Teaching scenarios / Wrist exercises

Walter & Group...

From John Tarr.  My comments in his text in bold red italics   G.:

Gordy,

     Couple of things.  Lefty shared that little secret of his, with me, in December, at the Renzetti Rod Fair.  I had a student that has been a little down on himself, as his casting was not developing as fast as he thought it should.  This particular person was an athlete all his life and just thought fly casting would come easily.  When I told him about Lefty's words of wisdom, he felt better and has continued to practice every day.  In fact, I got to watch him cast in some nasty winds recently, trying his heart out, at a time when a month ago he wouldn't have tried.

 

Which of his many "secrets" and teaching tricks ?

 One problem that I have found with students, that I am still having difficulty with, is their lack of wrist control with heavier rods.  This usually occurs with younger students and petite females.  Still, I have found the problems in others.  In firearms instruction, we referred to it a "limp wristing", when they fail to lock the wrist at all and allow it to flail around.  I'm not worried about controlled wrist movement, but the uncontrolled portion.  Many of these students complain that they do not have the strength to control the rod.  Typically, I will drop the rod weight and size down, to start the learning process.  But, there are times when they want to fish tarpon, tuna, etc and need heavier gear.

     So, my question is this.  Does anyone know of a good wrist strengthening exercise that a student can use?  Preferably one that it is low impact without much chance of injuring someone.  In checking with some of my gym gurus, they don't have any wrist specific exercises.  While I have tried the "work with the outfit that you are going to use" workout, it leads to poor casting techniques, further hurting their learning process.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Yes.  Check out :-

I. Joan Wulff's FLY-CASTING ACCURACY, pp. 89-93. (Note the "Palm up wrist curl and palm down curl, wrist rotation and ulnar deviation exercises.)

II. Also: A FLY FISHER'S LIFE , The Art and Mechanics of Fly Fishing, Charles Ritz, p. 35.  (Charles advocated wrist/hand exercises using a Hock wine bottle, starting with an empty bottle, then filling it with increasing amounts of sand.)

III. 30 days to better FLYCASTING, Berris "BEAR" Samples, pp. 42-44.  (Bear reccomends the use of an egg shaped squeeze-tool.  This fits with the idea that as the hand is exercised, most of the wrist muscles are strengthened at the same time.)    G.

   Next, there is a book out "Bluegill on the Fly."  I don't have a copy right here with me, but I will get the author and publisher and post it tomorrow.  While I don't consider myself the foremost panfish fly angler, I do fish for them.  Typically, I use a 4-weight outfit, with a floating line (GPX WF4F).  I tie my own leaders, 6 1/2 to 9 feet, depending on where I am fishing (shorter if I am fishing a lot of cover).  My tippet is 3-5 pound, again depending on structure.  I do lose some large bass, but it makes the panfish a lot of fun.  For flies, I like ants, boatman bugs, and small poppers.

   John

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Jim Laing comes forth with a problem casting scenario :

 

SHOT-GUN instruction model...

 

Once a year the Parks Department offers flycasting classes and the local FF club solicits volunteers to teach those classes.  So with 15 students you may have a situation where 10 or more volunteers show up to help.  Most of those volunteers are instructors.  Typically the students are placed in a grid (indoors) and the instructors spend time with one, and then rotate to the next.  Each student may have contact with 6 instructors in a 45 minute casting session.  I never thought to much about this until one evening I moved on to my third victim and asked how he was doing, then made a suggestion to help improve his loop.  What happened next was an eyeopener - He asked me to leave him alone!

 

I've made some adjustments to how I approach this situation, and wonder if any of the group has experienced anything like this?  How would you handle a group of 15 students and 10 instructors and 45 minutes?  Radically different scenario than the one instructor 4 students/ 2 hours.... would like to hear some thoughts on how this class may be improved.

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

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Jim ...  That chap who asked to be left alone represents an interesting yet uncommon situation.  Speaks to getting onto the student's "wave length".  Surprises do happen as we teach and that's one of them.

 

This student may have been engrossed in figuring out a problem on his own (????).  When I encounter that situation, I back off immediatly with a brief suggestion that he raise his hand in the event he does want help.

 

Let's see how others in our Group would look at this and the general set-up of that course.  One problem I see, is that when a student is confronted with help from ten different instructors, it may produce a kind of sensory overload.  This can yield confusion, particularly if each of the 10 instructors is using a different approach or information which conflicts with that given by other instructors.

 

As I try to place myself in this situation of trying to learn from 10 different instructors in a 45 minute period of time, I see these and other problems emerging.  For one thing, I'd sure like to see all 10 of these instructors being pretty much on the same page for this brief teaching event.

 

For this reason, if two or three of us are to give a workshop at a conclave, we spend time together well before the event arranging an outline and discussion on what and how we are to teach.  When Jim Valle and I have given courses, we actually follow up on that by going out in the field and going through our actual presentation and make final decisions on how to arrange our students and ourselves for the actual event.  Tom White and I did that for several years.

 

Hard or impossible to do that with Jim Laing's description of a SHOT-GUN teaching model ...... Well named !

 

Gordy

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