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Walter & Group...
[GH] From Gary Eaton. A vigorous counterpoint. This raises some issues on the advisability of maintaining the Task 20 requirement on the MCI Casting Exam. Despite its length his message is worth reading in its entirety :
Gordy,
I have attached a document that addresses the non-dominant hand discussion -
Gary Eaton
The entire document is pasted here, but likely will lose formatting.
Gordy, I wrote this before the “opposite hand” requirement became rule. When shopping it to MCI’s for input, they told me it would preclude my Master’s Certification, so I stored it on my computer for these three plus years. As I re-read and edit this today, my professional opinion has not changed. Furthermore, the exam requirement is very simplistic and does little to create significant cross-over of skills to the non-dominant hand.
Of course, I worked on casting with my less-used hand for the exam and demonstrated this ability as part of my adapting to strong wind from the rod-hand side. I passed.
Following this “letter of concern”, I have added a piece on developing ambidextrous capacity that I included in one of my “Adaptive Casting” pieces for THE Loop. The two are separated by a series of underlined asterisks *****.
Gary Eaton, MCI
Thoughts on Requiring Master's Test to have an opposite hand component.
As a trained neuroscientist, I believe it is pure folly. The board is simply not qualified to create this expectation. This portion of the certification process is not broken, do not "fix" it.
Would you require Tiger Woods to hit the golf ball left-handed to justify his prowess?
Would any tennis master advocate switching hands knowing it would decrease the finesse of the match player?
Would the military sniper be expected to shoot with the non-dominant eye in a critical combat situation just to demonstrate that he maintains the ability?
Should we strip Hank Aaron of his hall-of-fame honors because we will reserve this for only switch-hitters?
Can we expect major league pitchers to throw with equal accuracy and speed with each arm?
The answer to each of these is a resounding, “NO!". Likewise, the MCI should be showing the most consistent casts and fewest repetitions to achieve the intended result. This is to reduce confusion for students and utilize the paying clients’ time most efficiently. Should an instructor be truly ambidextrous, great. Meaningful use of the non-dominant hand for instructing seems an unlikely result of this requirement.
I have trained over a hundred people to cast using a hand other than the one with which I cast. They have no problems and continue to return for advancing lessons. They benefit from being able to stand on my casting side and move their opposite casting arm along with mine. When I teach and learn fly-tying from someone who favors the opposite tying hand, we face each other and mimic actions like watching in a mirror. In many hundreds of casting lessons, I have never had someone ask for a specific-handed instructor.
Many people are incapable of crossing dominance due to inherent neuro-matrix "hard wiring". The capacity of an individual to develop cross-dominance remains as unchangeable as eye color. People with one-sided paralysis following a stroke may adapt well to perform their daily life functions without assistance while others decline to oblivion with identical rehabilitation and identical imaging of the neurological areas of damage. Individual handedness issues may not ever be scientifically resolved.
When we consider issues of “eye-dominance”, prior injuries, effects of aging, visual deficiencies, and other anatomic and pathologic processes, the more versatile approach might be to study the proposal. An advisory group of solid advanced instructors with considerable human performance, rehabilitation, and neurological background could promote rational awareness of factors the CBOG might wish to consider.
Solid instructors with little or no capacity to switch hands have been enhancing the FFF casting instructorship program for decades. They can be masterful casting instructors and casters. We are not seeing a clamor for ambidextrous instructors from the public. If I have a candidate with unilateral arm dysfunction who can perform the current exam with a dominant casting arm, it would be blatantly discriminating to deny their Master's Certification due to incapacity of opposite-hand performance. People with left-hand dominance will have a decided advantage because almost all lefties have inherently more cross-dominant potential and skills. This results from a lifetime of adapting to the world where they are a minority of about 15%. They usually adapt to a right-handed instructor easier, and better, than the instructor can ever adapt to using their non-dominant hand.
Should the requirement arise, it is reasonable to require all current Masters to re-test with the new opposite-hand test in order to maintain their certification.
Members of the Casting Board of Governors assert that it probably takes years to prepare for the Master's exam after becoming a CCI, yet the test has changed in the past two years and consideration of an expanded hand-dominance challenge is being considered. How is one to prepare to be examined in a roiling matrix of changing requirements? All requirement changes should be delayed three-years from the decision to implement to allow candidates to anticipate the exam they prepare for.
Pursuing this will certainly renew legitimate disgruntlement with a "fickle" CBOG and testing program. Increasing criticism about the CBOG actively changing the program to keep it excessively difficult, and more exclusive, should be anticipated. Again, this portion of the process is not broken, please do not "fix" it.
A more realistic issue to confront is the concept of re-certification or required continuing education for maintenance of certification.
Respectfully,
Gary Eaton
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TECHNIQUES FOR DEVELOPING NON-DOMINANT HAND CASTING -
>From THE Loop Winter 2010, page 8
ADAPTIVE FLY CASTING INSTRUCTION -
TECHNIQUES FOR PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS
A Practical Approach to Common Ailments That Limit Fly Casting
Part Two - Hand & Arm Osteoarthritis
By Dr. Gary Eaton, MCI
AN EXCERPT . . .
DEVELOP CASTING SKILL WITH EITHER HAND – Probably no other skill extends the service life of an angler like being proficient with both hands. This one enhancement prolongs the fishing day and the capacity to fly fish until another body part wears out in old age. Experience with brain injury sufferers suggests that the capacity to initiate, much less develop skill, with the non-dominant hand may not exist for many people.
Unknown factors present barriers to the point of impossibility as some people simply never transfer any skills to their non-dominant hand. Recognize adaptable students before exploring the following eight approaches for developing cross dominant casting basics-
1) Two rods mimic each other in different hands. - Often with only one of them lined-up.
2) Begin and end each practice session using the non-dominant hand.
3) Use non-dominant hand on twice as many successful casts as dominant side during training.
4) Use a heavier line weight outfit in the non-dominant hand while being cautious not to overuse. Stop as soon as variability of casts encroaches. Over-lining AND underlining the non-dominant side outfit because both offer different kinesthetic and, maybe visual, feedback.
5) Condition the non-dominant hand first and last in casting sessions and consider over-conditioning the non-dominant side as compensation. (See The LOOP Spring 2009 and Summer 2009 for my explanations of fine points of conditioning versus training.)
6) Pantomime with non-dominant side, relentlessly - in the car, on the elevator, on the phone. . .
7) Work in front of a mirror:
a) At extremely slow speeds of one minute per half cast, then gradually increase pace
b) With both hands simultaneously moving a simulated rod (a writing device works fine)
c) Alternating dominant and non-dominant hands performing the same cast.
. . . . end of excerpt from THE Loop
Gary Eaton, MCI
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[GH] Gary,
You bring up some valid concerns, I think, with respect to having all Master instructors all become proficient in casting with the "opposite hand".
The issue is not whether or not learning to cast with the opposite hand would be beneficial when fishing. It is whether or not it would help most instructors teach.
The main problem is what you have called, "hard wiring". This makes it almost impossible for a sub set of otherwise very competent instructors to reach a true level of competence as they go through the tortures of endeavor while others differently endowed can learn easily to cast with the opposite hand. As I pointed out, this ability to switch becomes ever more difficult as one gets older.
One might ask if instructors and coaches of other sports such as tennis, golf and baseball are required to be competent with both hands.
Many of us (including you) have had little or no trouble teaching students who are opposite handed without having to resort to "opposite hand casting". Ambidextrous instructors undoubtedly do find that it helps them teach.
Did it make it easier to teach when I learned to cast with my "other" hand ? I'd have to say, "perhaps". For an instructor who has a devil of a time making that switch I daresay it would not make his teaching one bit easier.
It would be interesting to see messages from some of you who found that learning to cast with the "other hand" failed to help you teach fly casting.
SO - An alternative to think about .........
For the future, rather than having our MCI candidates comply with Task 20 as it is now presented, perhaps a task requiring the demonstration of methods designed to teach students who are opposite handed to their instructor would make sense. Only one of the methods might be teaching and demonstrating with the instructor using the same hand as the student regardless of "handedness".
The many alternative methods that most good instructors have been using for years would also be accepted while being given equal weight on the exam.
Gordy
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[GH] From Bernd Ziesche :
Hi Gordy,
I find it very useful in teaching situations to be able to cast on both sides with both hands. This way I have to care much less about wind and sun. I just put the sun in the student's back so they don't have to watch into the sun and depending on the wind I may choose right or left hand to show a cast.
Besides that if an instructor thinks it is difficult to learn casting on both sides the student probably never will learn it.
What I learned after starting to really focus on my "second hand" was that it was much less difficult to learn to cast with it than I thought it would be. And that should be the message to all students, I think.
Greets
Bernd
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[GH] From Jim Dowd :
Gordy,
Here's my 2 cents worth...
Casting with the non-dominant hand, like casting with one's eyes closed, is a REALLY great kinesthetic teaching tool. It "forces" one to give attention to "new" sensory input involved with the fundamentals of fly casting without input or "interference" from familiar (and possibly pre-conditioned) reflexes associated with the dominant hand. Unlike verbal or visual cues, this a form of direct instruction allows the student an opportunity for self discovery at a very high level.
Thank you very much for the Master Study Group!
Cordially,
Jim Dowd
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[GH] From Michael Heritage :
I actually found learning to cast properly with my left hand quite difficult, especially once I started to carry 45' or more and it became even more of a fiasco when I added the D/H. I believe Denise Maxwell lifted (with my permission) some of my musings on the subject that I had written on my blog and published them in Loop.
It can be quite a humbling experience to discover that you can't even get an instruction from your right hand to your left. On the plus side, I sometimes cast for students with my left hand and asked them to tell me what was going wrong. Almost without exception they told me what was wrong. It was sometimes exactly what I had been trying to correct in their casting for the last hour!
Mike
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Attachment:
MCCI opposite hand issue.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document