# Cubing 'Exercises'?



## StachuK1992 (Oct 21, 2011)

The recent thread by jskyler91 got me thinking.

Usually, when we get a new user joining the forums or IRC and they ask "how do I get faster?" we mindlessly tell them to 'go practice.'

I think this recent thread shows quite well that there's much more that you can do beyond 'just practice.' There are specific excercizes that can be performed to practice lookahead, turnspeed, etc.

We, as a community, need to compile a very good list of these. I found that the example from yesterday's thread helped a lot of people; we need information like this to be available fairly easily. At this point, we'll contain it in this thread, but as it grows, we'll move things to the wiki.


This all being said, give me some excercizes, hopefully that work for any puzzle/method.

Some ideas
-Time attacks, to practice algs
-http://cube.crider.co.uk/coracle.html
-Turbo-Tracking (also, try this BLD!)
-sexymove bursting
-*Go slow and look ahead* (I had to)
*-Go fast and look ahead* (yup)
-Focus on corners rather than edges, or other way around. Basically, change your focus.
-Know /exactly/ what your algs do. This helps predict PLLs, and many other parts of cubing. It's like predetermined look-ahead.

I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Give me them.

statue
[PS - don't spam this thread with "the above would be cool, let me try it!" Go try it, then respond. Unless something actually helped you, don't waste the space. I will delete your posts."]


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## Kirjava (Oct 21, 2011)

Off topic - I actually thought that 'Exercizes' was an American spelling for 'Exercises' until I looked it up.

On topic - practising individual parts of your solve seems to help people. Like focusing on LSE alone or F2B or w/e.


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## Escher (Oct 21, 2011)

Someone could make a wiki page on practice using ideas from this thread and the write up from mine, 'go practice' turns into 'go read this comprehensive page of stuff you can do'.

Also, solving f2l in 3 looks is fun, as is Phil Espinoza's 2 pairs BLD exercise (same thing really).


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## Jostle (Oct 21, 2011)

Escher said:


> Someone could make a wiki page on practice using ideas from this thread and the write up from mine, 'go practice' turns into 'go read this comprehensive page of stuff you can do'.
> 
> Also, solving f2l in 3 looks is fun, as is *Phil Espinoza's 2 pairs BLD exercise* (same thing really).


 
Could you explain this?


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## Escher (Oct 21, 2011)

Jostle said:


> Could you explain this?


 
Literally just solve cross, inspect/predict two pairs, close your eyes, solve both pairs, open eyes, yay.


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## Jostle (Oct 21, 2011)

Oh, yeah that helps lots. It's good


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## Stefan (Oct 21, 2011)

Nice idea and it should be helpful, but a thought about the background story: I think most people provoking a _"just practice"_ answer are still quite slow, can't/don't even tell us their status, and really benefit most from the probably best exercise - simply solving a lot. People who are already fairly fast and properly tell us their current status (not just "I average 30 seconds") already get better answers, but this list you're building could help there.


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## jskyler91 (Oct 21, 2011)

I think that it is also important that people realize not only how to practice properly but how to make sure your hands are at their fullest potential. Most people think that all they need to do to warm up is to do a bunch of solves, but this isn't really the best, or safest way to achieve this goal. Not only that, but it only makes your fingers warmed up, not stronger or faster. In other words you aren't really getting better at solving, just reaching an acceptabel plateau and then assuming your good. I am going to make a video on this, but I just thought I would get people thinking about how important being properly warmed up can be. If your fingers aren't reaching their full potential, then neither can you.


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## Cubetastic (Oct 21, 2011)

Maybe finger pushups to get good strong fingers for oh?


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## jskyler91 (Oct 21, 2011)

Cubetastic said:


> Maybe finger pushups to get good strong fingers for oh?


 
Nice, Lol, I actually have specific exercises for OH as well. They are pretty simple though, just triggers and double flicks.


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## DRAGON_RYU (Oct 21, 2011)

metronome perhaps?


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## Hershey (Oct 21, 2011)

Escher said:


> Literally just solve cross, inspect/predict two pairs, close your eyes, solve both pairs, open eyes, yay.


 
This really does work, I tried it earlier this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvctUcyagI&feature=channel_video_title


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## CubicNL (Oct 21, 2011)

DRAGON_RYU said:


> metronome perhaps?


 I think it should be added, I used it a while to make myself solve at a certain speed.
It's handy if you don't know how slow or how fast to go.
You can find out what's the best speed for yourself and then gradually increase the speed if you think you 'master' a speed.
It helped me I think.


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## 5BLD (Oct 21, 2011)

Do lots of slow solves without allowing yourself to hesitate. 
Then contrast that with doing fast turning and trying to keep up.
I find doing these exercises in this order really helps me.

Funnily enough for me, doing CMLL time attacks tends to give me jerky hands in solving so I don't find time attacks helpful.


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## Cubetastic (Oct 21, 2011)

Actually, there hasnt been any real training that I find has helped, i found i got to 30 second average really fast now but nothing can help me improve to get to lower times, I guess I'm going to have to learn full pll.


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## 5BLD (Oct 21, 2011)

Work on your F2L and lookahead. Learning full PLL honestly won't make you much faster...


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## chris410 (Oct 21, 2011)

Practice finishing the cross without looking. For F2L, practice locating the next pair prior to the current pair insertion. 

OLL/PLL practice recognition and use some of the trainers to help focus in on learning/executing them such as:

http://brunson.com/drillsergeant

*note: this would make a great iphone app!


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## MaeLSTRoM (Oct 21, 2011)

5BLD said:


> Work on your F2L and lookahead. Learning full PLL honestly won't make you much faster...


 
Actually it really will. about 2-3 seconds at least.


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## 5BLD (Oct 21, 2011)

2 secs at most.. Which ain't an awful lot.
My recommendations (to cubetastic) are for you to work hard at your f2l while gradually learning PLL.
In my experience 2 look PLL isn't too much slower than one look.
F2L on the other hand is a skill to be developed...


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## Litz (Oct 21, 2011)

I don't do any exercises nowadays but I did try many of them in the past. 

The only exercise I ever found helpful was solving f2l with a metronome. I usually recommend this to a lot of cubers with times around 20~25 seconds since those cubers tend to burst all the pairs with almost no (if any) look-ahead. Back when I was struggling for sub20 with just normal solves, this exercise made me cross it pretty fast and changed my whole cubing style to what it still is today.

Obviously this is simply what worked for me so it might not work for others, as what didn't work for me might work for them. I think if a fast cuber has problems with cross/f2l transition it wouldn't hurt to try solving the cross BLD. However, by the time this makes any difference most cubers already solve it BLD without thinking.


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## hic0057 (Oct 21, 2011)

I thought about some training/exercises that people could do a couple of times.

LU solves (most people are far better at RUing then LUing)
RDing
Juggling? (Improves peripheral vision which could help with looking ahead)
Two sided PLL recognition (there should be a tutorial somewhere helping with this)
With finger push ups.. maybe trying normal pushups but instead of flat hands on the grounds have fingertips.


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## Cube Equation (Oct 23, 2011)

I am currently attempting to improve my F2L. So this thread should be useful. One exercise that I find useful is to solve the F2L OH. Not only does this improve my left hand dexterity (which is extremely limited), it also forces me to slow down and look ahead.


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## Hershey (Oct 23, 2011)

Cube Equation said:


> I am currently attempting to improve my F2L. So this thread should be useful. One exercise that I find useful is to solve the F2L OH. Not only does this improve my left hand dexterity (which is extremely limited), it also forces me to slow down and look ahead.


 
Or you could just practice OH cubing in general and stop practicing 2H (not many people would like this though).


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## Cube Equation (Oct 23, 2011)

Hershey said:


> Or you could just practice OH cubing in general and stop practicing 2H (not many people would like this though).


 
I prefer 2H solving. It's just that my lookahead is virtually non-existent.


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## nickvu2 (Oct 23, 2011)

Flashcards for learning algs and case recognition. I've been training with Anki everyday for about a years now and swear by it.


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## majikat (Oct 28, 2011)

I recently have been timing each of the individual steps of my solve to see which one seems to be taking longer than I think it should, then focusing on improving those steps.
Using Roux, I discovered that I was pretty good with the first two blocks, but the CMLL algorithms were often taking me 4 seconds or more, and sometimes the LSE would take a long time too...so I worked on all the algorithms as well as improving the speed and especially the smoothness of the last step, and dropped like 3 seconds from my average in only a week or two.


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## tozies24 (Nov 3, 2011)

I have an exercise that doesn't require practice at all! 

So the past two days I decided that I wasn't going to time myself at all. I still solved by cubes a little bit, but without the timer there, there was no pressure to be fast. 
Today, I have been doing some solves, and I am ridiculously fast. I consider myself to average about 17, but right now I am closer to about 15.5 to 16. I broke my personal best of 5 and 12 by a decent amount. 

The reason this works is because your brain can recover and build up those cells that you used before. If you keep practicing, the cells never get back to full strength.


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## 5BLD (Nov 4, 2011)

Tozies, thats a very good point. Im gonna try that.
(yes yes i know im not meant to say that ill try it but this post WILL be worth something

I find experimenting with advanced/new techniques one handed helps a lot.
Because you have lower TPS it gives more room for opimisation without killing your solve like it might in 2H.
For example i can be just as fast colour neutral one handed as opposite neutral, whilst 2H im like sup-17 colour neutral but sub-12.5 partial neutral.
Also i can do 2.5 look LSE and im still just as fast OH whilst two handed i get recog problems. KCLL is easier to do OH too.


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## Mnts (Nov 4, 2011)

Cube Equation said:


> I prefer 2H solving. It's just that my lookahead is virtually non-existent.


My Look ahead exist only in OH, 2H I still have trouble with look ahead, so my difference between OH and 2H times are very low.


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## Vinny (Nov 4, 2011)

jskyler91 said:


> I think that it is also important that people realize not only how to practice properly but how to make sure your hands are at their fullest potential. Most people think that all they need to do to warm up is to do a bunch of solves, but this isn't really the best, or safest way to achieve this goal. Not only that, but it only makes your fingers warmed up, not stronger or faster. In other words you aren't really getting better at solving, just reaching an acceptabel plateau and then assuming your good. I am going to make a video on this, but I just thought I would get people thinking about how important being properly warmed up can be. If your fingers aren't reaching their full potential, then neither can you.


 
This is absolutely true. Whenever my hands feel cold, I realized that warming them up doesn't really do much. What I do if my hands are cold is warm them up (obviously), but while I am putting them in some warm water, I stretch out my fingers, hand, wrists, and I sort of keep moving my fingers around to actually get the muscles warmed up.


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## Cheese11 (Nov 4, 2011)

nickvu2 said:


> Flashcards for learning algs and case recognition. I've been training with Anki everyday for about a years now and swear by it.


 
Why would flashcards be any better than having a sheet of paper with all the algs?


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## Litz (Nov 5, 2011)

Cheese11 said:


> Why would flashcards be any better than having a sheet of paper with all the algs?


Anki uses a SRS (spaced repetition system). It works great as a transition from thinking/recalling the algorithm to muscle memory if you want to learn loads of algorithms since you can easily memorize tons of things with it (you'll be able to do the algorithm slowly from your head while it gradually transitions into muscle memory). If you do the algorithms over and over you'll place them in your muscle memory pretty fast though, so I don't really use it for cubing. 

I've been using it for years daily to memorize vocabulary though and it does work. If anyone's interested in memorizing tons of stuff (maybe letter pair lists for BLD?), have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition


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## MWilson (Jan 24, 2012)

Here's an exercise that has helped me a lot. Inspect cross normally, and pick a corner to track. Not so unusual, but the trick is to track it as your _last_ F2L pair corner, rather than your first. That is, track it during the cross, while looking ahead to the first pair and insert that one. Continue to track that corner but look ahead to the second pair, then third, the whole while keeping track of that corner but not using it even if it becomes a good case. Then, once that is natural, follow the last _two_ corners you will use in F2L, while looking ahead to the other pairs. As you're solving the second pair, look ahead to which of the two corners you've been tracking will be better to insert as your third.

For clarity, during the inspection you are choose (randomly, don't worry about it) a corner to follow _as your fourth F2L pair, not first_. Track that corner during cross and first three F2L, using it last. Graduate to two corners when that becomes easy.


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## devagrawal09 (Jan 25, 2015)

Some popular finger exercises - 
Do _(L'ULU')*6 , (L'DLD')*6, (RUR'U')*6, (RDR'D')*6_
These exercises with appropriate fingering help a lot for speedcubing. Try to do these within 3 seconds.


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## pdilla (Jan 25, 2015)

General finger exercises have been around forever. I remember learning a bunch of them when I got into magic.

With tutting being a rising fad, there are plenty of videos on YouTube for them.


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## MrMan (Jan 25, 2015)

pdilla said:


> With tutting being a rising fad, there are plenty of videos on YouTube for them.



That is epic !


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