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Well I come from 40 sec in 1982 and started speedcubing in 2003 back then I was 28 sec average , no I am 18 sec average. One think I have learned, to get faster is to train on the look ahead. You can practise this with -slow- smooth cubing . This means try to keep turning and looking at the same time. btw there are no barriers only the one you set yourself ....
Ton
sub-20 was definitly the hardest. I improved pretty consistantly until i was below 30 but after that it was a very long time until I got sub-20 and now im barely sub-18.
sub-30 took me the longest and was the hardest for me. I was still using fridrich when i realized that the f2l took me the longest. So i switchd over to block methods starting with petrus and then roux. sub-20 was easy after like 3 months of block methods. but i was stuck at 30-35 for +/- 5 months.
I'm working really hard at the moment to get sub-30. I got to about 34 avg really quickly, and since i hit 34, it's been a huge wall that i can't climb. I usually get 34 avg, but i get 32s and 31s as well. I can't seem to break 30 though...
I average like 23 seconds now, and I feel that getting below 30 seconds was hard. It took me like three weeks to do it before I realized that I had to look ahead in my F2L. I know that isn't a long time, but I was getting faster like 5 seconds every week, so all of a sudden, I had a sudden stop. Now I'm slowly, but steadily getting faster
Sub 1 minute was terribly hard for me at first. I had a cube that -needed- you to use your whole hand to turn a face, so fingertricks were out of the question. I'd been practicing so much, however, that when I received my first decent cube, I solved it in 40 seconds.
It seemed to take a while to get from sub-25 to sub-20. Now that I've reached sub-20, I've seemed to improve a lot more, averaging sub-18 a few times. Must be the extra practice due to lots of spare time.
Yeah, it's strange how you just speed up so fast until you hit a wall. I went from 5 minutes to 50 seconds in a matter of 2 or 3 weeks. Then i slowed down completely as i started with intuitive F2L and started learning all the PLLs. After i learned F2L and the PLLs, my times dropped fast again, all the way up to about 34 avg, 23 pb, and that's where i'm stuck now. I've been here for about 2 or 3 weeks now. This is really tough...
My best solve was 20.05 for a really long time, hence the pain, still only average low 20's but now get sub 20 times more frequently, still learning OLL though.
getting past 1 minute for sure, learning f2l was a leap for me and i finally feel comfortable with it. Still needs some practice but have a good teacher to well... teach me. Im like obi won! hah.
I'm stuck on the sub-30 barrier right now, too... I've got a couple really nice sub-30 avgs of 5, but nothing in the 12+solve range. Past like 10 solves my average tends to hover around 33.xx
I don't know all my PLLs, though, I'm still using 4LLL. 7/21 : [. I'm sure if I learned them all and got decent at recognition I'd be sub 30. Or if I improved my look-ahead a bit, which is what I'm currently working on.
Sub-18 was my hardest barrier, both mentally in terms of convincing myself that I could break it, and time and effort spent trying to break it. It took me 4 years 10 months to get my first sub-20 average, and from there it took me a year and 2 months to get my first ever sub-18. After I got my first sub-20 I really starting increasing my practice routine to a couple hours a day, and I was practicing on a near daily basis for the first time. In retrospect I think it took so long because I often practiced only with my then current methods without learning new algs or trying to fix up my cubes better.
I'm also currently working on consistent sub-15, though I've already done sub-14 once for an average of 12.