so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im kind of stuck. started learning CW back in the spring, got comfortable copying at maybe 5-6 wpm with the character trainer on lcwo, felt pretty good about it. but every time i try to push past that i just fall apart. like i can copy individual letters fine but as soon as words start coming at me faster than i can mentally "say" the letter in my head it all turns to mush.

i know the answer is probably just more practice but i feel like im practicing the wrong way or something. ive been using the farnsworth method where the characters are sent at 20wpm but spacing is stretched out, which felt great at first but now i wonder if im just training myself to wait for the gaps instead of actually getting faster. anyone been through this plateau and found something that actually broke them out of it? does the word recognition stuff on morse runner or similar help or is that more of a contest thing

oh man yeah the 5-10wpm wall is so real and i think almost everyone hits it. what helped me more than anything was forcing myself to stop trying to copy every single character. like literally stop. just listen for a second and let it wash over you. sounds counterintuitive but when you start recognizing common words as sounds instead of sequences of dots and dashes it just clicks eventually.

the other thing i did was listen to W1AW code practice at speeds higher than i was comfortable with, like i couldnt copy most of it but my ear was getting used to what faster CW sounds like. took a few weeks of that alongside normal practice before i noticed i was relaxing more at 10-12wpm. also honestly Morse Runner is great even if youre not a contester, just set it to a slow qrm-free setting and work callsigns, it forces you to copy in real time with no rewind button which is kind of the whole game

im kind of in the same boat honestly so following this thread. one thing my elmer told me that stuck — he said dont learn to copy, learn to hear. took me a while to understand what he meant but i think its basically what the other guy said, stop translating and start recognizing. im still working on it too so no great advice from me but you're definitely not alone in this