# What's after old pochman?



## Birlibis1 (Apr 6, 2011)

I've been cubing for a month or something and I finally got a good BLD solve on tape.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am0JTvBBX9E

My question is what should I do next. Can someone suggest me based on my video a good method that will speed me up?. I've heard many things and I'm a little bit confused.


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## Birlibis1 (Apr 6, 2011)

Suggest to me*


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## ilikecubing (Apr 6, 2011)

M2


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## freshcuber (Apr 6, 2011)

M2 I believe. I'm not well versed in BLD methods though.

Edit: Ninja'd


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## Micael (Apr 6, 2011)

With the method your currently use, you can shave 85% of your current time with practice. hence, I suggest to practice.


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## d4m4s74 (Apr 6, 2011)

try m2/r2, and later Turbo or another three cycle method


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## riffz (Apr 6, 2011)

just learn M2 for edges


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## danthecuber (Apr 6, 2011)

new pochmann


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## EricReese (Apr 6, 2011)

Don't learn R2. Just use M2/ old pochman corners and that can get you at least sub 1:30 (my brother can do it that way, dont know of anyone faster, I am sure there is I just don't personally know any)


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## Kynit (Apr 7, 2011)

1. Improve your memo - anything more than a minute means you've got some room to improve!
2. M2 is the next step up from Old Pochmann, but don't worry about it too much.


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## Innocence (Apr 7, 2011)

Birlibis1 said:


> Suggest to me*


 
You can edit your posts. Just sayin'

You can also get decent solves using just Old Pochmann, but the next step would probably be to learn M2 for edges. People (such as Eric Limeback) have been able to get sub-1 using M2/OP. I personally use 3OP for corners as well, because I just find it easier to memo. (And slightly faster)


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## QCcuber4 (Apr 7, 2011)

You got alot of answers so this is just incase you need more.

I learned all my BLD at Macky's website: cubefreak.net

In my opinion, a good thing in BLD is to learn as much as you can, to allow you to fully evaluate which method apeals most to your style. Some are easy on memo, some on execution.

3OP is a good beginner method but it a looooong memo, and M2/Old pochmann (for corners) is a much quicker memo, but a lil more complexe, but nothing impossible really.

TuRBo is a fairly eaasy concept, you could actually figure that one out on your own, I did, and because of this I can't give you a tutorial link, sorry.

And if you're really hungry, try some BH algs, the corner algs have some easy cases that you could assimilate easily, the is a post on the forum with a full BH corner tutorial, just look for it.


Hope that helped! Good luck.


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## buelercuber (Apr 7, 2011)

danthecuber said:


> new pochmann


 
i was going to say the exact thing XD LOLOLOL


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## Birlibis1 (Apr 7, 2011)

Thank you guys. I've been illuminated


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## theace (Apr 7, 2011)

You mean enlightened 

Any tips for speeding up memo? Edges take me 1:40 to 2:30 depending on how horrible the cycles are while corners take about 1:30 to 2:00. So in all, I have a 4 to 4 and a half minute long memo with an execution of 2 to 3 minutes. I'm using old pochmann right now but will switch to turbo in 2 days. (I already know how it works. I get confused with the algs. I just need practice). I use letters for edges and visual for corners. No letter pairs yet. I make up words and sentences on the go. Though I do have certain letters and pairs that have set words.


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## RyanReese09 (Apr 7, 2011)

Do people fear practice? I didn't even need to practice much at all to get sub2 BLD times.


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## QCcuber4 (Apr 7, 2011)

theace said:


> You mean enlightened
> 
> Any tips for speeding up memo? Edges take me 1:40 to 2:30 depending on how horrible the cycles are while corners take about 1:30 to 2:00. So in all, I have a 4 to 4 and a half minute long memo with an execution of 2 to 3 minutes. I'm using old pochmann right now but will switch to turbo in 2 days. (I already know how it works. I get confused with the algs. I just need practice). I use letters for edges and visual for corners. No letter pairs yet. I make up words and sentences on the go. Though I do have certain letters and pairs that have set words.



Like Ryan said just above, it's all practice.

But if this helps: try different memo methods.

Try memoing edges, then corners, then solve corners and edges. I memo in the specific order and I remember dropping 2 to 3 minutes from 4 minutes avg in total, I now take about 1:20 to memo everything. I memo edges, and repeat the sequence once or twice to encrust it in my head, then speed memo my corners, don my blindfold and quickly solve the corners away to go straight to edges.

But practice makes a huge difference.


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## theace (Apr 7, 2011)

I know practice is absolutely essential. I just want to know if I'm on the right track. Practicing something that isn't quite as good is pretty pointless isn't it?


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## Mike Hughey (Apr 7, 2011)

RyanReese09 said:


> I didn't even need to practice much at all to get sub2 BLD times.


I needed LOTS of practice (years; certainly over a thousand solves) to get sub-2 BLD times, so not everyone has it that easy.


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## maggot (Apr 7, 2011)

i practice maybe 10 solve a week with m2/op and im not even sub 3. ive been practicing bld for about 8 or 9 months.


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## ilikecubing (Apr 7, 2011)

maggot said:


> i practice maybe 10 solve a week with m2/op and im not even sub 3. ive been practicing bld for about 8 or 9 months.


 
1 month has 4 weeks and you have been practicing for 9 months and you do 10 solves a week.

So total number of solves = 10 x 4 x 9 = 360

Woah,thats lot of solves,with that many solves i would have sub 90 easily.

Maybe try reducing your memo time,its really easy to sub 150 if you have sub 60 memo


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## amostay2004 (Apr 8, 2011)

Mike Hughey said:


> I needed LOTS of practice (years; certainly over a thousand solves) to get sub-2 BLD times, so not everyone has it that easy.


 
No offense Mike, but I think it's because you care too much about not DNF-ing. I might be wrong but as far as I know you have a pretty high success rate and will always try to solve the cube even if it takes you longer than usual to memo/recall, am I right? 

Well I think to get fast you should just not care. Perhaps set a limit to your memo times (if my memo goes above 30 I usually just give up the solve) and just GOGOGO, especially in single BLD. This is often what helps you break plateaus, and after your times generally get faster (with more DNFs) you can start trying to get more comfortable during memo and you'll find that it's easier to do safe solves. So it's more like a GOGOGO, play slightly safe, GOGOGO, play slightly safe kinda process.


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## cmhardw (Apr 8, 2011)

amostay2004 said:


> Well I think to get fast you should just not care. Perhaps set a limit to your memo times (if my memo goes above 30 I usually just give up the solve) and just GOGOGO, especially in single BLD. This is often what helps you break plateaus, and after your times generally get faster (with more DNFs) you can start trying to get more comfortable during memo and you'll find that it's easier to do safe solves. So it's more like a GOGOGO, play slightly safe, GOGOGO, play slightly safe kinda process.


 
It amazes me how different 3BLD is to bigger cubes BLD. I've tried the GOGOGO pacing for bigger cubes BLD, and it seems to most of the time lead to longer memo times and more recall delays. For bigger cubes BLD I've found that I try to go as quickly as possible, but when I feel that my memory is not sticking, I throttle back as much as is necessary (sometimes _drastically_ so). I then memo at the slower pace until I feel the memo begin to stick again, after which I speed up my pace until I again feel that it's not sticking.

It's funny to me, because this pace doesn't seem to work well for me on 3x3x3. When I use this pace on 4x4x4 or 5x5x5 I often get solves that are really fast for me. When I use this on 3x3x3, I either get solves right around my "average" GOGOGO pace, or slower, sometimes as much as 33% slower.

I wonder if certain people take DNFs differently. To me a DNF is 5-10 minutes of post-mortem'ing to figure out what I did wrong. I *hate* doing post mortems. It's like rubbing salt in the wound. Not only did I screw up the solve, but now I have to put myself through this ordeal of figuring out *why* I screwed up. In general when I practice I'd rather be solving for as much time as possible; I want to waste as little time on doing post-mortems as possible. I've heard from a lot of you sub-60 BLD'ers that GOGOGO pace is the way to do it, but I imagine with as many solves as you all are doing that you're probably not doing a post mortem on many, or any of the DNF solves? Is that true?

My question is this though. If you don't care about whether you DNF or not, and you DNF a lot (whatever a "lot" means to you) without knowing why, then aren't you reinforcing bad habits every time you get a DNF solve? Wouldn't that drastically slow down the pace at which you improve and break past plateaus?


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## macky (Apr 8, 2011)

Can we please make GOGOGO a technical term?


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## cmhardw (Apr 8, 2011)

macky said:


> Can we please make GOGOGO a technical term?


 
Do you mean to make it a technical term in the sense that those using it should define precisely what they mean by it? Or do you mean that we should archive the definition into an official glossary (yours is coming to mind here)?

If you mean the former, than I interpret GOGOGO pace as:

To memorize and solve at a pace that feels subjectively beyond your normal capabilities. To memorize and solve at a quick enough pace such as to no longer be fully confident in the efficacy of either your memorization or your solving phases.


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## Mike Hughey (Apr 8, 2011)

amostay2004 said:


> No offense Mike, but I think it's because you care too much about not DNF-ing. I might be wrong but as far as I know you have a pretty high success rate and will always try to solve the cube even if it takes you longer than usual to memo/recall, am I right?
> 
> Well I think to get fast you should just not care. Perhaps set a limit to your memo times (if my memo goes above 30 I usually just give up the solve) and just GOGOGO, especially in single BLD. This is often what helps you break plateaus, and after your times generally get faster (with more DNFs) you can start trying to get more comfortable during memo and you'll find that it's easier to do safe solves. So it's more like a GOGOGO, play slightly safe, GOGOGO, play slightly safe kinda process.


 
Thanks. I've often suspected this is the case. But for some reason, even if I try to do this, I find that I just can't. It goes too much against the grain.

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. At some point, I need to sit down, do nothing but hand scrambles (so I'll care less - I'll know I can't repeat a scramble or tell people what my scramble was, so I won't worry about it as much), and insist on absolutely no review on the memo ever, no matter how bad it's going. (I feel the same as Chris - the approach of slowing down if I need to is what I've always done.) I think I need to do something more drastic than I've done before, like doing this for a couple of hours straight, to get anywhere. I'm really pretty sure that I'm capable of sub-20 memo, but I don't believe I've ever done it, simply because it always seems worth the extra 10 seconds to be safe to me.

I did make a big jump before when Joey "forced" me to memo sub-30. So it does seem that this approach can even work for me; I just have a hard time bringing myself to do it.


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## maggot (Apr 8, 2011)

ilikecubing said:


> 1 month has 4 weeks and you have been practicing for 9 months and you do 10 solves a week.
> 
> So total number of solves = 10 x 4 x 9 = 360
> 
> ...



i have tried doing runs of avg of 5 and such where i restrict my memo, however even if i do get a sub 60 memo (which for me is difficult, any advice would be appreciated), i have a hard time during the recall and i end up dnfing. what i need to do is do more bld SESSIONS. 360 might seem like a lot of solves, however, the hardest part about it is that i do it randomly and most of the time just casually. .. i guess im like mike and i care about a success... maybe because the event of sitting down and doing a bld solve is a decent time invested. same reason why i dont do sessions of 6x6 or 7x7. most time consuming event that i practice is 5x5, where im about 2:30ish. i think if i was consistently sub3, i would invest more time in it. i just need to get it over with and do some sessions. its kind of like the beginner method > CFOP transistion. . sometimes you just dont want to practice it.

edit: however, i do feel like i am perfectly capable of doing it. im just lazy when it comes to bld and sq1 lol


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## Rpotts (Apr 8, 2011)

EricReese said:


> Don't learn R2. Just use M2/ old pochman corners and that can get you at least sub 1:30 (my brother can do it that way, dont know of anyone faster, I am sure there is I just don't personally know any)


 
Cornelius is super fast with M2/OP, his yperm is like sub1 every time.


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## QCcuber4 (Apr 8, 2011)

In my opinion, 10 solves a week isn't enough practice... I bld everyday... like, I bld more than I actually solve normal. I've been doing the for 2-3 weeks and I dropped from 4-5 even 6 minutes solves to sub 2- 2:30 and I'm still getting better.


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## amostay2004 (Apr 8, 2011)

@Chris: Post-mortems on single BLD never mattered to me at all. I only do them when I get a really fast and close DNF because it pissed me off, and it doesn't bother me at all if I couldn't figure out why. Even without actively analysing my reasons for DNFs, my times and success rate would get better. I guess you learn more than you think just doing blind practice (hehe pun intended). Somehow you would just be able to fix your errors by doing more solves.

@Mike: What I use to do was to always compare my times with my (non-lucky) PB. I would only be satisfied with a solve if it's say 5s away from my PB, because once I get a certain fast time without a lucky scramble I know I'm fully capable of getting times like that every attempt. So I will always try to make my future attempts as fast as my PB. I guess you have to have the mindset that successes don't matter if they're slow, and fast DNFs are better.


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## Cubenovice (Apr 8, 2011)

I find that (unless you end up with a fully scrambled cube) in a single 3x3x3 BLD it is typically very obvious where the mistake was. Instant-post mortum if you like.

I never bother going through the solve again.

Regarding Cornelius' BLD video. I think he once posted full OP solves close to one minute.
Message to self: OP is not an excuse to be slow


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## Jaysammey777 (Apr 8, 2011)

practice


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## Mike Hughey (Apr 8, 2011)

I'm still amazed by the fact that I'm considered slow now. Just a few years ago, I would have been world class with my current times. Now people can't believe I'm this slow (averaging about 1:40). I know that methods have improved (freestyle/BH vs. 3OP), but honestly, I don't see that as explaining more than a few seconds of the difference. Now, many new people to BLD find themselves sub-minute withing 6 months of their first attempt. Why? Is it just that people now know it can be done, so the barrier doesn't seem as great anymore?


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## Cubenovice (Apr 8, 2011)

Availability of detailled info / tutorials:
- memo techniques (including complete letter image lists)
- solving techniques

Coupled with dedication, more people interested and overall TPS of the young guns?


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