Instructors platform

[Paul Arden]

I do something similar but I didn’t know it had a name. In fact my student tomorrow was given the task of experimenting using what we covered last week to see what he could find.

… Anyway have a great week exploring the things we talked about today. I’ve intentionally not given you any drills because I want you to explore it yourself.

I think that’s very important for all levels of students. But every once in a while it’s nice to set it as an open homework assignment. It’s also a very good way of breaking ingrained habits of course.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

It does set the grey matter running, I was wondering if that was how the 170 came about and if circles, straights and eights serves a similar process for those who are earlier in the skills acquisition process.

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

It all has to start somewhere. I think open ended play is an important part of development. That’s where the lumiline has been very useful. All of sudden it goes from trying to put the fly somewhere to what can I do with this? All those aerielised Spey casts that I use came from playing with the lumiline.

But I also believe that casting to fail is important too. Instead of trying to be perfect explore being imperfect. If a student has a problem with tails then one way of dealing with it is to explore throwing tails. Tailing loop curves and skip casts undoubtedly came from this. I have a SW collapsed cast presentation that I know came from this!

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Going back to Bart’s cues, there’s a bit more here

https://www.scienceforsport.com/coaching-cues/

This mentions normal cues which I guess is what John meant by neutral cues.

0A8E16B7-C416-4384-8034-5B584501D8E6.png (8.79 KiB) Viewed 1072 times

[VGB]

I suspect myself and Bart are running down parallel tracks. We’ve both recognised that preparation for assessment doesn’t give you a broad grounding in instructional techniques and in the absence of a programme have gone out to educate ourselves. There’s some really solid coaching information out there and we are trying to apply it and in our specialism, there’s not much out there. Bridging the gap between theory and practice takes time and I’m 60, I don’t have 20 years to become a halfway decent instructor.

I’ve had appointments with the optician and a doctor this year, where they’ve asked me if they can consult a colleague for a second opinion and I’m not even the elephant man. I guess what he’s looking for is similar networking with other professionals to bounce stuff off.

Regards

Vince

[andrewparkeruk]

https://www.tdgolfcoach.com/learning/co ... ching-why/

Vince I have read this article for a second time: the first time I must not have been in the mood for new terminology. It makes some great points:

Take this example, where a player has come to you with an excessive out to in swing path. You decide that the swing path is a problem and explain to the player some basic concepts around swing path. You then have 2 options.

OPTION 1: Make the player aware that their hands are moving away from their upper body at the start of the downswing and explain that they need to keep their right elbow tucked in and hands close to the right pocket on the way down in order to correct the swing path.

OPTION 2: Place a head cover (task constraint) in such a position that if the player repeats the same out to in swing path, the clubhead with collide the head cover. Then, simply ask the player to strike the ball whilst missing the head cover

In option 1, the player has been dictated to (little autonomy and low relatedness) whilst also encouraged to focus very internally (ouch!).

In option 2, the player is faced with a task, promoting goal directed behaviour and an external focus (Gabriele Wulf has a ton of research supporting this). In terms of autonomy, this is now dramatically increased as the player must now problem solve and discover the new movement themselves, whilst relatedness is also increased by nature of conversation. In addition and importantly for the coach and player, the desired technique will emerge from a clever positioning of the head cover!

The TRUE BEAUTY of this exercise is that the constraints will act to force players towards certain behaviours – (there should be no need to reel off any script about ball, hand or shoulder position in this exercise).

Makes me wonder how many flycasting instructors, and instructor assessments, rely on those scripts

An aside: at EWF some years ago Aitor (aka Unregistered) and I witnessed an instructor teaching by demonstrating what not to do!

[Paul Arden]

Hi Vince,

I have no problems discussing anything and find the teaching terminology and ideas interesting. I’m always trying to improve; that’s very important I think for any instructor. I think you’ll find that many experienced instructors have gravitated to these things through experimentation. If you’ve taught, say, 10 or 20,000 students, it would be very surprising if you hadn’t learned from the process and explored and developed a wide range of techniques. And that’s just on your own, imagine then teaching with other experienced instructors.

I’ve always seen teaching fly casting and fly fishing as a two-way learning approach, in the same way that a fly box is a working tool box, giving lessons is a continual development process, not only for the student, but also – and often more so – for the instructor. There are many ways of going from A to B. Since they all lead to B we get to explore different avenues. This is handy when we encounter a landslide of course, but actually it keeps it interesting for us too since we can constantly develop our methods.

I can fully understand Bart’s position and indeed think it’s a great initiative. I’m always more than happy to discuss things here! Personally, the main reason I spend so much time on the Board, is because I see the information posted here as having a wide reach – and maybe even after I’ve kicked the bucket!

I am surprised that none of the associations have taken the initiative. Maybe they don’t want to start internal fights

What I do believe, is as an instructor/coach/angler/ fly tyer, we have to be flexible and come up with novel approaches to challenges. That’s what keeps it interesting.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Makes me wonder how many flycasting instructors, and instructor assessments, rely on those scripts

Hi Andrew, I tried the scripted approach once and dumped it, I’d lost the student somewhere about the grip shape. Some of the less mechanically minded have reached their bandwidth limitations putting the rod and reel together. I try and keep to my 3 big major points to take away to stop overload and not try and dump everything I know on them in one big lump. I think that the great thing about the external cue is that it removes a huge amount of the detail about which joints to wiggle in and what sequence, that results in overload.

The other hugely interesting part of the text you quote is:

In terms of autonomy, this is now dramatically increased as the player must now problem solve and discover the new movement themselves

I understand that it’s not only autonomy but retention is also aided by this approach and we have to consider our role in the process. With a beginner we may start by instructing but as the student improves our role changes, they are the expert in their individual constraints but we can manipulate the task and environmental constraints and I think we are more of a mentor or facilitator at this point.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

Hi Paul

I can think of a couple of reasons why the associations might not go here formally but that doesn’t stop interested individuals talking bollox to each other. Changing human behaviour through instructing is fascinating and I’ve come across some that are caused by the standard theoretical constructs that have been misinterpreted or misunderstood.

I had a student that was struggling to carry a longer line, he knew the mantras about 5 essentials, increasing arc etc, he had done his homework, his body movement was pretty good, there was weight shift going on. The issue was that they had viewed casting stroke/arc as sequential activity, the arc followed the end of the stroke, and looking at the 2D diagrams that label parts of the stroke I could see how he got there. I changed his reference point to the rod tip and showed increasing arc as a clock motion and increasing arc as a consequence of SLP. A huge light bulb went on over his head and there was a step change improvement in his casting, it was great to see.

For me, this manipulation of what goes on in between the ears should be our bread and butter but those sort of discussions only take place in the dark corner of pubs after hours.

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

I understand that it’s not only autonomy but retention is also aided by this approach and we have to consider our role in the process. With a beginner we may start by instructing but as the student improves our role changes, they are the expert in their individual constraints but we can manipulate the task and environmental constraints and I think we are more of a mentor or facilitator at this point.

I completely agree and this is an excellent observation, Vince. That’s ideally where we want to get to with our students. When we can get that we are doing very well!

I’m not sure it’s possible to learn to cast with the 5Es They can be very distracting.

Cheers, Paul