Structuring multiple lessons

[Paul Arden]

Ooh. You’d have to standardise the drills and exercises and then examine someone’s ability to explain them. Then it becomes rather easy.

Right now it’s rather difficult and all over the place. Quite unnecessarily IMO. The reason it’s difficult is because there is no map. This makes assessment difficult for both the assessors and the assessed.

Cheers, Paul

[umm, Steve]

For me it’s very straightforward, Vince. The first thing to learn is to cast loops. Not loops with 30’ of flyline. But just with the leader, with 1’ of flyline, 2’ etc etc up to whatever it can be.

They can play with loops that are tight, open, not straightening, falling to the ground. Loops initiated from a D loop. Loops in all planes and on both sides of the body.

They can try standing on their heads, casting between their legs, running after a bus, hanging upside down out of a tree. In fact the more challenges we can create the better. Because we are building loop control.

They can cast right foot forward, left foot forward, sitting down. Jumping up and down. Freezing their wrist. Freezing their elbow. Freezing their shoulder.

This is how to start someone casting. Not trying to immediately fit them into a box. But playing around to see what works and what doesn’t work.

Task 1 of any CCI test should be “how do you start someone casting?”

Cheers, Paul

I’m not an instructor, so one can choose to stop reading now if they wish.

I had the great good fortune to learn to cast from Willie George at the GGACC. I want to share that I could not fit in the 10 to 2 box, and I’m sorry, Mrs. Wulff. I can’t cast that way. Still can’t. It was Willie, and later Paul’s videos, that taught me that it’s about the loop and line control. It was not about metronome strokes and dogma.

I just wanted to emphasize Paul’s point; it’s always the loop, not the looper. At least it was for me, a single data point.

[George C]

…..Anyone that has tried to stab the gaps between their fingers with a knife or compass will have directly experienced the effects of this law.

Regards

Vince

Mumblypeg!!!
Damn, I’ve not thought of that game for 60 years now.
The idea will keep me smiling the rest of the day.
Thanks, Vince

[Paul Arden]

Well yes and no. My teaching has changed a lot since the App. While my first lesson or two has always been about loop control and namely short line loop control, particularly after Lee introduced his Triangle Method, it’s really been the past 5 years that I’ve overhauled my approach, and I’m very thankful to Vince and Mark for this “enlightenment”.

But I also have some very good students. One is a Spey casting champion learning the 170 for the WCs this year. I have two others right at the top level, one I expect to be very prominent in future casting sport events. The other doesn’t compete, but by God he is good. And then I’ve got another tier of casters just beneath that who will become as good, and probably this year. Some of these compete too.

At this level it’s different. Here everything matters. The small nuances. The difference between a 70’ carry and a 90’ carry is technique. The difference between a 105’ cast and a 120’ cast is technique. It’s not just about loop control then, it becomes about everything we do. As well as everything we don’t do.

In between these two extremes are instructors. Now I can’t talk for everyone, but I certainly started fly fishing without a lesson. There were instructors 43 years ago, so it would have been possible, but there weren’t any near me. And I suspect that this is the case for many instructors. The basic faffing around with the rod we did, albeit unintentionally. When we then did finally get lessons (I got them like many others, so that I could teach fly fishing), loop control was already there. I’d been fly fishing for 15 years by this point and had picked it up.

So my introduction was not as a beginner but as an already fishing competent caster. And since that’s how we learned, it’s logical that’s how we should teach too. But that’s simply wrong. Beginners do not need their casting movements to be honed down. They need them to be expanded. Honing down and the tiny minutia comes later. Very much later.

Coaching an elite level caster is totally different to teaching a beginner. I’m aware that the underpinning methods are the same, but it’s very much more technical, and in a way that would cause beginners to fall apart.

I know one thing. Starting a beginner out with a 30’ of flyline PUALD, where they can’t see their backcast, and then faulting every cast, is a bloody terrible way of teaching. 28 years ago, when I first started teaching, I was doing this. Sorry!!

Cheers, Paul

[Rickard]

I know one thing. Starting a beginner out with a 30’ of flyline PUALD, where they can’t see their backcast, and then faulting every cast, is a bloody terrible way of teaching. 28 years ago, when I first started teaching, I was doing this. Sorry!!

That's my first contact with fly fishing/casting. And it almost ended right there. Hadn't it been that I could see that the other students in the group did worse than me I would have quit.

[Paul Arden]

That’s just as well Rickard because now you are one of those outstanding casters!!

[Paul Arden]

As you know, it’s a practice that sets my teeth on edge. An understanding of Fitts Law and the resultant speed accuracy trade off would make it obvious that a short stroke to achieve high line speed is bound to end causing significant force application problems for a learner. Anyone that has tried to stab the gaps between their fingers with a knife or compass will have directly experienced the effects of this law.

It can also be a different motor program.

A good example would be the differences between walking and running. We have these same differences between a short line cast, a medium distance cast and a long distance cast. One is like throwing a dart, the second like throwing an axe and the third like throwing a javelin.

To an extent when we increase line speed (even with the same line length), pattern changes can also occur. An example of this would be initially rotating the wrist through the stroke for a slow short line cast, and then at the end of the stroke as we increase line speed with the same short line. Also the stroke is not simply sped up, the casting arc needs to widen.

I agree that this is not suitable teaching in a beginner’s first lesson, however it’s undoubtedly essential later on, particularly for when our caster finds him or herself fishing in the wind.

Can you tell what book I’m reading this afternoon?

Cheers,
Paul

[Stoatstail50]

Can you tell what book I’m reading this afternoon?

A really interesting book.

It’s really good on how we learn and adapt generalised motor programs.

It relates well to a debate about why a cross body teaching drill for a PULD learner will be more effective than a perpendicular teaching drill. I think there was a penny bet paid out on this in 2009/2010 experimenting on Scottish youth footballers.

[VGB]

I think I can take a WAG at the book you are reading

A good example would be the differences between walking and running. We have these same differences between a short line cast, a medium distance cast and a long distance cast. One is like throwing a dart, the second like throwing an axe and the third like throwing a javelin.

I agree it is a change of motor pattern but what the instructosphere has said that there only one way to throw an object and that is like a dart at a dartboard. The outcome of what happens when you try and throw that dart at the dartboard from 50ft away using the normal distance pattern is predictable under Fitts Law. Our pattern changes enable us to regulate the speed accuracy trade off.

Regards

Vince

[Stoatstail50]

I think the whole point of Generalised motor programs is that they’re general. They’re a summary of the basic features of something, throwing for example. Throwing a dart at a dartboard or casting in this position is just a variant of a GMP, a 170 is a variant of the same GMP.

On this board there are two conflicting objectives when we are at work on the same GMP.

One is instructional, which is how do you teach your students to adapt the program to meet highly variable contextual feedback ie when you’re fishing.

The other is coaching, which is how to narrow performance to meet specific, invariant task criteria ie in competition or assessment.

These two things have become muddled up IMO. Same GMP different objectives.