I'm an intermediate player, with my any% right now averaging around 1:14. I usually try to go too fast and end up making pretty bad mistakes but one thing I want to make sure I'm doing right is my routes. I've been called out in the past for following some of Smallant's routes, which in hindsight are obviously outdated by now. I decided to watch a combination of Tomshi guides and watch many top-level runs to improve myself. One part of the run that is conflicting, but without any high-level strats is Sand kingdom (excluding dram for now). I use Tyron's route of going from the Moon on the Eastern Pillar (left of Jaxi poison swamp), and then triple jumping to the ledge to get the chest moon, and finishing the kingdom with the moving platform clip to obtain the chest, sphinx, and then luggage moon. My splits right now are typically 2:32 Cap, 6:00 Cascade, and finishing sand at 11:35. Would I benefit more from just using the cactus, bird, and tree notes route?

TL;DR

Should I use Tyron's sand route or Tomshi's? (1:14 PB and 11:35 sand exit)

don't do platform clip with that time. it only saves 3/4 optimally

with a 1:14 i don't think you should even be considering using anything other than the tomshi beginner route (make sure it's the beginner one and not the advanced one), don't use strats that are out of your skill level because it will help improve your skills a lot faster and help with consistency and finishing runs instead of resetting to a trick that you can't do, and the beginner route can easily get you to a 1:05 without adding anything fancy

Okay I think I'll continue doing poison triple but after the hidden in a block moon I'll turn and go for the cactus moon and so on.

i honestly think that the triple loses time if not executed properly. Honestly just do normal jaxi skip ( as in Tomshis beginnerroute)

Speedrun tricks usually only save time if you can do them optimally. Having a 1:14 doesn't mean you aren't allowed to do any of the hard speedrun tricks, but by looking at your pb, we can somewhat determine how skilled you are as a player. It could be that you somehow get super good at certain tricks super fast, but in general, you should improve your consistency before going for fancy tricks (except if those fancy tricks are easy for you)

I stopped the platform clip and am now doing the other route. I'm not really sure if it's saving much time but it's definitely way more consistent and I've never reset because of it so I'll stick with it. I'm at sub 1:12 now and hopefully when I clean up a few more kingdoms it'll be a lot lower :)