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Walter & Group...
[GH] From Joe Libeu. I'd like to ask any of you left handed instructors to read this carefully and help us by answering the six questions which follow :
Gordy and All,
I have followed with interest the discussion on task 20 and have a couple of thoughts. First of all we teach casting, which hopefully allows an individual to go fly-fishing. With this in mind, I have found it advantages in situations to present the fly using my non dominate hand. 2nd, and this is a question to all of the lefties out there, do you cast with your right hand and if so, do you find it help full in teaching a right hander and 3rd, this is a master test and it is believed to be beneficial in teaching to teach with the same hand that the student uses. The purpose of this task is not to have you cast with the non dominate hand but to learn to use this non dominate hand to allow you to become a better teacher. It also serves you well in fishing those situations where it is needed.
We have just completed our casting class here at the Long Beach Casting Club and had about 80 students. From the second night on, we video tape and use play back to the students as a teaching aid. In doing this, we have the instructors stand 2-3 ft ahead of the student and they perform the cast together. The first time around the student watches and mimics the instructor and the second time around the students looks at his cast. We see this as way to determine if the student is a visual learner and reinforce the teaching with visual play back. Now, if we have a student that is left handed we need to video tape this so that the instructor is using their(With my left hand so the student can see them better. One of the things we do to insure that the instructors are proficient in teaching is to have them learn how to cast the roll cast, pick up and lay down and the false cast during the instructors training with the non dominate hand. We do not require that a instructor be a FFF CI or MCI in teaching our casting class and we are successful. In the past three years we have had instructors from other clubs attend our instructors classes and help us teach, they then take what they have learned back to there club to develop a better program of there own. This year we had 14 instructors from the Orange County Fly Fishers attend our instructors class and 80 percent of them helped in our casting program. This works for us and helps us achieve our goal to develop better casting instructors, which is part of our responsibility of the FFF program. If we can get non FFF instructors to learn to cast with the non dominate hand in order to better teach someone, then why is so difficult for a perceived master to learn in order to become a better teacher?
Joe
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[GH] Joe,
You present a clear picture of how instructors who have learned to demonstrate casting with the "opposite hand" have been of value with your method of teaching fly casting.
Questions which you have posed to the Group (With a bit of editing) :
1. Do you lefty instructors ever find the need to cast with your right hand when fishing ? __________ .
2. " " " " " ever demonstrate casting with your "other" (Rt.) hand to students ? _______.
3. " " " " " ever find it helpful to do this as you teach ?_________.
4. If you answered YES to # 3., let us know how you do so.
5. Do any of you lefties find that being able to make basic casts with your right hand has made you a better fly casting instructor ? ___________.
6. " If we can get non FFF instructors to learn to cast with the non dominate hand in order to better teach someone, then why is so difficult for a perceived master to learn in order to become a better teacher?"
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[GH] From Gary Eaton :
Gordy,
The issues about instructing versus fishing versus competing seem to be rising appropriately.
American Casting Association events do not require non-dominant hand casting. This appears much the same as tennis, baseball, golf, shooting sports, and other competitions where best possible performance remains key.
There are many fantastic sport coaches and mentors whose time of dominance in their discipline is well past. These individuals remain heavily recruited for their expertise in developing skills and strategies to enhance abilities of higher-level players. Their command of fundamentals stabilizes the foundations of their expertise.
Phil Jackson or Larry Brown as a basketball coaches, Jimmy Johnson as a football coach, Bella Caroli (Bela Karolyi) as a gymnastics coach, Bruce Bochy leading the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, etc. None can function near their optimal lifetime performance level. Their best years as competitors remain non-factors in their recognition as Master instructors.
As noted in my LOOP article, the potential value of being able to cast with either hand is not disputed for all of the reasons mentioned and recapitulated within the group's comments. I notice that many advocates cite very long-term or extremely severe disability in justifying the value or developing the skill. Notable, too, is the extreme amount of time many people invest in developing even rudimentary non-dominant side skills as casters. Perhaps this time would better return value if invested in developing instructional skills.
I reiterate that the many valid examples of the value of non-dominant casting skill thus-far expressed never address the dominance embedded in a "hard-wired' manner in a particular individual's neuro-matrix. I suspect that more people with combinations of:
1) eye and hand dominance on same side,
2) right-sided dominance,
3) longer-established single, dominant-side, use patterns
4) older age or greater entrenchment of single-side dominance
5) success without crossing dominance
7) NO neurological nor physical circumstance requiring cross-dominance
8) inherent and developed unilateral dominance as "hard-wiring" combined with experience -
will be lost to the instructor pool as a result of this rule. The more of these conditions that exist, the more difficult the adaptation. The mere presence of "hard-wiring" predisposes people to incurable unilateral side-dominance. The MCI expectation remains a severe burden to a great many and of questionable added value to most.
Indeed many of us have seen quality CCIs abandon MCI pursuit due to this requirement. Anticipate prolonged, negative reactions and increased vehement rhetoric toward the FFF CICP to as a result. Students approaching me for MCI preparation are encouraged to consider their cross-dominance capacity first.
I find the incapacity to make the crossover a complete non-factor in their effectiveness teaching people of either hand-dominance to fly cast successfully. There appears no validated rationale that the incorporation of cross-dominant skill provides significant benefit across the broader student or instructor population..
If students of Jim Valle, with all respect to Jim, were to regularly out-cast or out-fish the students of a MCI who does not encourage cross-dominance, this would be a case-study worth further research. I seriously doubt that many of my students encouraged to non-dominant casting regularly fish with their non-dominant side. I know, with confidence, that my students who prefer side-dominance other than my own, adapt to my teaching to cast and fish in correlation with the quality and frequency of their casting practice, alone.
Gary Eaton
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[GH] Gary,
The FFF CICP has thus far taken the position that a CCI or MCI who participates in giving certification exams should be able to remain a sufficiently competent caster that he/she can perform all of the tasks on the exam.
As you point out, that is not necessarily the case with instructors of other sports.
Two glaring examples which come to mind are :
1. Harvey Penick who was still considered one of the most effective golf teachers / coaches ever born years after he had reached old age and could no longer play.*
2. (As you cite) Bela Karolyi, coach for Nadia Comanici, gymnast who made history by being the first to reach a score of perfect "10's" in the 1976 Olympics. Her coach could do none of the maneuvers his students had perfected. As I've pointed out before, Bela couldn't even climb up onto the balance beam !
Some of my most satisfying moments in teaching fly casting arrive when i can teach one of my students to reach accomplishments that are beyond my own physical ability.
An example : When teaching distance casting, on a good day, I can make perfect casting demonstrations to about 80'. Less than perfect to 90'. So I stick to making those demo's at about 80'. I have had several students who heed my demos, and my coaching to the point that they can easily reach 100' or better.
Now. Am I less of an instructor since I couldn't make that 100' mark any longer ?
Using the same rational, If I can teach students to do about anything I want them to do without my ability to cast with my non-dominant hand, am I a less competent instructor ????
I forced myself with untold hours of practice to overcome my own "hard wireing" during many months of effort. Do I find it helpful when teaching ? Perhaps to a very limited extent. Can I teach without that skill ? You bet.
Will this skill help others teach ? Yes.
Is this skill mandatory for efficient teaching ? I don't think so.
I can see both sides of this argument. My personal opinion as to whether Task 20 should be retained ? Neutral.
Apropos comments made by Gary and others over eye dominance; back in the 80's I had a detached retina in my dominant eye as the result of an injury while fishing in Alaska. Two operations later, complications rendered me legally blind in this eye. This forced me to use my left eye as the dominant one. For over a year, my casting accuracy suffered badly. To make a long story short, after two other operations, I got my sight back in my right eye. Years later, the transferred dominance to my left eye has remained .
Gordy
* The WISDOM OF HARVEY PENICK, by Bud Shrake & Helen Penick, 1997, ISBN 0-684-84508-03 , Pub. Simon & Schuster. (Many thanks to Peter Minnick for sending me a copy.... thanks to Chuck Easterling for pointing out this and Harvey Penick's LITTLE RED BOOK for me in the first place.)
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