Almost a year ago (July), I did my homework/research to find the best, not just a better layout than qwerty (that's easy), I was lucky to get it right first time with Colemak mod dh wide.
before, I never passed 60WPM with qwerty,
my typing speed recovered to my qwerty average in less than 5 months (first two higher learning speed), I just worked, rarely had the conscious training session to focus on fixing bad touch typing habits etc.,
later past that even more rarely,
my typing speed improved almost naturally.
here's a result for a typing test I did on the 20th.