So you’re possibly suggesting that we shouldn’t teach saltwater fly anglers taking shots because most anglers fly fish for trout?
I’m not suggesting any such thing. If a caster has a specific need then the instructor should be able to teach what they need.
I for one can’t do a 170 without hospital treatment and have very little experience in the salt and if I can’t do it, or I don’t fish the salt much, I don’t believe I should be teaching it without a big caveat. I can however cast 80’, I’ve even done it off a flats boat in a big wind. Even so, no one on this good earth is going to come to me for competition distance instruction or a tarpon tune up. It would be dishonest to claim I was competent to teach that stuff.
The previous comments I’ve made on these threads refer to how you teach “what” you teach. Historically the 170 and other distance casting techniques have been taught using direct instruction and highly internalised cueing, it’s usually instructor feedback dependent and error reductive. As you have recognised there are other ways to teach this. My point, if there is one anymore, is that the old ways of producing maximum performance are not as effective as the other “new” ones we’ve been discussing, for producing maximum adaptability for a recreational caster.
I wouldn’t teach a 170 to a trout angler but I may teach eliptical casting or presentation casts or the speys to a saltwater angler who wants to cast 80’ upwind in a wave from a boat. Not because they need it to catch their cliff face permit but because the process develops balance and functional stability and variability promotes adaptability.
Historically these “whats” too have been taught using predominantly direct, reductive instruction and this to some extent has been driven by the techniques employed by the experts. By and large recreational casters are not experts and this requires a tweak to instructional technique. If you’re an expert caster, and an instructor, this can be counterintuitive, as evidenced by the many furrowed brows and irritation on here and elsewhere.
This weird dissonance can be remedied by reading a few books. The people who write them have a greater insight into learning and cognitive processes than I could ever muster. I’ve personally found them to be highly enlightening but they do on occasion represent a significant challenge to the current instructional orthodoxy. This affects “how” you teach your 170 back cast shot not whether you teach it or not.