How do you (personally) prevent cubing injuries? I do alot of cubing and I
don't want to hurt myself.

Warm up before speedsolving.
Only thing really.

Would you warm up by solving it slowly and then gradualy get faster?

Exactly.
Try to cube in a warm room too.

On the subject of warming up, I usually get my best averages after a nice, long, hot shower. It helps a lot. After the shower, the 2nd or 3rd average is usually the best of the set.

krazy glued my thumb on a tile!

i almost had an incident like that with krazy glue lol, I was gluing a broken kernel back together and holding it tightly with both thumbs, but realized my foolishness and removed them in time.

I was using a chisel to take the center caps off a 3x3 so I could adjust the
tension and the chisel slipped and I cut my finger . My finger is fine
now but I might have a scar. I also was not using gloves.

http://www.planet-puzzle.com/cubesolved ... astest.zip

watch the end

katsu doesn't like injuries either.

i thought it was funny?

Haha!

wow, that's a crazy video..

What is the thing he picks up when it says "Please don't hurt your hand"?

I don't know...I was assuming a lotion or something that eases joint pain or something. I dunno..

I think Adam Zamora holds the record for worst puzzle related injury, but i'll let him tell you about it

wow, so i guess the unofficial record is 6 seconds now? daaang, thats fast...

EDIT: he should really put that on speedcubing.com... or was the solve optimized?

he memorized the cube for hours. he has solved in 5 secs before.

oh, darn...


and ona completely different note, i can't honestly say that you can seriously hurt yourself cubing. i skateboard when i'm not cubing, so i'm jumping off loading docks, grinding rails/ledges, etc, and injuries include rolling ankles and spraining wrists. you guys mean to tell me that you can get hurt cubing? worst i've ever done was gotten a tile corner under my fingernail.



PS. sorry if this sounded mean to anyone, i'm not trying to be, really

Hm, well some people say that you can't possibly hurt yourself while playing tennis, but that's just not true...

So the same with Rubik's Cubes...I can definitely see it in the realm of possibility to get injured while cubing.

You could get carpal tunnel from cubing a lot.

at one point my mom ( a nurse ) said i most likely have carpal tunnel from cubing so i quit for a while.

Have or will get? If you have carpal tunnel it hurts a lot.

my hands were hurting badly, it hurt just to make a fist. i stopped cubing for months a few days after it hurt. i didn't cube that much since so my hands are fine.

yep that was carpal tunnel. I had goten it too when I used one hand to turn
one face and was averaging around 1:25 sec and used the solution that
came with it. I just stoped for a while and then it got better.

kyle, is that why you quit cubing for about a year? i think you said you quit for that long once...

yeah

I just stoped for about a month. Why a year?

i lost interest after months of not cubing.

I stopped for a year. It's just because I go in and out. Sometimes I concentrate a lot more on music or community work or school (just to get out!) and in the process I'll lose touch with my cube. I'm glad I decided to pick it back up again. I think I've been decently faithful..

I had lost intrest in cubing for a couple months and desided to learn a new
faster method.

i've only been cubing for a few months, and i don't really have many ppl to do it with, so i'm on my own... i guess that means that i'll lose faith alot slower than others...

Anything can cause carpel if you're not doing it right. If your cube is too tight or you're doing some weird twists, then yes, it might do it. But you can cube without getting carpel.

What do you consider a weird twist? Like L' F L or L F' L.

More like arms flying wildly or putting your elbows into it.

D2 B2 U2 without regripping or fingertricks. you just grab one part, and use it in all of the turns


kindof twists your arms around in circles, lol.

Kind of off topic, but ever since I started cubing, I have had a habit of doing a weird twist when I'm bored.

With your left hand, hold the centerpiece of F and B with your thumb and middle finger, then with your right hand hold corners URF and DRF with your thumb and forefinger, and twist R3 D4 then R4 D4 continuous. (edit: thats R clockwise and D counterclockwise)

I used to do this to loosen my cube after lubing it or if it was cold out. Now I just do it when I am bored... along with solving the cube.

You can do something interesting like that on a 2x2x2 too... it feels really smooth and weird. With your left hand, hold ULF and ULB; with your right, hold URF and URB. Then do (R2 D'4 R2) repeatedly, like in VertclyChalnged9's thing. If you can get it going fast, it feels like your right and left hands are orbiting around a central core...

That's really cool . It is also really fun too.

lol, it also twists your arms around in circles... probably not healthy, but since when do i do anything healthy?

I'm sorry to say that within a day I have sunk to a new low of puzzling injuries...

On my cubefans megaminx, my middle finger got stuck between 2 layers and I had a gash cut into the finger.

Later in the day, I was trying to get the tiles off one of the center caps to adjust the spring, and I was using my swiss army knife. I applied too much pressure, and cut a slice through my index finger on the same hand I had already cut.

These are definitely not the normal cubing injuries, but I think I'm the first to draw this much blood from one day with one puzzle.

i don't know whether to congratulate you on your first ever injuries, or tell you not to play with puzzles anymore

Ow! I got a cut from a chisel when trying to remove the center caps on a
studio cube a while ago. Tip keep your hand that is holding the cube out of
the way or wear a really heavy duty glove on you hand that could get cut.

lol, i think i've actually gotten an injury from cubing: the inside edge of my right thumb (right next to the nail) is getting sore from turning the cube, and my left index finger is losing skin! (darn those textured tiles)

skateboarders know what i mean about losing skin, it's the same thing that griptape does to your thumb from dropping the board down

at least i'm used to my fingers being in pain, lol.

I wasn't actually cubing, but I was putting together my DIY. Stupid idea: using a pocket knife as a screw driver.


= gash in finger.

Tip on cuts/gashes. First clean it. Stop the bleeding by closing the cut and
applying preshure and hold your arms above your head for about 5 min.
Put a bandage on it to hold it together and keep it dry.

What I did. I naturally put pressure on any cut (even before I knew the logic of it when I was younger...less pain, I suppose). So it didn't bleed until I was already washing it off, and because of all this, I was able to get a bandage on pretty easily without blood coming out in the process.

wow.... you're just talking about a simple cut on your finger, right? i didn't know that there was a huge process to this kind of cut... i just kindof wait until the bleeding stops, then decide if a need a band aid or not...

That's what I did when I cut myself with a chisel. the cut was about an inch
long and bled a lot but didn't hurt at all. It probibly didn't hut because the
chisel was really sharp. Too bad I don't have a pic .

didn't really hurt. i just knew it'd be bleedin' like crazy. plus i grew up with my over protective mother, haha.

same here, but i also hang around in town skating/over my dads. you get hurt there, and the basics are:

"did you learn anything?"
"yeah, doing [insert action here] kindof hurts..."
"good boy"


lol, and when skateboarding, never show weakness to friends!!!! or random people that see you around the streets, esp if they are skaters.

Hiding pain is weakness.

how so? i went snowboarding, managed to sprain my ankle (again) and was in pain the whole time, yet i was still trying stuff harder than what my friends were doing. i'm weak because i'm doing good? it doesn't really make any sense to me. like my friend once said, "pain is weakness leaving the body."