This is a list of things to do on a daily basis (or weekly if you don’t have enough time) to get faster at speedsolving any twisty puzzles with any methods you like.
Of course you don’t have to do everything but you will get much more out of your practise sessions when doing as many tips as you can.
I. Advices on solves
1. Plan entirely the first step (or beyond it) of the method you are using.
E.g 1: if you start by solving a layer, you will try to find a solution for a possible layer you found within the 15s of inspection.
E.g 2: you know how to plan your first centre on a 4×4, you would be looking into planning the second centre or a part of it.
To do that, you need to turn off the inspection and give you as much time as you need to plan it and make sure that you get the solution right. You can either write down the solution or do it mentally (that would much more useful than writing/typing it as it would help you more for actual solves).
You can also execute the solution without seeing the puzzle to make sure you don’t execute a different solution.
2. Try to plan where the pieces of the next step will be by tracking them and/or predicting where they will end up.
To do that you will simply trace where a piece or a group of pieces go(es) during the execution of your solution for the first step to know in advance where it/they will be.
Or you could try to predict where it would be after the execution of the solution.
3. Record the solves and watch them in a critical point of view to analyse what was good and what was bad and need to be deleted/improved. Sharing to other people who you think could have a critical mind on filmed solves would be also a good option.
So by doing that you could identify your strengths and your weaknesses during a solve or an average then you would try to transform your weaknesses into your new strengths by not doing the errors you did again and again.
4. Take risks during untimed slow solves (this can be included in #9).
Try to risk things to see what you get that may have screwed up your solve when timing it.
5. Try to be more and more efficient without getting slower and slower, you can also try to be more efficient then be as efficient but faster.
To decrease your move count, stop wasting moves and also either being at the same speed or even faster.
To do that, you simply need to do FMC-like solves and figure out what would be the best solution(s) for particular cases and use those new approaches in solves.
6. Watch example/walkthrough solves from people using the same method(s) as you do and see how you could adopt some things that they do, like an alg or even a way of solving.
So you would see other solutions for particular situations and see how it could affect the rest.
II. Advices on practise
1. Slow and steady to get pauses to 0 (so no pauses) and smoothness of the solve to the maximum (rather than full speed and huge pauses).
So turn slowly enough to be able to look ahead and see what to do next rather than trying to go as fast as you can which would avoid your brain to process the information required to solve the next pieces causing pauses.
Here is some techniques:
–Metronome: there’s two ways to use this technique which are:
* start with a relatively slow bit per minute rate and increase until it’s a bit too fast for you and then increase it when you feel comfortable with the one you were using
* calculate your targeted tps by finding your average move count and the desired time you want to be at, then divide the average move count by the time than multiply it by 60.
x bpm = |
Move count |
Target_time*60 |
–Step BLD: solve a group of piece (e.g: an F2L pair on 3×3 or megaminx) without looking to see if you know your alg well enough to allow yourself to look somewhere else while solving that case.
–Double Step BLD: same as above but with more pieces per example: two F2L pairs
–Delayed execution: when you see something you want to solve, don’t solve it but track it while solving something else and then solve it
–Before-end looking ahead: when you solve something, pause before finishing the last three moves and look for the next thing to solve.
–Prediction: before you solve something, you will try to predict where the next piece(s) you want to solve are going to be then execute the alg and see if those next pieces ended up where you thought.
2. Drill down brain-dead algs, like parities, LL algs, coms etc. (any algs could be included).
Let’s say it takes you 3s to execute a particular alg, you would then try to be able to execute it under 2s or directly under 1s.
To do that, you simply need to find fingertricks that you could do fast and that suits your turning style then try to execute it as fast as you can until you can get it subX.
3. Keep practising with goals in mind (e.g: sub15 in 2 months on x, sub1 in a 6 months on y).
So set some deadlines about reaching a barrier or anything similar, to know where you want to go such as the road to sub15 per example.
4. Never do/keep doing mindless solves (just solving to get a time or to increase the number of solves), always practise something in particular (even if it’s more than one thing) during a session.
Let’s say, rather than doing full BLD solves you could try to focus on corners only to get better at solving them blindfolded without having any factors from edges like unknown mis-execution for edge targets.
An other example would be: you want to improve your LSLL stage so you would use LSLL scrambles rather than doing full solves.
5. StepBLD, basically doing a step or a part of it while not looking/being blindfolded. This will improve the brain-deadness of that (partial) step and will forge a base for #1 and #3.
To do that, you just have to plan the solution for that (partial) step and then watch something (like a video or a TV show) or cover your eyes and apply the solution and see if you got it right, if you did then you could solve that (partial) step while looking ahead for upcoming things like the next step or the rest of the step you partially did.
6. Experiment algs, new/other ways of solving the puzzle or just a case or a group of cases.
E.g 1: you use an alg for a ZBLS case but you would like to find one that would influence the CO differently.
E.g 2: you could learn other methods or part of them like Salvia to manage more efficiently cross edges out of their spot when F2L pairs are around them but that you would like to preserve.
E.g 3: you would try to find how useful it would be to solve EO/OLL parity while skipping OLL or before reaching the LL to have a nicer 3×3 LL on big cubes.
III. Other advices:
1. Be Dedicated and have Passion in what you are doing. And also Enjoy what you are doing otherwise… What’s the point of doing it ?
2. Take breaks, neither too much and too rarely and in a “correct” length.
Taking breaks is important as it would rest your brain from what you were doing to recharge itself so you wouldn’t be more exhausted or less focused on what you were doing by not taking breaks.
3. Switch your main puzzle when ever you feel that your current one is no longer fitting you well without expressively changing it with new puzzles in the market.
Don’t get the newest puzzle that just came out just because it’s new, stick with yours and if you feel (or if you know when you tried it) that a new one is going to help you to fill up the void that your current main is leaving then go for it.
4. Always warm up and well before doing an average to get the best performances after that.
That way you won’t get a bad average as your first average of the day rather than warming up and having a normal or a good average.
5. Solve in good conditions so never when you are tired or your hands/feet (or one of your hands/feet) are/is painful and also consider the lightning factor to be able to see properly. And also if you feel not well or not excited about doing a cubing session then don’t do it and try to do things that would make you feel well or excited about doing a session.
Max's Cubing Site 