This one is a slice from the recent FF&W E-List mailing, and is also straight from the next version of my Nature of Fly Casting book (and not yet edited). Makes for a decent (if brief) lead-in piece to the “Heathier Cast” post/page. Here goes….

If you’re going to be doing some serious casting during a practice session, it is smart to do some warm-up before getting into it (especially with distance). Just a few minutes of getting your muscles moving with shorter and/or lower-power casts may help you prevent injury. It may seem laughable to talk about “pulling a casting muscle,” but you’d be surprised how often I’ve heard it from people who just decided to grab a rod and try to pop a few big casts over beers in the backyard.

Between casting practice session (sometimes immediately after), I will do small regimens of stretching, especially my fingers, wrists, forearms, upper arms, chest and shoulders. This is something I really started doing after I began working with Dr. Tim McCue at the Fly Casting Institute. In the past, I sometimes noted wrist, hand and other isolated pains during and after casting (particularly long-distance and curve casting). By stretching between casting sessions, many of those pains simply stopped or were noticeably reduced. I also do exercises with fly casting specifically in mind. My regimen is designed to put a focus on my casting muscles directly, as well as core strength.

In A Fly Fisher’s Life, Charles Ritz discusses weight training in epicurean terms. He talks about swinging wine bottles (empty or sand-filled) as a way to build “incredible” results. When I read Ritz’s text, I get these wonderful visions of strolling along a Provençal stream, swinging a recently emptied bottle of Bordeaux and watching grayling dimple in the shadows. Yes, I think I can understand why Ritz prescribed such a set of exercises!

Other resources for fly-fishing-specific physical conditioning include Dr. Gary Eaton’s articles (appearing in the Federation of Fly Fishers’ journal, The Loop), Stephen Hisey and Dr. Keith Berend’s book, Fit to Fish, Lefty Kreh’s Fly Casting with Lefty Kreh, and Joan Wulff’s Fly-Casting Accuracy.

Even very modest weights can help with increasing strength and control. You can also get benefits from no weight at all, via isometric exercises. Charles Ritz—sans wine bottles—wrote about this as well, inspired by a discussion he had with his friend, Ben Fontaine. Ritz’s suggestions involved squeezing tennis balls, as well as pulling against a simulated rod and line anchored to a wall. Not quite as romatic as wine bottles, but still effective.

If you do decide to start a casting workout program, it is advisable that you get direction from a physician and/or trainer who can make sure that you are not doing something that might lead to injury.