Mental Practice

[Paul Arden]

Out of curiousity, for students who have limited access to outdoor casting time, maybe they have weather or time constraints, does anyone suggest that they practise the mental imagery of casting?

Or is this something that you have tried suggesting even when they have access to the great outdoors? Or perhaps during lessons?

I remember (almost 25) years ago being asked about this by Bugman Mark, who taught karate…

Hi Paul,

Have you ever used a psychological training technique called visualisation? I use it a lot in my training, and was wondering if it could be applied to flycasting. (Mark is a Karate instructor - Paul)

The idea is that if you sit quietly for half an hour each day, close your eyes and visualise yourself doing a tricky technique perfectly, then your technique will improve. I use it a lot for Karate, and it does work. What got me thinking about the flycasting is this: Some people who use the technique for weapons training (let's say a wooden staff, for instance) say that they visualise the body movements they have to make, and when they train the staff naturally follows the correct path. Others say they visualise the path of the staff, and their body automatically makes the correct movements when they train. Personally I visualise both - one is no good without the other, after all.

Mark
Mark Whittaker

A nice reference to internal/external focus there!

Cheers, Paul

[Rickard]

I think watching videos of good casts is good for this.
Videos like this one:

And pantomime the cast with the first section of the rod. Doing it slow with some kind of mirror, at least at first.

[Paul Arden]

Apparently it can be a very good idea even during training to use mental imagery. Eg between casts to run through the cast in the mind. This is not something I can remember asking a student to do, but it’s certainly something I’ll try.

I also like the idea of suggesting mental practise when the rod isn’t in hand. This is something I do along with pantomime. I’ve done this for all sports, both rugby and triathlon. Particularly triathlon transitions I run through many times in my mind, as well as the swimming stroke, which is another highly technical sport.

I’m going to make more use of it in teaching.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

I see this as belonging more to the top end of the learning process, once autonomous performance is realised. At the acquisition and associative stages, I think it drives internal cueing but this is based on a sample size of one.

do blend pantomime and visualisation, a wooden spoon becomes my rod and the line outcome is imaginary but my cue is external, what is happening to the bowl of the spoon. I know a test pilot that does similar, his hands become the aircraft and he walks his profile, leaning at turns, climbing and diving with arm extensions.

Regards

Vince

[John Waters]

I believe mental imagery can use internal or external cues, equally effectively for motor skill acquisition.

John

[VGB]

Hi John

For performance of a learned skill, I agree visualisation has benefits. It has been shown to improve the recall of previously learned motor programmes and can reinforce existing skills. However, you can’t easily visualise a movement sequence that you cannot perform and I think that it can prove disruptive at certain stages of learning.

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Interestingly, although perhaps not surprisingly, there are several views on this. One is to use it in the early learning stages (p234). Certainly Mark the Bugman provided both internal and external cueing examples, and he mentioned to me in conversation later, that through visualisation there were examples of karate practitioners actually performing kicks afterwards that they couldn’t perform before.

But I also do agree with Vince that I would expect it could accidentally promote internal focus.

It would be interesting to read some more on the subject.

I certainly have some students who do this already and you can see them doing it between casts. (I haven’t asked why or where they got it from, but I will). It would be interesting I think to explore encouraging it. Ie at learning stages to visualise the next cast prior to making it.

One thing I think worth mentioning, is that in a distance competition, I analyse my previous cast and prepare a new cue for myself while stripping the line in between casts. The idea that we are trying to produce our best casts in a competition (or practise for that matter) is incorrect, we are trying to produce a better cast than the previous one. For that every cast is cued differently. The cast is made, analysed and a new cue generated. That’s why practise is so absorbing.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

I don’t think P234 promotes that view at all Paul, it tells you that mental practice is better than doing nothing but not as good as practising the skill. In fact it cautions against uncontrolled mental practice for learners.

If it was that easy, we could watch an Olympic diver going through a sequence either live or on screen, have a mental review of the process while supping a few beers and then flipping 2.5 somersaults with a twist, before twofers at the pool bar. In practice, most of us would end up being the drunk that belly flops of the side while losing their budgie smugglers.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

A good read

https://www.drdevroy.com/visualization- ... -exercise/

[Paul Arden]

Cheers, interesting stuff. Have you tried asking students to do it? Again in the article it partly supports the idea of skills acquisition and not only of refinement.

I can imagine it might surprise a few students, although mine already think I’m weird. “Close your eyes, count to 10, breathe deeply, you’re about to find yourself on an imaginary beach on a desert island… keep your eyes closed to see the imaginary trophy bonefish at 10 o’clock.”

Actually I do ask anglers to do this already in training. Just not when I’m present. Phil had some good stuff to say about this.

Cheers, Paul