Movement Skills Overview

[VGB]

I train lightly for fishing, usually 1.5 hours of walking a day and exercise bike 3 times a week for a bit more aerobics stuff when I’m not recovering from an injury. I keep fit to fish not to cast, covering up to 6 miles a session and need the upper body strength to get in and out of the river. I am in my 60s now and was fit as a butchers dog in my 40s, I cast a lot further now than I did then.

I would guess that my student demographic are gentlemen of a certain age, very few are athletes in the traditional sense.

Regards

Vince

[John Waters]

Performance includes many outcomes in fly fishing and casting, many of which are enhanced by flexibility and strength training. Performance is much more than being able to cast long distances. Injury prevention is one key component of performance that gets too little attention. Shoulder, elbow and wrist issues, amongst others, impact fishing and casting performance. The technique instructed is equally important in injury occurrence. Instructional focus on joints like the wrist and elbow to generate movement range and speed, with little focus on more proximal flexibility and strength, also impacts injury occurrence and hence performance in the future. That applies to all ages.

John

[Lasse Karlsson]

Hi Vince

I would bet that your technique has improved more than your strength have deteriorated the last 20 years
I am probably the weakest of everyone here, so need technique like my life depended upon it. was stronger a few years back, and cast further because of it. will get that back though, tired of crap injuries the last 5 years, none of them casting releated, but hindering casting none the less.

Oldest student I have had was well into his 70's and had flyfished longer than I have existed. Youngest was 3, but that was my daughter, so not sure if she counts Rest is in between and ranking from never picked up a rod to beating me in competition.

Cheers
Lasse

[VGB]

You are correct Lasse, technique has carried me a lot further than I expected. Turning that understanding into a transferable lesson has been another challenge. Reducing the complexity and leveraging off the Pygmalion effect has helped.

Regards

Vince

[Lasse Karlsson]

I had high expectations for you, glad they came to fruition

Love the kiss principle!

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

I’m sure the reason technique beats strength is because the loop is the key. If you form a loop with 75’ of line, the difference between throwing it at 100mph and 150mph is not too great. Whereas the difference between firing an arrow at these speeds is much more significant.

So I don’t know if we would see a jump in distance without a change in technique. I’m sure we would see greater consistency with specific physical training exercises.

You know me, I think we should train our bodies irrespective of what we do in life. It doesn’t matter much in our 20s but it certainly makes a difference as we get older. I have guests my age and a little older sometimes, who struggle just to get in and out of the boats. Some slowing down is inevitable, but the longer we can put this off the far better our lives will be. And… we will probably live and fish for longer too.

Cheers, Paul

[John Waters]

I’m sure the reason technique beats strength is because the loop is the key. If you form a loop with 75’ of line, the difference between throwing it at 100mph and 150mph is not too great. Whereas the difference between firing an arrow at these speeds is much more significant.

So I don’t know if we would see a jump in distance without a change in technique. I’m sure we would see greater consistency with specific physical training exercises.

You know me, I think we should train our bodies irrespective of what we do in life. It doesn’t matter much in our 20s but it certainly makes a difference as we get older. I have guests my age and a little older sometimes, who struggle just to get in and out of the boats. Some slowing down is inevitable, but the longer we can put this off the far better our lives will be. And… we will probably live and fish for longer too.

Cheers, Paul

Hi Paul,

Agree with you about technique changes. It will be interesting to see how that changes in the future, if at all. My view of distance casting technique is that any change made to increase the distance thrown should primarily be made to generate greater line speed. Fly line loop propagation is complex, so the impact of air resistance on the distance a loop will travel forward, when line speed increases, is difficult to calculate. However, any increase in speed aids distance casting performance.

Pity we did not have access to a stadium sized wind tunnel.

John

[Paul Arden]

I don’t know the answer John. I think distance in the 5WT is very much tied to line carry and shoot is limited by this. A faster loop unrolls quicker, how much more line can be shot while the loop is unrolling, I don’t know.

I know that remaining momentum at loop straight will shoot more line. So extra speed certainly assists at loop straight.

The other side of the equation is the more speed we generate with the rod, the greater the resulting counterflex and the wider the initial loop shape. There is a balance in all of this.

Personally I think more distance will come from minimising the dangle and tightening the loop. We’ve all experienced casts that seem to “float” through the air.

Lots of unknowns.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

In my opinion, you are continually fighting the speed/accuracy of movement trade off battle as you seek to improve, deliberate practice is the key to this improvement. Close quarter accuracy in constrained environments is more important to local anglers here than absolute distance in a field, therefore my teaching is tailored to this end. More tai chi than Kung fu.

First aid training today, another important skill we need.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

A few things to be learned from England Rugby this weekend:

Skills practice has to be realistic

The players made mistakes and they tried playing safer and by playing safer you end up playing riskier because we haven’t trained that. We haven’t trained like that, so suddenly you’re doing something in a Test match that we haven’t trained. Tonight they didn’t – they made errors and got into the next battle. If there is anything I can encourage the players to do, it is go into the next battle.

We’re going to make errors but do it the way we want to do it. And that’s okay because then we know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. If we do something completely different, we don’t know if the original plan is going to work or not. What pleased us today is that the players go out and just tried to bring all their strengths onto the pitch.

Pygmalion effect:

In many ways, though, it is George Furbank who epitomises this England side. Borthwick has repeatedly talked of an offload he made at Murrayfield that went to ground. His point being that England lost the ball but it was the correct decision to make. It seems to be an apocryphal story but Furbank is someone who does some wonderful things with the ball in hand and also drops a few clangers. Borthwick’s decision to back him is a surprise given he coached Freddie Steward at Leicester but also shows his determination to accentuate the positive, which is a trait with which he is not instinctively associated.