# Personal Progress Thread: Square-1 Sub-10 and beyond



## BradyLawrence (Jul 30, 2020)

First off, I would like to acknowledge @PetrusQuber 's thread about requirements/guidelines for Personal Progress threads. I do believe that I meet both requirements that were suggested.

As for the actual thread, this will be my progress to sub-10 and below. The major steps include learning full CSP and full PBL. I am starting with CSP and 2CP PBL.

Starting point: All of the star CSP cases, all but Ga/Gc perms for 2CP PBL



Spoiler: Week 1



Week 1: My week 1 goal is to learn the square cases for CSP, and to get a sub-15 ao100.
Result: I only managed to get through 6/10 of the Square cases. I also ended up with a 15.88 ao100 (on stream). I noticed that it might be better to put CSP on a slower pace and work on increasing my SPS on my EO and CP algs (I think this was suggested below actually).





Spoiler: Week 2



Week 2: Finish the last 4 Square CSP cases; Get all EO and CP algs sub-1.5; and sub-15 ao100.
Result: I was successfully able to get all of my EO and CPs sub-1.5, however my CP recognition is not very good, so my total EOCP time is around 4 seconds. My ao100 was a 15.49, which, while it is an improvement over last week's time, it is still not what I'd like. I also only made it through 2 of the CSP cases I wanted to learn for the week, and I will probably set aside CSP for now, and focus on other parts of my solves.





Spoiler: Week 3



Week 3: Sub-3 EOCP, and Half of CPP. (I thought that I might try and learn the 8 CPP algs before CSP, as a sort of in-between stage to CSP. I also have noticed before that I am fairly decent at recognizing parity after EO, and the CPP algs are better than normal parity algs.)





Spoiler: Week 5



I missed week 4, but after reading comments and trying CPP, I found that it is not good at all, 0/10 would not recommend. I thought maybe I could post 2 example solves per week (1 parity, 1 non-parity), and see if you guys have any ways for me to improve that you notice. My goal for this week is to finally get a sub-15 ao100



Spoiler: W5 Example Solves






Spoiler: Parity



14.29 (4,0)/ (3,0)/ (-4,2)/ (0,-3)/ (-3,0)/ (1,-5)/ (-3,-4)/ (3,0)/ (6,-5)/ (0,-2)/ (2,0)/ (6,-2)/ (-1,0)/

CS: -3,0/3,-2/0,4/1,2/0,3/
CO: 3,-3/6,3/0,3/
EO: 1,1/3,0/3,0/-1,-1/-2,1/-3,0/
CP: 6,-1/0,3/0,-3/0,3/0.-3/(Misalignment to preserve blocks)
EP: -6,1/0,3/1,1/-1,-2/-4,0
EPP: Adj swap w/ cancel into equator flip (The algorithm was too hard to write out lol)










I will do weeks monday to monday, and will update the original post with updates every week. If anyone thinks this is too unoriginal or it copies too close to someone else's thread, just let me know and I will be happy to change or even delete this thread.[/SPOILER]


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## PetrusQuber (Jul 30, 2020)

Wow someone actually looked at my thread (lol). GL!
Edit: Oh Nmile bumped it. I kind of gave up on it anyway
@Sub1Hour


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## Sub1Hour (Jul 30, 2020)

BLCuber8 said:


> First off, I would like to acknowledge @PetrusQuber 's thread about requirements/guidelines for Personal Progress threads. I do believe that I meet both requirements that were suggested.
> 
> As for the actual thread, this will be my progress to sub-10 and below. The major steps include learning full CSP and full PBL. I am starting with CSP and 2CP PBL.
> 
> ...


What is your current Avg? Also, I personally don't think that full PBL or even full EP is required to become sub-10. I think that learning how to cancel into things and influence your next step with misalignments is more important than just learning algs.


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## BradyLawrence (Jul 30, 2020)

Sub1Hour said:


> What is your current Avg? Also, I personally don't think that full PBL or even full EP is required to become sub-10. I think that learning how to cancel into things and influence your next step with misalignments is more important than just learning algs.


I currently average 15.5 or so. You’re right, PBL is not necessary to get sub-10, but I made this as sub-10 and beyond, so I’m thinking eventually sub-9 or sub-8


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## Sub1Hour (Jul 30, 2020)

BLCuber8 said:


> I currently average 15.5 or so.


How well do you know your algs? In the sense of what your algs do to the puzzle so you can make the most out of cases. You don't need a ton of algorithms as long as you can make up for that in misalignments and SPS.


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## BradyLawrence (Jul 30, 2020)

Sub1Hour said:


> How well do you know your algs? In the sense of what your algs do to the puzzle so you can make the most out of cases. You don't need a ton of algorithms as long as you can make up for that in misalignments and SPS.


Yeah misalignments is definitely one of the things I am working on to get faster, I just found it hard to explain in the original post.


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## David ep (Jul 31, 2020)

BLCuber8 said:


> I currently average 15.5 or so. You’re right, PBL is not necessary to get sub-10, but I made this as sub-10 and beyond, so I’m thinking eventually sub-9 or sub-8


pbl isnt even for sub 8


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## Q-- (Jul 31, 2020)

Sub1Hour said:


> How well do you know your algs? In the sense of what your algs do to the puzzle so you can make the most out of cases. You don't need a ton of algorithms as long as you can make up for that in misalignments and SPS.


I’m kind of in the same boat, and I don’t really want to make up for it in SPS (I do misalign though). Turning speed will gradually get faster over time, and I don’t want to waste the time on 10-12 slice EPs done in two looks when I can do it in 6-8, because I’ll have to start from scratch again later. I definitely agree it’s possible to get incredibly fast without even full EP *cough* Ethan Erez *cough* though.


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## Owen Morrison (Jul 31, 2020)

Q-- said:


> *cough* Ethan Erez *cough*


Do you have corona?


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## BradyLawrence (Jul 31, 2020)

Q-- said:


> I’m kind of in the same boat, and I don’t really want to make up for it in SPS (I do misalign though). Turning speed will gradually get faster over time, and I don’t want to waste the time on 10-12 slice EPs done in two looks when I can do it in 6-8, because I’ll have to start from scratch again later. I definitely agree it’s possible to get incredibly fast without even full EP *cough* Ethan Erez *cough* though.


That’s true about EPs, CM made a good video on intuitive EP. For me, it’s not worth learning new algs for Z/U, Z/Z, Opp/O, and parity EPs. Most of the cases that involve W, H, and O are worth learning a new alg imo.


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## BradyLawrence (Aug 4, 2020)

Alright Week 1 is now complete, and I added goals for Week 2 to the original post.


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## BradyLawrence (Aug 12, 2020)

Ok sorry for being a day late, but week 3 is now on. I will still try to do week 4 next Monday.


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## Sub1Hour (Aug 12, 2020)

Pardon me for being late to this but, CPP isn't good. If you are going to learn parity, either learn 1-2 EPP algs, or learn full CSP. The in-between of CPP and 6+ EPP algs are a waste of your time. They will save a little time every now and then, but if you aren't going all-in on CSP, then you should focus on learning other alg sets that will benefit you on more solves then specific CPP and EPP cases.


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## BradyLawrence (Aug 27, 2020)

Sub1Hour said:


> Pardon me for being late to this but, CPP isn't good. If you are going to learn parity, either learn 1-2 EPP algs, or learn full CSP. The in-between of CPP and 6+ EPP algs are a waste of your time. They will save a little time every now and then, but if you aren't going all-in on CSP, then you should focus on learning other alg sets that will benefit you on more solves then specific CPP and EPP cases.


Thanks for the feedback, I haven't updated this thread in a couple of weeks, but after learning the adj/adj CPP algorithm, I noticed that it didn't really save me any time whatsoever, making learning 7 more long algs completely pointless.


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## BradyLawrence (Aug 27, 2020)

Also week 5 is now up, sorry for the wait


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## BradyLawrence (Feb 7, 2022)

It's been a while! I recently got back into cubing with comps happening again and decided to give this thread an update. After taking basically everything from September 2020 - October 2021 off of cubing, just occasionally picking up my 3x3 or sq1 for a few solves, it's taken me up to now to get back to where I was in March 2020 at my last pre-quarantine comp. I just got back today from North Star Cubing Challenge 2022, which was the most competitive I've ever seen in MN, with sq1 podium at sub-8 and 3x3 finals somewhere around 9.5. I feel quite motivated to actually follow through on my original plans to attempt sub-10 at sq1, so I'm going to try to update this every two or so weeks with progress.



Spoiler: NSCC 2022



So, I just got back from the comp today, and I figured I'd share some results. This was my second post-covid comp, and I'm really quite happy with the results. I really didn't have too much for goals in most of the events, but here's the results below:




Spoiler: 3x3



My only real goal for 3x3 was to get my first sub-10 official single, which I managed to do... 3 times over. Honestly quite surprised, I usually don't get many 9s even at home. I did record all of them, but the only one with a half-decent camera angle is a 9.72 (my best was 9.62).

https://streamable.com/83tj17

^^^ 9.72 video

I also managed to get an 11.07 ao5, which I'm pretty happy with. I wasn't really expecting much, but there you go I guess.





Spoiler: Other Events



I didn't really practice much for anything other than 3x3 and sq1, so I clumped them all together in this section. No recordings or anything, I'm just going to list any PRs below:

4x4: 43.xx single, 47.xx ao5
Megaminx: 1:29 single, 1:33 ao5
FMC: 38 single, 39 mean
OH: 25.xx single





Spoiler: Square-1



Lastly, Square-1. This was the only event I really practiced at all over quarantine, and I managed to gain a solid 3 seconds or so of global average.

My goal was simply to get new PRs to aim for, and I did manage that: 10.39 single, down from a 12.15, and a 12.85 ao5, from a 15.90. As I mentioned earlier, this comp was very competitive for sq1, so a 12.99 ao5 was barely enough to make finals, but still pretty solid nonetheless.







With the comp results out of the way, I have a few notes on plans for the future. I'm planning on trying to get sub-10 at sq1 by July for NA Championships, which to get that kind of consistency I'm going to need to stop putting it off and actually learn CSP. So, I still know the star cases, but I'll update this every little while or so when I learn more, and try to get all of the cases down by the end of the semester in early June.



Thanks for anyone who took the time to read this,
Brady


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