John Waters wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 1:20 am I agree that many casters would not consider fly fishing an athletic endeavour. However, when either a shock or repetitive injury to the wrist, elbow or shoulder occurs, that view may warrant reconsideration. Kuhn and Kuhn (2020) surveyed 162 recreational fly fishers, living in the United States, about any pain they experienced whilst or after fly fishing. The authors found 36.4% of respondents reported experiencing upper extremity pain immediately after fly fishing, ranging from periods of less than one day and up to a week after their fly fishing outing. None were associated with long term disability.
I found it interesting that the authors mentioned an elliptical or side-arm casting technique in their findings. I suspect most of those anglers using that technique used torso rotation to some degree in their stroke. If they did not, maybe they should have. Both the instruction and application of an initial internal focus on how best to capitalise on torso movement, which then transitions to an external focus, may assist in better casting performance and less negative impact on the angler's shoulder, elbow and wrist.
A very interesting read John. I have had a cursory read of the paper and need time to digest it properly
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1 ... 7120959303
A few points caught my eye
This may be a geographical finding, it’s not a common technique over here but I would suggest we have our fair share of injuries in the UK. I want to mull over the “grip” discussion a bit as well, grip strength that results in rigidity has been overlooked as well.Pain was shown to be significantly associated with casting in an elliptical/sidearm fashion (as opposed to casting overhead or 2-handed), varying grip style, and using weighted line or added weight (split-shot, weighted heads, etc). A major strength of the current study was that the general North American recreational fly-fishing population was surveyed, which may make our results more generalizable to the “average” fly-fisher.
Have you picked up anything other than the torso twist that you are willing to share?
Regards
Vince