What to Practice Next?

[Zyrb]

I know 4LLL and intuitive fridrich method, and when I looked at the How to get faster using fridrich method forum, I am a lot slower than it says i should be, about 5-10 seconds slower, my non-lucky PB is 43.56. Along with that according to the forum I talked about earlier I learned things in the wrong order (f2l first and then 4LLL). So I wanted your guys opinoin on what to learn and or practice next.

 

[James Ludlow]

I'd practise F2l.

 

[Zyrb]

Yes, it would be impossible to not practice F2L seeing as I solve the cube at least 100 times a day. I should have said this in my first post...

 

[Tykwondo35]

Awesome you just explained my whole problem to. I am also attempting at working on f2l.

 

[Anonymous]

You should really just practice- your times will improve quickly at your speed, so just perservere, I guess. It'd help if we had a breakdown -how fast can you do the cross, F2L, OLL, PLL, etc...

On the other hand, if you're getting bored, try learning full PLL. It's good experience, and not all that many more algorithms. The varied solves that come once you know full PLL are also a lot of fun.

 

[Zyrb]

Awesome you just explained my whole problem to. I am also attempting at working on f2l.

Awesome, good to know there are more cubers out there like me

Edit: I'm not bored, I was just confused

 

[Andrew Ricci]

Here's my advice: Learn algorithm F2L, then try and find ways to do the algorithms intuitively. It may sound strange, but try it. It (along with full PLL) and practice, got me to sub 30.

 

[StachuK1992]

Do F2L.
Slowly.
Plan the entire pair before you do it.

Then, when you feel comfortable with that,
while you're doing one pair, look for a corner _or_ an edge, then the other so that as soon as you're done your current pair, you can just switch over.
Personally, I initially look for corners.

edit - olook, this was my 2000th post not in off-topic.

 

[Zyrb]

ok, so basically try and learn look ahead, odd case algorithms for F2L and full PLL?

 

[Forte]

honestly, you just need more practice at your speed to improve your times

 

[Zyrb]

yes, that will be easy enough to accomplish

 

[Chapuunka]

Also if you see yourself practicing a whole lot (like you said, 100 solves each day for a week or something) but not improving too much, try taking a little break. Go for a few days, maybe a week, without timing yourself. When you come back, you may see more improvement.

 

[cyoubx]

Adding on to what others have said, just solving a cube isn't really practice, particularly for F2L. If you want to make the most out of your time, you should really sit down and concentrate on solely improving your F2L and just ignore the LL.

Doing 20 concentrated F2L solutions will be far better than 100 complete solves.

 

[Anonymous]

Adding on to what others have said, just solving a cube isn't really practice, particularly for F2L. If you want to make the most out of your time, you should really sit down and concentrate on solely improving your F2L and just ignore the LL.

Doing 20 concentrated F2L solutions will be far better than 100 complete solves.

How is that possible? A hundred solves are a hundred completed F2Ls.

 

[cyoubx]

Because you're not actually practicing F2L, you're more or less working on the method. To REALLY improve on F2L, you have to consciously make an effort to learn looking ahead. Simply solving the cube a hundred times will improve your overall speed, but not F2L alone.

 

[maggot]

Not to say there isn't some experience cuber that come to forum after much experience, but I have to point out that you just joined the forum.
The best way to improve time as I have from experience is to work slowly, no timer, and doing a lot of solves, constantly trying to find better ways (quite possible that your f2l is poorly executed with many cube rotation, little to no lookahead, and only insertion from one angle). Also at that time your cross execution is probably far from optimal, uses many cube rotation etc. Watch videos and pratice cross blindfolded. Back to f2l, when you have a case, there are a few, that you know are your slowest and require cube rotation or they have many 'wasted' moves, there is where you can find alg to guide you. By no means should you memorize these algs, but go through the motion (as previous poster suggest) and watch very carefully with each turn what happens to the corner and edge, how they pair, where they pair, and how it is finally inserted. Alg f2l memorize will probably make you slower at first, just like learning a new pll when you already know which 2 2LPLL is going to achieve the same result, but like I mention, the amount of 'bad' case for intuitive f2l is so small that these alg will sometimes save you a couple of second just on one pair, especially when your f2l execution is inconsistant and inefficient.

 

[Zyrb]

Should I make an f2l cube?

 

[StachuK1992]

Should I make an f2l cube?

No.
You should make practice.

 

[Zyrb]

fair enough

 

[Anonymous]

Not to say there isn't some experience cuber that come to forum after much experience, but I have to point out that you just joined the forum.
The best way to improve time as I have from experience is to work slowly, no timer, and doing a lot of solves, constantly trying to find better ways (quite possible that your f2l is poorly executed with many cube rotation, little to no lookahead, and only insertion from one angle). Also at that time your cross execution is probably far from optimal, uses many cube rotation etc. Watch videos and pratice cross blindfolded. Back to f2l, when you have a case, there are a few, that you know are your slowest and require cube rotation or they have many 'wasted' moves, there is where you can find alg to guide you. By no means should you memorize these algs, but go through the motion (as previous poster suggest) and watch very carefully with each turn what happens to the corner and edge, how they pair, where they pair, and how it is finally inserted. Alg f2l memorize will probably make you slower at first, just like learning a new pll when you already know which 2 2LPLL is going to achieve the same result, but like I mention, the amount of 'bad' case for intuitive f2l is so small that these alg will sometimes save you a couple of second just on one pair, especially when your f2l execution is inconsistant and inefficient.

That's true- I joined the forum recently, and am not quite yet sub-20 (which isn't even very fast anymore, lol). Still, I'd like to point out that IMO, the examples you cited are rather superficial, for the most part. For instance, it's not something requiring more than a few minutes to figure out how to execute F2L cases from a different angle- the hard part is executing them at speed, with the same level of comfort as your normal way of solving it. Yes, dedicating time to fix bad cases such as misconnected pairs is important, but it hardly takes more than looking up an algorithm.

My point is that after maybe a half hour (at most) has been dedicated to these things, I think it's a matter of practicing them at speed to build comfort. And if you're practicing at speed, there's no reason not to just complete the LL.