Self-improvement
Chapter Nine: Physical practice
This month’s column on physical practice begins Segment 3 of the “Performance Psychology and Tournament Fishing” series: Self-improvement.
As leaves and the temperature fall, the end of the tournament season is at hand, or nigh upon us. For many it is a time to rest our rods and reels, do some hunting perhaps and take a break from competitive fishing. Harsh winter weather leads us to put boats into storage and move our chairs closer to the fireplace. And competition becomes a fading memory or a distant dream.
Top professionals, however, recognize there is no real off-season, that expert performance demands ongoing monitoring and continuous improvement. To be sure, brief breaks in competition are welcome and even necessary. Excessive time and effort on one particular activity can lead to burnout, even with something as enjoyable as fishing. At the same time, there are a number of tactics seasoned professionals use to sharpen their skills between contests. Perhaps these techniques can work for you.
Review, reflect and refocus
For starters, review your performance from the season just past. You may find you kept good records following the first few tournaments but let this practice fall off as the season wore on. No big deal. Just go back and complete your notes for the tournaments in which you participated. If you don’t remember who won or how, call your fellow competitors. We all know the axiom about winners being very talkative, and this can be just as true during the winter as it was on tournament day.
Practice is mandatory
No matter how well you did last year, you will, when reviewing your notes, find an area or three that need improvement. Make the commitment right now to set aside practice time to improve those areas where you were not strong. It’s not enough to say you will try harder, fish more hours or compete more intensely. Attitude shifts can help performance, but they rarely result in significant gains.
And don’t let the “time on the water” cliche fool you either. To genuinely improve, you need a practice plan. Your favorite baseball or football star did not reach the top just by throwing the ball around. Exceptional performers in music, art and sports spend far more time practicing than performing. The competitive angler also needs specific practice goals and plans. You would do well to pick out two or three techniques you want to improve and set up practice schedules for each of them.
Creating practice sessions
For discussion purposes, let’s say you finished near the bottom in three tournaments last year that were won by guys using jigs. The first question Joe Average Tournament Angler will ask in that situation is, “What color jig did the winner use?” Then he will go on to ask about jig weight, trailer style and line size. Those variables are typically far less important than how and where the jigs were used.
If you find that jigs were effective in 10 to 15 feet of water and you primarily fish them in shallow situations, you now have a clear practice opportunity. You could begin by going to a private pond or a restricted lake where you know fish are available and experiment with different jig combinations in deeper water. You might also set up a fishing trip with guides or colleagues who own this technique and watch what they do.
However, in learning a new skill, the “Who, What, When and Where” are usually less significant than the “How.” I strongly encourage you to ask questions about, and focus your attention on, how jigs are used in deep water. Are short hops more effective than a crawl, or are big jumps the best? How often does your jig pro deadstick his bait? Watch his hands. Watch your hands. Notice the difference.
You must make a conscious effort during practice sessions to move your bait differently than you normally would. As boring as it sounds, you can practice deep-water jig techniques in your back yard. Several pros refined pitchin’ and flippin’ this way; and, with a little imagination, you can throw a jig off your back deck and have it land in 20 feet of water! Then you can work it back in any number of creative ways.
If you use a guide, have him spend some time watching you; ask him to comment on your technique. After all, you’re not paying him to catch fish; you’re paying him to teach you to catch `em, and he can’t do that very well if he has his back to his student.
Distributed practice
Hopefully you won’t catch many fish during your first practice session, because, if you do, you may incorrectly assume you have this technique figured out when, in fact, you probably don’t. You will need multiple practice sessions on different bodies of water, under varying conditions, to transform an area of weakness into a strength. Recall what we discussed about learning in Chapter Four, that several short practice opportunities are preferable to one long session.
Specific skill development begins with honest self-appraisal. Once you know your weaknesses, you are in position to ask for help and develop practice plans to make you a more formidable competitor. Use this off-season to learn and practice something new.
Jay T. McNamara, Ph.D., L.P., is a psychologist, who is also an avid bass and walleye angler. With more than 25 years of professional experience complemented by participation in competitive fishing at local and national levels, he is uniquely qualified to illustrate how performance psychology principles apply to tournament fishing.