Using others' critiques to get to sub-11 average.

[Andrew Ricci]

Wow, I'm so glad my advice has helped! Can't wait for some future videos.

 

[jonlin]

Wow, I'm so glad my advice has helped! Can't wait for some future videos.

Here.

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

Wow, I'm so glad my advice has helped! Can't wait for some future videos.

Yeah, it really did!

I haven't really improved much yet, but that's because I'm just starting to go back over all my algorithms and such. I'm pretty sure a lot of the reason I haven't been able to improve (including in lookahead) is because my turning is so inconsistent and I lock up unnecessarily. I'm going back through my F2L algs, as I said before, and yeah, it turns out that my left hand is even more uncoordinated than I originally thought, AND that my turning is a lot more inconsistent than I originally thought. With inconsistent turning, a sub-12 RA of 100 isn't going to happen any time soon, let alone a sub-11 or sub-10 RA of 100.

So yeah, I'm basically relearning how to cube... it sucks, especially when I'm 18, so I'm learning a bit slower than I'd like to.

Why didn't I figure this out when I was still 15 or 16? :fp It would have been just slightly easier.

Shut up, me. Stop making excuses and just practice....

 

[Andrew Ricci]

Here.

You're turn speed seems good enough, just work on minimizing recognition pauses between cross and F2L as well as during F2L, and know what you're going to do with each pair before you do it.

@DaKrazedKyubizt Seems like a lot of work ahead of you, good luck!

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

Surprise surprise!

7.47 RA of 12 for F2L! That's with focusing on TPS--just speed of execution and avoiding lockups. I started focusing better on lookahead without even trying to do so intentionally. Maybe I need to focus on TPS more often...

Tomorrow, maybe I should aim for sub-7.4??? Maybe I'll make it, hopefully with some skill, rather than luck.

I'm using the website below to work on my F2L execution. I'm not actually using those algs, since I have better ones for a lot of them. I'm only doing them in that order.

http://www.learn2cube.com/cfop/f2l/index

Case 1 didn't need much work, and I'm just starting Case 3 right now. I've gotten them pretty decent on both sides for all 5 of the algorithms in Case 2, except one, which I'll be working on more. It's the left-handed version of the middle case. I could just use L' U L U' L' U L U2 L' U L, which is still quite fast (and I use that mirror often times on the right side, which I'm trying to get out of the habit of doing), but I chose to learn something different instead because I want to keep my fingers learning algorithms, especially difficult ones--plus, I don't like where the U2 is placed. It's kinda awkward for my fingers. I won't stop practicing it though.

The algorithm I'm using instead is R' U2 R2 U R2' U R and it's mirror. I can do it on the right side at a good speed, but I'm not terribly consistent. I can do it really slowly on my left side. It still feels super awkward, and I keep doing it wrong because I'm used to do the algorithm using a really bad, slow method. Habit breaking sucks, but I'm working on it. I'm going to try and use the algorithm in my solves too. I think it'd be slightly easier to lookahead with those algorithms, but I'm not really sure. The repetitiveness of the longer algorithm is helpful too, but you get to see more stuff with the shorter one, I think.

In the meantime, I always practice sledgehammer and sexy move on my both sides, mainly left hand, at least 3-4 times more than my right side. For some reason, I lock up a lot after about 7-10 repetitions on my right hand side, so I'm trying to sort that out too to see what the problem is, and I'm just glad my left hand can finally do something. This ol' hand has learned a lot in the past few days. Let's see what else it can do...

Right now, I'm just starting Case 3. I'm going to make a video of my progress on Cases 1 and 2, even though there's not much to say about case 1.

Lastly, I am removing any major attempts at edge control (besides the occasional sledgehammer) because I think there's a lot of instances where I tried too hard to control the edges and it slowed down my times instead of improving them. Anything else that's too complicated is being removed too. I still use WV, though I don't know whether to keep it or get rid of it. I think sometimes the algs give me better times, sometimes they don't.

Last layer will be for the most part ignored. My LL is absolutely TERRIBLE right now. I lock up about... twice on LL on average (I don't think that's an exaggeration, so my LL is often 5-6 seconds on average when it should be 3-4. My G-perms are getting progressively worse too. They're suffering the most. But F2L TPS and F2L lookahead comes first. LL is for later. So my times should stay sporadic for full solves, like they usually do, just because half the time I have a huge lock up. I'm going to be doing mainly averages for F2L only, not really going to do much for full solves or LL only. Maybe just one full solve average of 12 a day at most.

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

I hate to feel like I'm deliberately manipulating myself psychologically. The psychology for me is simple: just let everything go and just relax. (Sounds weird this way put but: be happy!)
When i think of it as psychology I feel things get too serious, I dunno, that's just the way my mind works. The funny thing is that I am very interested in psychology for other things but for cubing I just like to think that everything is natural.
Again, that contradicts the fact that I notice psychologically i work best in a calm mindset. Mehhh.

Lol. I win. Psychology is psychology, no matter how you look at it.

Speaking of being calm, I'm thinking of looking to how I would cube if I got more shiatsu massages. I've been taking a Shiatsu massage class, and I'm learning a lot about meridians and energy lines in the body and stuff. These meridians are accessed through applying pressure to specific point on the body, and almost forces the patient to relax. It's pretty amazing. I wonder if the action itself helps. I try to practice on friends all the time. They seem to enjoy it a lot.

Maybe you're not focussing what you're focusing when you tell yourself to focus on practice. For me, again, if I think of focusing, then I just lose focus straight away and i start to get angry. When I say 'focus on just practicing' means... I don't care if I get bad times. And funnily enough with this philosophy I very rarely do. However to stop my brain from saying 'hang on a minute how are you tracking your progress' I reply saying 'I will do an average tonight. Right now my focus is practicing.'

The Psychology of this is that I no longer feel pressured. Even if I get a bad time it really doesn't matter to me genuinely. I think when you say 'just practice don't worry about times' what you're subconsciously saying is '5BLD says that this will help me get good times. I'll be very angry if I don't get good times with this philosophy'. This obviously leads to you getting angry with bad times, and this being further suppressed by the fact you're making yourself 'focus on practicing only' only makes matters worse and you get more and more angry.

NB: Please please if all of this is wrong don't be offended; i'm writing what I'm thinking as I go along. All this might not even make sense.

Just figured something out: Focusing on one thing at a time REALLY helps. I focused only on F2L turning speed and avoiding lockups, and my look ahead got better almost unintentionally. I got a 7.47 RA of 12 for F2L, and an 8.61 RA of 100 for F2L as well, which is pretty good for me. I stopped caring about getting done fast, and more about just getting them done without locking up, because I knew that I'll likely get it done faster if I focus more on not locking up. I'm definitely focusing on TPS a lot more now.

Also, considering I'm mildly ADHD, it's probably also true that I need to focus less to focus more. There's been studies done on people with more severe ADHD, and in most cases, when they try to focus more, their brain ends up focusing less. I remember, a study was done on this one girl, where she took an IQ test without medication for her ADHD, and she got a 90, which is approaching retardation but still quite far from it, but at the least, 90 is pretty stupid. She tried to focus, and the tests showed that several areas of her brain simply stopped lighting up when focusing. When she took the medication, her score jumped into the genius range quite easily (idk, probably somewhere between 140-160; regardless, it was a very good score). So the point is, more focus if ADHD ironically = less focus. Maybe I could learn from that...

Yes absolutely. Do you sometimes get the feeling that you don't want to practice a certain step because you'll be angry when you realise that you're bad at it?

ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME. I'm getting past that point though, slowly but surely. Willpower all the way, baby!

As for remembering to think, well, obviously thinking is a good thing but I find 'up-front' thinking is just slow. I like to think of it as this: the mind comes up with a thought and if it's an up-front thought it translates it into something coherent, like into English or something. As I said eariler I may be completely and utterly wrong but these are my thoughts. Whilst I find quick thinking just happens with a completely blank mind and total focus. So focussed and not thinking 'ok this pair goes there' but sub-consciously kind of acknowledging that it's there and you know straight away to solve it and then you do this CMLL and watch how the edges move so you know you've got this 4a+4b case and then you know you'll get a 4c skip and then you drop the cube put your hands on the timer.
You don't go "This red-blue pair moves here so now I need to look for the red pair which is over here"; you do this all quickly subconsciously rather than processing everything 'directly' in the moment.

Well, I didn't quite mean that... or maybe I did. Not really sure. But either way, it wasn't a great idea, I don't think.

As for being calm. Whenever I remind myslef to be calm due to the circumstances my rage just builds up, being suppressed and this is not such a good thing. Well at least this is what i think happens.

I find that very interesting. I've been really curious about an element of self-control in thought and focus. What can be done to really control the mind, to prevent it from going on a rampage.

I sometimes plan though the first block and the first second block square, then when I pick up the cube I'm like, so what was the first block again? I think this is similar to what you have. Now that I have noticed this though I've been doing this a lot lot less.

That wouldn't happen so much with a CFOP user, I don't think, because if they can't spot it, they usually don't go for it, and block building is a little too complicated to implement effectively into CFOP... but that's pretty funny, though.

If you're focussed on trying to focus, I find you start to lose focus of the aim to focus but more focussing on the fact that you HAVE to focus. WHen you try to focus on remembering to focus IMO you lose focus of what you're trying to focus on in the first place.

I must say, this conversation can get a bit lol at times.

But you make a good point.

Nice plan
I prefer to have variety in my practice however... As for alg execution without lockups I find the problem most have with algs is they know what move to do next so they go do said move before they are even finished with the previous move, causing a lockup or explosion.

HOLY COW!!! That explains SO MUCH!!!

I am such an ***** :fp

 

[MostEd]

Yah, I need to work on that too. It's one of the things I can do, but always forget to. Like I don't need to work on CMLL prediction, i need to remember to do it

this is why i tell you, do slow solves and remember to do all of whaat you want to

 

[aronpm]

I've been taking a Shiatsu massage class, and I'm learning a lot about meridians and ]energy lines in the body and stuff. These meridians are accessed through applying pressure to specific point on the body, and almost forces the patient to relax.

lol

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

lol

What? It's fun....

Okay, I guess if i were in your position I'd be laughing, too... It is kinda funny, especially the way I brought that up... And the topic of massage itself can make some people giggle....

But I actually want to go to med school, but take a gap year college and med school to go to a massage school and get licensed. I find massage really interesting.... Am I digging myself a grave by saying this?

Just a BTW, I just practiced on executing algorithms for about 2 hours straight... I'm tired. I think I actually want to do my homework now. That was kind of exhausting, but my executions are definitely improving VERY fast. Now, the hard part is actually incorporating the stuff into the solve. I'm workin' on it. It gets progressively easier as I re-learn more algorithms because that's a little more stuff I can work on during the solve. If I don't know enough of them, I start to forget to use the proper execution when the algs show up.

 

[aronpm]

What? It's fun....

Okay, I guess if i were in your position I'd be laughing, too... It is kinda funny, especially the way I brought that up... And the topic of massage itself can make some people giggle....

But I actually want to go to med school, but take a gap year college and med school to go to a massage school and get licensed. I find massage really interesting.... Am I digging myself a grave by saying this?

Don't take that the wrong way, my lol was directed at "meridians" and "energy" lines. Massage is fine, but as I'm sure you realise, it's just playing with muscles, not "manipulating energy".

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

Don't take that the wrong way, my lol was directed at "meridians" and "energy" lines. Massage is fine, but as I'm sure you realise, it's just playing with muscles, not "manipulating energy".

Are you so sure about that?

EDIT: Then again, that's a question for a new thread. Let us not enter into such a debate.

 

[aronpm]

Yes. Yes I am. When you get to med school I am pretty sure you'll learn about how much nonsense Qi is.

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

Yes. Yes I am. When you get to med school I am pretty sure you'll learn about how much nonsense Qi is.

okay, fine.

 

[5BLD]

Been a month... time to analyse again. What do you guys think? One thing i notice is I'm only slightly faster at 9.4ish avg but turning way too fast...

 

[jonlin]

I notice between each step, you have a half a second pause. If you turned just a wee bit slower on the last few turns and look ahead, you could get your avg. down to 9.00 seconds.

 

[Escher]

@5bld: the 8.31 is how every solve should look.

There is barely any pause between FB and SB, and you go smoothly into CMLL with reasonable lookahead into EO etc.

Your other solves are only really slower than that second solve you've posted because of the pauses (and movecount obviously), like Jonlin said.

Take a step away from timing for a while and just concentrate on making your solves aesthetically good Might be better to do that after RO though, since you might surprise yourself with being a bunch faster and get nervous

 

[5BLD]

Thanks for your advice Rowan and Jon.
Yeah you made me realise it was mini pauses which made my solves all slower than that 8.3. Also on the 8.31 the lockup added on some time- so as you say I need to make my solves aesthetically good. Will work on that today, maybe this week and see where it takes me really

 

[jonlin]

I'll take some advice please. I really like this thread, cause no spammers are able to come here.

I need to make my solves smoother with less pauses.

 

[RaresB]

Been a month... time to analyse again. What do you guys think? One thing i notice is I'm only slightly faster at 9.4ish avg but turning way too fast...

nice solves honestly at those times nothing you do would make you better except for constant cubing, if you dont mind me asking how old are you, on your wca profile pic you look young and i HATE getting owned by younger people

 

[5BLD]

I look younger than i actually am, and i am young. 14.
Oh I've got lots to work on other than constant solving as rowan poimted out....