 1 hour type practice, so poor time management

For example, I can do 24 cubes in 1 hour 10 minutes, so I have to only worry about shaving off those 10 minutes


Which path of improvement is faster and more stable?
Is it personal preference?
I would prefer 2 over 1, as the practice with same number of cubes set a good constant for my brain and good for documentation and analysis.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I always used approach 1, so I voted for that, because I think it helped with my overall accuracy. I believe that approach has led to my being highly accurate in competition.

That being said, I think there is one significant negative to it: it leads to multi always being a fairly miserable experience. As you get better, it just keeps getting harder and harder. Approach 2 means it feels easier as you get better, which might motivate you to practice more.

 

[Jorian Meeuse]

I much prefer the second approach. I've consistently found that my improvement rate is always a pleasant surprise when trying a couple more cubes than I think/know I can do. In fact, my current short-term MBLD plan is that I'll get a few more cubes in next week and grind 41 cubes a ton until I can sub hour that.