Defining Skills Levels

[VGB]

What would you consider a reasonable number to split into groups and what age bands would you set?

[Paul Arden]

I haven’t perceived differences in speed of learning that I can attribute solely to age. One of the issues perhaps is because generally there aren’t many examples of fly casters under the age of ten. When we did the children’s days with STA there was a minimum age of 11. The examples of under this age have all been very good. Alex Jardine, Maxine. Those are the only two I know. Which is interesting because I’ve often heard that children under this age don’t have the strength or coordination.

I’ve certainly taught children younger than 11. But if we are talking differences between 13, 23, 33, 43,,53, 63, 73, 83… while I will communicate differently between children and adults, I don’t see a learning difference between ages.

I do think that it takes a very long time to be a really first class caster. And definitely we can keep
Improving. I know I am. The great thing about starting young is that you have more time to improve.

Cheers, Paul

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Vince,
the biggest groups I have taught were between 20 and 25 students. Usually I took a fellow instructor with me to have some support. The biggest group I was teaching on my own was about 15 students. I didn't see a need to split into groups.
But I see, that in other sports there are aged based groups set up in general.
I think it makes sense to set up a class for children. I did that twice yet. Usually there aren't so many asking for a lesson. Mostly its the father bringing his son, too. For the adults I yet didn't set up any age based groups. I felt fine in teaching the mix.
Opposite to Paul's experience I saw young ppl. learning faster than the older ones, especially physically (performance wise). Ok, when below 12 there is a limit to how long concentration will be on fly casting. For kids I bring a ball. Youngest students I had were 4 and that meant basically waving the stick back and forth for a moment before doing something else.12 to 22 however learn very fast compared to 70 to 80. Still I can mix and will just give a few extra keys for the fast learners.
The older ones may already have more of a basement (skills) to built on. That does make it even often. But the learning speed is higher in younger age. I think that's not up for discussion!?
Regards
Bernd

[VGB]

Hi Bernd

A maximum of 4 for me. Perhaps at my age, I lack the mental capacity to manage any more than that but it suits the way I like to teach and because I don’t teach full time, I can pick my battles. Otherwise, like you father and son are the most common age combinations.

I think that the age thing is a little more complicated than just looking at brain plasticity, there are other factors driving the learning outcome. If I compare like for like teaching objectives, such as getting novices started, younger students come with less mental baggage due to predetermined ideas and maybe are a little less self conscious about learning to cast/fish. However, this is not always the case, fear of failure is a huge individual driver.

Motivation to learn something new has a great effect on outcome in my opinion but this is based on a small sample size. Most of my students are men of a certain age with some disposable income and have previous fishing experience of some kind. In a family unit, one generally wants to be there and the other is along for the ride. I think being able to damp down objections to learning, whilst stimulating and encouraging the positive aspects of the lesson will largely determine the result. Age can be used as an obstacle to learning at both ends of the spectrum.

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

For me it’s very difficult to pin differences down to age. I hate to use the term slow learner because I don’t think of fast/slow learners — I’d prefer to think of them as being “more detailed learners” . Often the differences between students come down to how physically active they are. For example are they playing sport? I’m sure we’ve all experienced teaching racket sport players who learn to fly cast usually very quickly.

Now of course age can play into this because it’s more likely that a 15yo will be playing sport whereas a 70yo may be sedentary — or at least that used to be the case 25 years ago. But if your 70yo is playing tennis or physically active and your 15yo is playing computer games and sitting on the couch (which is more common nowadays!) then I think that the 70yo is going to be a faster student.

The year I taught the children’s days with the STA I taught 1000 children aged 10-16yo. They did not all learn at the same rate! As would be expected some were fast and others were “more detailed”.

I have some 70yo Zoom students in my current classes. They have all been fast learners despite what they might think. And that’s no doubt because they have been casting/fishing for over 50 years. Sure movement is ingrained and that’s a hurdle. But if we teach a new/similar-but-different movement then it’s fast. Of course it takes weeks and even months to fully reprogramme, but I think that’s normal. How many hours did it take us to learn to drive a car just without stalling? And at what age? 17?

So while there are differences between students, I see that as down to whether they actually actively use their bodies. Lots of 60&70yo men go to the gym. My father is in his 80s and goes to the gym every day. He’d have no problems learning to flycast.

Age may play a part and certainly it may influence activity. But directly attributing speed of learning to age is very difficult to say with confidence. You’d have to compare a bunch of sedentary and active students in both age groups.

Cheers, Paul

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Paul,
I agree with all your points about age in learning to fly cast. Quite different to some other sports though! Science speaks different results here.
I d like to add, that there usually isnt one fast learner and a slower one. Instead I see student a is fast in exercise a and student b is fast in exercise b. Hard to forecast who s going to be the fastest in exercise c. I was surprised often. Seemed to me we all have our strong and weaker areas when learning...
Regards
Bernd

[Paul Arden]

Totally. The Curve Cast is a good example of that. Sometimes it can take 20 minutes just to bend the line. And then another student does it first time. Nothing up to this point will be an indicator for me of which it’s going to be.

This variable rate of learning between students is one major reason why 1-1 coaching is a better option.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Hi Bernd

Quite different to some other sports though! Science speaks different results here.

Please could you give examples of the different results? I suspect that you are confusing learning with performance still, the skills acquisition element with the physical aspects.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

Another sport

https://news.sky.com/story/luke-littler ... n%20London.

[Stoatstail50]

I think we’re very far from the original point of the thread here but the current discussion highlights the difference between performance and learning.

Old way/new way, of itself, obviously requires a learner to be able to “perform” both the old and the new way. It’s purpose is to displace and then replace old learned behaviour with new learned behaviour. Performance in this context is plainly a necessity but it is, nevertheless, still just a step on the learning process. The implication and use of this method very clearly being that the capacity to perform a new way does not mean that it has been “learned”. Learning in this case being a permanent change in the behaviour of the learner resulting in the new way being the default movement pattern.

Whilst performance of a particular behaviour has been taught by an instructor, consistent repetition of a new way under the supervision of an instructor is not necessarily evidence that this new way has become the default behaviour of the learner. In one to one teaching the implications of this for an instructor are simply that the job at the end of lesson one is very likely to be incomplete, however good the supervised performance.

I’m convinced also that single lessons are not in the best interests of either a learner or an instructor and I’m going to take a leaf out of Pauls book and only take multiple reservations going forwards.