Paul Arden | Tuesday, 17 September 2024
Last week I was listening to a podcast on swimming that I subscribe to, where the coach was saying that just going out and swimming laps will not make you a better swimmer and you need to mix up the speeds and ideally work on drills. Swimming is a very technical sport and reminds me a lot of flycasting, although in flycasting we have many more strokes and intended outcomes.
My courses involve these topics for example:
Accuracy, OSD, Hauling
Roll cast, 3 stops
Backcast deliveries
Jump Roll
Spey Casts
170
Presentation casts
Presentation Mends
Rod planes/loop planes
Wind, all options.
Line management, quick shots
Specialist casts/steeple cast/change direction/ snaps/ tailing loops
It was 12 lessons, now it’s ten but most rebook anyway. The course is layered and the learning is spiralled. Accuracy and Distance is a part of almost every lesson as we build.
I’m not writing this to encourage you to book me because certain time zones are too busy now anyway, Malaysia is coming into Wet Season and I have a lot of guiding booked and besides I always seem to have a fresh influx of new students without any sort of serious promotion on my part.
The point however is that you can use the above list and the Sexyloops video manual to help structure your own training plans.
You’ll need to set yourself some tangible goals. The Sexyloops Challenge is a good one. Many take the FFI CCI as a casting challenge. You can also measure yourself in Accuracy and Distance. Even entering competitions. Whatever the challenge is that you set yourself, make sure you have fun doing it and find a way of making improvements measurable.
One of the challenges I set myself when 50’appeared on the horizon was to get fit. Just running around the park doesn’t work for me. So I do Ironman. 3.5 weeks to Ironman Malaysia. No bike here in the UK but I’ve certainly improved my swimming and upped my running volume considerably these past two weeks. I’m still not where I want to be with this fitness wise, but I think I’m a lot fitter than last year. I bloody well should be.
But it’s not about training for an event; instead the purpose of entering the event is to structure my training. It really has become a way of life. Finding the most effective way of training 13 to 15+ hours/week, recovering and restructuring the training weekly to keep building. I’m keen to see where I am now. I’ll know soon enough!
It’s a pity the IM is so expensive. I’d like to do more of them. There won’t be any change out of 2.5K USD and no flight involved. But it gets me training even on days when I’d rather not and I’m a hell of a lot fitter than I’ve been in a long time.
I’d like to beat my IM times set in my mid 30s. That’s not going to be easy out in the tropics. The tropics is a different level. I fully appreciate that but I think I’ll be pushing some of my IM times from back then for sure.
Anyway we all need goals if we want to improve.
I still have a few lumilines left. I found a few more here. And then that’s it! They are 100USD including shipping. Which is a great price particularly since shipping can be 20USD out of the UK!
I might go to the rod factory in Spain next week for a day and catch up with Alejandro, Pablo and Juan. It would be a shame to be so close and not visit. Flights from Gatwick… grrrr.
Have a great day!
Cheers, Paul