when you averaged 35s, how hopeful were you to get to sub 20 avg?

When I averaged around 35 seconds I thought it was impossible for me to get a faster solving time.
This was mainly because I had not only mastsred 2-look OLL and 2-look PLL, but I also had hit my maximum turning speed.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how fast I was in the F2L I just couldn't pass that 35 second mark. It was immensly frustrating - but as you might have guessed it - and judging from my signature I got pass that hump by multiple ways. I have to however agree upon that breaking the 35 second barrier was not easy and required a lot of work and effort.

I realized that no matter how fast I turned the cube I couldn't get sub-35 so I started to turn slow - REAL slow. Rather than trying to solve the F2L layer as fast as possible I started to solve the F2L with as few turns as possible. This was extremely hard at first because I had until that point just solved the cube with the timer as fast as I possibly could. Turning off the feel and stress of the timer running in the background and just purely concentrating on making as few turns as possible required an insane ammount of self-control and patience. Eventually I came to the realization that solving the F2L by force and speed ruins the possibility to handle multiple F2L pairs at once and in effect - it forces A LOT of unneccesary turns and moves. Slowly I started to crawl to 30-second-averages. I also started to go full PLL and after a month or two I was way pass the 35-second-mark and solving sub-30.

The leap between 35-second-avg to 25-second average required significant more effort and patience than 45->35s avg. In my case what I was missing was look-ahead and full PLL. Those two alone dropped my average by 10 seconds.
 
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Being able to know full PLL doesn't help my time right now, still averaging 35's. Other problem.
 
i am now sube-30. I've been practicing the whole week but my time hasn't changed. :(. (I think i kinda wanna give up. I really need some help!)
 
i am now sube-30. I've been practicing the whole week but my time hasn't changed. :(. (I think i kinda wanna give up. I really need some help!)

Try practicing for another whole month. A week is usually not enough for a 10 second drop from a 30 avg.
 
I haven't learned any new algorithms since the 2looks (shut up I'm lazy) and went from 45 average to 25 average.

Don't worry, just practice.
 
I haven't learned any new algorithms since the 2looks (shut up I'm lazy) and went from 45 average to 25 average.

Don't worry, just practice.

:eek:

This seems impossible for me I can barely get a sub 30 solve when I get lucky.
 
I was pretty hopeful, when i was avging 2 minutes i thought that was the method on getting to sub ten and it was just all a matter of finger speed xD

Though i get to Sub 25 in about 3-4 months
 
I didn't time my solves until I was getting sub-35 averages. The first average that I timed was 33,97 and those days I wasn't very interested in speed and just did it for fun. The only thing that I have put a real effort into was averaging sub-25.

Now I'm pretty sure that I will get sub-20 with a little bit of practice. (The PB avg of 5 is pretty close ;))
 
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Ever since i started cubing, late 2008, my goal was to get to sub 20, and i've always thought that possible.

My plan was to start exploring different methods when i averaged sub 20, as to get a better overall understanding, and to limit my restrictions while solving the cube.

Now that i am sub 20 i still feel i've got LOTS of room to improve my fridrich, especially the f2l/look ahead parts. So now i want to get to sub 15 before i explore different methods.

I wonder if i will experience a deja vu when i am sub 15 and reset my goal to 13 or something similar before exploring...... I'm starting to suspect that may be the case :)
 
I went from 60s to 35s averages within weeks but I've been stuck around 35s for a couple of months. It's discouraging at times but I'm still optimistic about breaking the 30s barrier. My solves seem to go a lot smoother when the timer inst running though :P

I learned F2L + 4LLL when I was still averaging over a minute with the beginner's method. I've since seen it recommended that you learn F2L when you're faster than that. I wonder if that has anything to do with my current plateau...
 
when I was sub 35 average I was targeting sub 20, when i finaly got sub 20 single I didn't think i was going to get it again... now i sub 20 every several solves.
 
@killface

35s is a tough plateau, because this is about where suppression of motor attention becomes important. The evil thing is that the harder you try to go fast, the harder it becomes to avoid watching what your fingers are doing.

A major sticking point for me at 35s was that I was relying on visual cues for solving the cross and all but the most basic F2L pairs. I fixed that by doing 8-look solves (/w 3-step LL) where I only looked at the cube between solving steps. This was especially helpful for forcing me to properly plan the cross. You might get an immediate 2-3 seconds right there. Transitioning to proper F2L look-ahead took a bit more work. Once I had confidence solving pairs without watching them, I gradually became better at searching the cube for the next pair while my fingers solved the current one.

PS: I'm going through all of this again now learning ZZ after a 2.5 year break (former CFOP solver). Building blocks without watching pieces is hard!
 
I was pretty confident I'd get there if I kept practicing. I just kept remembering back to when I was solving it as fast as I could completely unable to get sub 1:30 times.
 
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