Structuring multiple lessons

[Paul Arden]

“Because it’s fun” was her reply.

Your stretch made a difference today, John. The “chuckit” ball launcher also resonated. Thanks.

Something I was thinking about today is that targets aren’t just there for tracking but also for stability. Foot position as we know is critical. It both blocks and facilitates torso twist. And if the foot position is misaligned to target, then weight shift is not directed to target. I see that as a very common causes of problems in the 170 backcast. In other words while they may have picked the correct target, the weight shift is in a different direction because the feet had poor placement. Which then creates all sorts of problems for both stability as well as loop integrity. When you are hitting the line for six you need all the core stability you can get.

It’s incredibly difficult to do something that’s really very simple!

Cheers, Paul

[John Waters]

“Because it’s fun” was her reply.

Your stretch made a difference today, John. The “chuckit” ball launcher also resonated. Thanks.

Something I was thinking about today is that targets aren’t just there for tracking but also for stability. Foot position as we know is critical. It both blocks and facilitates torso twist. And if the foot position is misaligned to target, then weight shift is not directed to target. I see that as a very common causes of problems in the 170 backcast. In other words while they may have picked the correct target, the weight shift is in a different direction because the feet had poor placement. Which then creates all sorts of problems for both stability as well as loop integrity. When you are hitting the line for six you need all the core stability you can get.

It’s incredibly difficult to do something that’s really very simple!

Cheers, Paul

Hi Paul,

No worries and not surprising. Agree with you about the importance of the stance and the potential it creates for moving the body's centre of mass. In my case that is a major challenge.

"It’s incredibly difficult to do something that’s really very simple". Just keep looking at how other sports have met that challenge. IMHO, they are far in front of us in respect of what to move and how to move it.

John

[VGB]

“Because it’s fun” was her reply.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/featu ... 000049.pdf

In particular, the sports interest of fe- males, especially their interest in participating, appears substantially explained by the courtship display hypothesis. By contrast, the spectator lek hypothesis primarily applies to males: for boys and men, sports are largely about compet- ing for status, “showing off” one’s qualities to other males, and evaluating the abilities of other males. The differing applicability of the specta- tor lek hypothesis is indicated by several find- ings, including that status is consistently asso- ciated with male but not female sports achievement and that male athletes are more likely than female athletes to be motivated by competition. Furthermore, this account also ex- plains girls’ and women’s extremely low inter- est in watching nonstylistic women’s sports.

A bit more on spectator lek

https://time.com/4322947/men-women-sports-evolution/

Much of the answer is based on the phenomenon known as the spectator lek. Principally found in birds, but also in some species of insect and mammal, a lek involves males gathering in a single place and displaying their plumage, size or overall fitness, sometimes by engaging in mock—or not-so-mock—combat, while other members of the species observe. For females, the value of watching the displays is straightforward, since it helps them select the mates who have the fittest genes and can best compete for resources. For male spectators, it has equal, if different, value, allowing “nonparticipating males [to] monitor the performances so they can evaluate potential competitors and allies,” the researchers write.

[Paul Arden]

There is a lot in there, Vince. My principle reason is for skills development. For me it has a direct benefit on the reason I do anything, which is to go fishing.

Very similar to triathlon actually. I’m not there to compete against anyone. I’m there because it makes me train. That in turn affects my fitness and makes it easier to load the boat down the staircase of hell, or go hard up jungle rivers. And hopefully I’ll live a bit longer too, so I can fish more days. And actively fish them.

The fact that I occasionally win a casting competition is great too, because it validates technique. But it all comes down to better angling opportunities for me. More shots go in. Wind is not a problem. I don’t mess around with more false casts than I need. And handling the pressure of competition is very similar to handling the pressure of a shot.

I wouldn’t compete if there was no fishing.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Beautiful plumage though Paul but apart from the piss take, it does point the way into getting more ladies into competition casting and angling.

The fact that I occasionally win a casting competition is great too, because it validates technique.

In terms of teaching though, the task, equipment and environment in competition is highly constrained and changing objectives as we have to in order to fish result in a greater variety of patterns.

If you go back to what Nick Winkelman said “The question is whether the athlete is learning to self-organize under learning conditions that represent the skill in real life - I call this the National Geographic filter - is this how it is done in the wild.”. For you, the fishing and competition technique are reasonably similar. For myself and the people I teach it is poles apart and our teaching needs to reflect those differences.

Very similar to triathlon actually. I’m not there to compete against anyone. I’m there because it makes me train.

I’m training to extend my fishing career as well but not competing, my feathers have all fallen out

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Sure. But something like the Danish Games but with a variable course format would work for you. If you set something like that up at the BFCC I’d certainly enter when over. I’d train for it too, which is the whole point.

I’d love to see a whack-a-mole type competition but it’s not very applicable to most people’s fishing. That would be the closest game to what I currently do here.

Cheers, Paul

[Stoatstail50]

I agree Paul that a series of lessons is going to be the most effective means of continuous development but I think we have to accept that most casting instruction is delivered through single points of contact. This could be individual or group sessions but the common feature of them all is that they are relatively short and for instructors they’re usually a one shot game, you get one go to make an improvement.

This is a driver for performance related drilling, rather than for retention and transfer, at the meat and two veg end of the casting pool. It is a driver for fast rather than slow. The only measure of “success” is what the caster can do at the end of the 20 minutes, or hour, or day, that we have had them for. There is no mechanism for us to assess whether this performance is sticky or that they have learned to adapt it when they’re out on the bank. With a long term program this is not the case, then we are able to assess what has and what has not been retained from previous lessons and adjust follow up content accordingly.

Having said that, one hit sessions doesn’t mean we can’t structure our instruction to fit best principles. Basic lesson planning gives a coathanger format. Add in an assessment of the casters objectives, needs and capabilities and, providing an instructor has a basic grasp of the principles of learning and cast mechanics, this will drive what and how we teach.

The missing bit in most of the instructional manuals is how to make that assessment of “who” we teach and the common patterns of cognitive behaviour they are going to demonstrate when learning motor skills. This “who” is the key determinant of what you’re going to teach and when you’re going to teach it…in fact, for any given context, I would suggest it’s the only determinant.

[Torsten]

Hi John,

exactly, we cast the line, not the rod. That's unlike other sports you have mentioned, a flexible level between you and the "projectile". Principles apply only partially, mechanics is quite different IMHO (as Merlin has pointed out in a different thread).

Greetings,
Torsten

Hi John,

is your objective distance fly rod throwing?

Greetings,
Torsten

However, the principal of using kinetic chaining to create energy and transmit it to the rod is the same as is used and instructed in other sports to create energy and transmit it to a ball, discus or javelin.

Hi Torston,

All line length casting, principle is the same. Only joint range and joint engagement changes as the line length changes.

John

[Paul Arden]

Hi Mark,

If they don’t practise then I will not see improvements, simple as that. In fact most of the lesson won’t even be retained.

I think most of us would be extremely alarmed to meet the student again two weeks later, and would probably wish we hadn’t

A quick search on learning to drive a car; on average it takes 45 hrs of lessons and 22 hrs of practise. Things must have changed because I think I was 15 lessons but significantly more practise time. But on the other hand, within six months of passing I had written a car off by spinning it into a ditch! All part of the learning curve. Apparently I’m not a race car driver.

All of my courses start with one lesson of course. It’s rare but it can happen that I’m impressed at the beginning of the second lesson. Sometimes however we have managed to go off in a complete and unexpected targent. And I just wouldn’t know. It’s not just beginners either but very experienced casters can often go in a different direction too. It’s been very eye-opening to say the least.

Cheers, Paul

[John Waters]

Hi John,

exactly, we cast the line, not the rod. That's unlike other sports you have mentioned, a flexible level between you and the "projectile". Principles apply only partially, mechanics is quite different IMHO (as Merlin has pointed out in a different thread).

Greetings,
Torsten

Hi John,

is your objective distance fly rod throwing?

Greetings,
Torsten

Hi Torston,

All line length casting, principle is the same. Only joint range and joint engagement changes as the line length changes.

John

Hi Torsten,

That's very true, the rod is a flexible lever and we only throw the line, although on occasions I have thrown the rod as well. However the direct contact we have is with the rod only. We create movement in the body that is transferred to the rod through the rod hand. IMHO, that connectivity i.e. hand through rod to line has zero impact on how we move the body. I'm not sure what principles you refer to, but IMHO, the caster can control (physical restrictions through injury, age etc. aside) what joints are used, the sequence in which they are used and the movement range and velocity generated from that joint movement. In my view the principle of proximal to distal chaining is independent of gear.

John