Strength and mobility for general wellbeing and fly casting

You will add hours to your fishing trips because you will be able to fish for longer hours without getting tired. I lift weights quite consistently and have never fished with anyone that has been able to fish longer than me. They always get tired and start to complain about aches and pains.

You will add years of fishing to your life by preserving lean body mass. I don’t think that anything else is more important to age well than lean body mass.

You will be able to train your casting more by being stronger. What physically limits the amount of training you can do is your technique and strength. Both will allow you to train more.

To become stronger lifting weights is probably the best method. Body weight training isn’t bad but is more limited. With weights you can adjust the resistance within a few pounds, your body weight is fixed and resistance has to be adjusted by changing angles. 

Strength training is also great for flexibility and mobility. In simple terms mobility is being able to handle weight/load in a part of movement. Being very flexible but not being able to handle any load is not very useful. Weight training with full range of motion is probably going to cover the need for flexibility and mobility for most people. By strengthening a muscle in its end range of motion the range of motion can be extended and all parts of the range of motion will be safe to use.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cm_PZdN6bdI a PhD in sports physiology saying it to you also.

So we start from the beginning.

When we lift weights it has to be challenging, so challenging that we almost cannot lift it again without rest both after each set and also each workout. We want to let the body know that it needs to be stronger, that it is more to come so it needs to pack on some muscles. The body is lazy and wants to conserve energy, so it won’t pack on any more muscles than necessary. We also need to do it kind of regularly to let it know that the effort wasn’t something that just happened, this will happen again and again, it must adapt. So with some frequency and consistency the body will adapt, then we need to increase the load to force it to continue to adapt, else it will stop adaptation once again.

When we do your strength training we want to cover the basic movement patterns as a beginning. We probably won’t need any specialisation, but want to cover the whole body.

There are five basic human movements, or six. Squat, hinge, push, pull and loaded carry. The sixth being everything else. This idea I have shamelessly stolen from Dan John. One of the best strength coaches in the world.

Squat, almost sitting down many times. This movement pattern will primarily focus on the frontside of your legs and your ass, secondarily the core of the body. Trained with exercises like goblet squats, barbell squats, lunges and legs presses.

Hinge, picking something up from the ground many times. This movement pattern will primarily focus on the backside of your legs, your ass again. The whole back will get a good workout here also, and your core. It seems like the ass and the core is pretty important to move the body around. Trained with variations of the deadlift and swings.

Push, pushing things away from you with your arms. This movement pattern will primarily focus on chest, shoulders and back side of the arms. Trained with exercises like bench press and standing press with dumbbells or barbell, the classic push-ups and machines for pushing.

Pull, pulling things towards you. This movement pattern covers the backside of the upper body and the frontside of the arms. Trained with exercises like pull-down, chin ups, dumbbell rows, barbell rows, machine rows.

Loaded carry, lifting something up and carrying it around or pulling something around. I guess you do that kind of regularly in your life. You can train this by grabbing something heavy in one hand or both hands and just walk away as far as you can. Or hugging something and walking away. Or grabbing something and start to pull it away. Or push your car around.

So now we have the basics and get in to some details and put an actual training program together.

We need some frequency, we humans like weeks. So doing your strength training at least once a week is a good idea, a frequency longer than a week and we are closing in on a frequency that will not give good adaptations. Twice a week isn’t a bad idea either, probably better for most people. With the program I will outline for you three times per week is also fine, increasing the frequency beyond this it can be a good idea to split the exercise over the days. Adjusting this frequency up or down depending on what is going on in life and how we feel between each session is a good idea. As long as we are doing some progress we are not doing too much, if the progress is going backwards we are doing too much in combination with other stressors in life. If you’re just getting started, two days per week is a good idea to build this new habit.

Consistency, yes how long should we keep doing this thing? Do you ever stop brushing your teeth? That’s your answer. We want to improve or do our best to work against deteriorating. 

We need to increase the load over time. Load is a combination of the weight lifted and the number of times we lift it. And we know that the load has to be so challenging in each set that we are close to not being able to lift it again without some rest. If we only lift the weight once or twice in a set we are in testing territory. Three or four times we need to use a very heavy weight but now we are going away from testing territory and into working territory which is much better for building strength and muscles. Strength and muscles are built even with very high repetition counts, 30+ reps is fine. The problem then is that the last few reps has to be very challenging and painful. So it is better to keep it at a happy medium 6-15 repetitions per set.

So how do we know what weight to use, we try. And we usually just have to try once to find out. Pick a weight that seems reasonable and on the lighter side. Do one set of the exercise. Was it too light? Increase it. Too heavy? Decrease it.

Too light is when 15 repetitions didn’t feel challenging. Too heavy is when the weight feels challenging from the start and getting six repetitions would be impossible. The goal is to work the muscles with control, not show off.

One set per exercise can be fine; more is better until it no longer provides additional benefits for adaptation. So to be sure that we get good effect we do three sets per exercise. Putting that together do three sets per exercise and increase the weight when you reach 15 repetitions on your third set.

We also know that we want to perform each exercise in a full range of motion to do our best for our flexibility and mobility also. Sounds kind of vague and hard. It doesn’t have to be. Perform the exercise without any load at all, do it with as long range of motion as possible in both directions without removing tension in  the main muscles used in the movement and you will know what range of motion that is your full range of motion. I will add some descriptions when I go through each of the example exercises. And YouTube is full of descriptions of how different exercises are performed.

Loaded carries can be very productive. But I would consider them a bit more advanced than the four other movement patterns. So we will set them aside for now.

For squats I think that nothing beats the goblet squat, it makes squatting easy. Holding the weight in front of you helps with balance so this one might be easier to explore the full range of motion with some weight added. Go as deep as you can while still keeping some tension in the front side of your legs. This exercise can be performed with a kettlebell, dumbbell or a weight plate.

https://www.strengthlog.com/goblet-squat/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTrQkBMQySo

For deadlifts I would recommend the Romanian deadlift. Loosen your knees a bit, put your hands in the crease of your hips and try to touch the wall behind you with your but and keep tension in the backside of your legs. Either dumbbells or a barbell is good for this exercise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zmlnbWb-g4

For push go with the dumbbell bench press. Dumbbells allow for a longer range of motion. To test the range of motion here do a standing push-up. First push your hands away, hard. You will probably feel a bit of tension in your chest, now pull your elbows back as far as you can while still keeping a little tension in your chest. An other description is when you perform the exercise is to lower the weight as far as you can with control and not compromise control for range of motion. Keep your elbows in line with your hands is an other good cue.

https://www.strengthlog.com/dumbbell-chest-press/

For pull go with the lat pull down. I like this one because here we can really use the extended part of the movement. Humans are really good at hanging by their arms by design. So the end range is just to extend your arm as far up as you can then pull down to your chin.

https://exrx.net/WeightExercises/LatissimusDorsi/CBFrontPulldown

Performing these exercises one to three times a week, with some progression, you will have a solid foundation. Some specialisation can be added on top of it, but for most not needed. We can revisit specialisations for fly casting in a later article. Like the exercises suggested in Joan Wulff’s fly-casting accuracy, it has some overlap of the training here and weight training I have used to overcome pain from too much training of fly casting.

Afraid of getting hurt by doing strength training? You are doing variations of these things in your everyday life unprepared in an uncontrolled environment, right? If you are fine with that shouldn’t it be safe to do it in a controlled environment with a load you know you can handle? And you are probably not strong enough to hurt yourself: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3pQrgcgQZ_4

Cheers, Rickard

PoD: Me snatching 110kg, when lifting weights is no longer simple.