When to practice BLD?

[fanwuq]

When to practice BLD?
I have almost no opportunity to practice BLD. I want to do it, but there's too many distractions every where. I can't do it in homeroom or on the bus. Random people talk too much. I tried it before, but it was so painful to memorize when others interfere with talking. What should be a 3 min memo turns into at least 10 minutes. Then after I start, I mess up executing an algorithm because people were talking. It's getting really difficult to find a nice quite place with no distractions. Also, I don't really have much time for it. I have to study for AP exams (or at least pretend, no cube when studying). I only get a chance to try after 10 PM, but by that time, I'm usually too tired. I can only get about 2 solves a week.

Should I practice less than one step at a time or do it sighted or give up until the summer?

 

[cmhardw]

I would practice one step at a time during homeroom or whenever you can spare a moment.

Also, competitions are not exactly quiet environments conducive to memorizing quickly either. If you can solve when others are talking to you, you can certainly solve in competition.

Until you get faster, which just comes with practice, and can memorize and solve in under 5 minutes I would just practice corners, or just edges, and make sure you can do that even with distractions. I sometimes practice BLD cubing with my alarm clock going off in the same room the whole time. It's annoying as hell, but again if you can concentrate even with distractions, then you can concentrate in the hubbub of a competition as well too.

Remember too, any practice for BLD is good practice. Whether it's a horrible DNF, or a successful solve in record time. Either way you are training your brain to concentrate very hard, and often in the face of many distractions. So regardless of the outcome of the solve, you are still getting in good practice.

Keep BLD cubing, your practice will pay off, even if it's hard to find a quiet time to do so.

Chris

 

[fanwuq]

Thanks, Chris! I'll just practice one step at a time with the distractions. I can usually get about 1-3 min corners only and 3-6 min edges only that way.
Yes, BLD is very different from speedsolving. It requires so much more concentration.
I'm also considering if I should do TuRBo now, or stay with regular 3-cycle until I get better.
I like TuRBo, and it seems easy, but I don't want to get to far ahead of myself.
"It's the same principle as pochmann and M2 only you solve more pieces at once."--http://erikku.er.funpic.org/rubik/turbocorners.html
That sounds like TuRBo is hard. I understand it, but I can't understand M2 or Pochmann.

 

[hait2]

I would indeed suggest practicing with distractions around you. You will really quickly learn to tune everything out. I think Chris actually gave me this tip a long while back, and so I forced myself to do it Instead of practicing in quiet by my computer for instance, I'd put on some music or a comedy show and solve BLD then. Sure it pretty much doubled my times and shot my accuracy to 0% at first, but I do believe it helped me become better in the long run.

Music doesn't phase me at all anymore, and I can semi-hold a conversation during a solve although I won't be setting personal records if I do. My current PB was actually set during a car ride with radio in the background and some idle chatter (I wasn't talking, but still)

 

[fanwuq]

Thanks. I will practice with the distractions. At princeton, I did one solve. It was 5-6 minute memo and I was almost done with EP when I had to stop because it was over 10min. Of course, it was a bad DNF, not even close.