How to Practice ZBLL

For ZBLL practice, there are essentially 4 things you need to address:

1. Case recognition speed.
2. Speed of your algorithms, as well as getting the algorithms in your muscle memory.
3. ‘Case-Alg’ connection: You don’t just need to learn the algorithm, you also have to associate it with the case it’s going to solve.
4. AUF stickers.

You can figure out why all of these factors are important: when you do ZBLL in a solve, it is boiled down to 3 steps:

• recognition (which covers point 1).
• execution of the algorithm (which cover points 2 and 3).
• post AUF (which covers point 4).

How to practice, step by step

1. You get your algs from your sheet and practice them one by one with good turning, and try to mindfully associate each alg with their corresponding case. You can do that by doing the inverse of your alg and just seeing what case does the alg solve. While doing that, assign an AUF sticker to your algs (if you use my sheet, it’s already done for you).
2. Then get your timer and drill your cases to at least sub 1.2 seconds. This may be too hard for your speed, so you can aim for 1.5 instead, but keep in mind that you want your algs at 1-1.2 at the highest level.
3. Now go into the ZBLL trainer and practice your algs. On the right side, choose the cases that you’re going to practice, and hit ‘recap each case once’ on the left.
4. Do 3 ‘recaps’ where you simply focus on good recognition, turning and looking at the AUF sticker.
5. After that, do recaps where you aim for recog+execution speed, until you reach a certain speed goal.

You can set 2 kinds of these goals: Either a set time, so sub 3, or for advanced solvers, sub 2 to low 2, or simply aim for a time that is below 3rd of your average solve time, since LL takes about this much in solves.

Tip: You don’t need to practice all of the 12 algs at once. You can learn them in halves (so 6 each) or even in thirds (4 each), that way you can practice each case more.

You can use this learning process for the first 2-4 days or so. The rest of the week will be spent on daily practice of these 12 algs. During that time, continue using the ZBLL trainer to solidify these cases further into your muscle memory, and start incorporating the learned algorithms into your solves.