How to get ahead of 99% of cubers

Summary

The video argues that cubers improve faster through deliberate, strategic practice than by repeatedly doing full solves without examining what is holding them back. The presenter describes four steps:

1. Fix your fundamentals

Core skills—solving efficiently, turning smoothly, looking ahead, knowing effective algorithms, and using inspection well—can all limit your times. Weakness in any one of them can waste moves or create pauses, so improving fundamentals makes later practice more effective.

2. Analyze your own solves

Don’t guess which skill needs work. Record several ordinary, representative solves—not just personal-best solves—from a front or over-the-shoulder angle. Review the footage and identify mistakes, inefficient solutions, pauses, or other recurring weaknesses. The presenter’s own examples include inconsistent turning and not planning enough during inspection.

3. Use targeted practice for the weaknesses you find

Repeating full-speed solves can reinforce existing habits. Instead, choose drills that isolate the skill you want to improve, and adapt them to your needs:

• Efficiency: Watch examples of better solutions, then do slow solves while deliberately applying those techniques.
• Turning smoothness: Solve slowly with controlled, accurate turns, then gradually increase speed.
• Lookahead: Do slow solves while focusing on the next pair rather than the pieces currently being solved.
• Algorithms: Learn improved algorithms and practise them with an algorithm trainer.
• Inspection: Practise untimed inspection, planning as far ahead as your current goal requires, and gradually work toward doing it faster.

The presenter gives a personal example from blindfolded cubing: after noticing that memorization was too slow, he used a timed device that required him to finish memorizing within a set limit. He says this focused drill helped him achieve a roughly five-second memorization at his next competition.

4. Learn what you need, then grind solves

If reaching your goal requires a new method or major skill, learn it before putting most of your time into repeated solves. The presenter says he spent about two months learning “floating,” an extension of his blindfolded-solving method, rather than focusing on ordinary solve practice during that period.

Once the new skill is learned, practise many solves to become comfortable with it. The general principle is to focus on learning one major change at a time, then build fluency through repetition.

Overall, the recommended cycle is: strengthen fundamentals, record and diagnose your solves, practise specific weaknesses, and learn necessary new skills before building repetition around them. The presenter attributes his rapid progress in blindfolded cubing—from around 300th to third in the world in five months—to this kind of focused approach.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Charlie Eggins (Swift Cubing): The sole speaking narrator, sharing advice and personal cubing experiences.
• Charlie’s brother and father: Mentioned as having helped build the timed memorization device; they do not speak in the subtitles.
• Sprinting: Used as an analogy for training fundamentals; no sprinter or external source is identified.