S8, Ep 18: The Learning Curve: Mac Brown on Effective Teaching Methods

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articular Flyer back with another casting

angles with the man himself, Mac Brown.

Mac, how are you?

I'm doing great.

How are you doing, Marvin?

I am glad to be home, Mac Brown.

I'm glad to be home.

You put a lot of miles on your Subaru, didn't you?

Yeah, as you know, so if folks haven't been following along, I've fished my way to the

show by driving from Charlotte to Cleveland and then I had a meeting in Columbus and then

drove from Columbus to Lancaster and then broke the drive back to North Carolina by stopping

off to see my mom.

So I literally just got home, gosh, probably five hours ago, give or take and I added up

all the mileage when I got home and it's a easily drove over 1700 miles from last Sunday

to today.

Wow, that's a lot of pilots.

You know, it was fun flying back too.

We had all this big front come through.

So we got pretty much tossed and thrown around in the airplane the whole way back to

Asheville and even coming in to Asheville, landing, you know, had had a lot of big wind

and then when I started driving home from the airport at 10 in the morning, then it snowed

really heavy and got down to like single digit windshills last night.

So it was pretty, pretty exciting when I left it was like 75 degrees and came back to

winter.

Yeah, and you know, we've got some friends here still stuck and it sounds like they're going

to spend a better part of the week hanging out in the Lancaster.

So, you know, I was thankful to have the car and it was kind of great too because I could

kind of move around the weather a little bit.

So I was able to avoid the turn pike and some things like that and made the trip trip

a little bit easier.

But the fishing was really good on the alley.

I was up there and we absolutely crushed them Monday on Elk Creek and then it's pretty

stingy on the sugar and the following day and then that rain came through and kind of

blew us off the water.

But it was good seeing everybody in Lancaster.

You know, it's the last defly fishing show for the year and I think it's, it was my

last show.

I don't know it was your last show and we thought it'd be kind of interesting to kind

of talk to folks about, you know, you've taken these classes and you know, now what's next

and how do you apply that knowledge to improve into the upcoming fishing season?

Yeah, I think that'd be a good topic because the last one, you know, if you're doing

those week after week and then it really gets you pretty sorry about what you're going

to deliver and I thought that'd be a good topic for, you know, people that like to teach

whether it's this type of kennis ed, export teaching or whether it's whatever it might

be in the fact of just talking about the separation of how much do we teach to performance.

In other words, just to make sure that somebody's doing something with fundamental movement

or how much do we want them to go away where we know good and well they can correct

themselves without having to come back again and again, you know, so I don't know if

that'd be a fun topic to kind of dive into.

Yeah, and it kind of boils down, you know, to, you know, you know, what, how much you're

teaching, but I'm thinking, you know, you and I, you know, if you're sitting there teaching

somebody for two and a half hours or all day, you know, and you're teaching them a lot

of different things, you know, it's kind of unrealistic to think that they're going

to nail all the tasks and go home and be perfect, you know, and so you have to kind of,

you know, we do, I do that in the introductory class, I know you do it in your classes where

you're really trying to set things up where people kind of intellectually understand what

they need to do and then how to basically drill that and test themselves after they leave

the class so that they can work on the perfection part kind of on their own time.

Yeah, and especially with these devices, everybody has in their pockets these days with the

use of video on their phone, once I know it is what they're looking for and that's kind

of how the classes, I mean, the numbers like what you said in your classes, real similar

to even the all day class that we do with how much actual performance versus how much

you're going over stuff to bring that understanding and all kinds of literature, we could bring

up the, you know, that support that all the latest, you know, coaching methodology and sports

physiology and psychology at all backs up what we're saying, you got it, you got to have

all of that to make it a worth a worthy class and when I got into this rodeo in the early

90s, everybody would tell me and I obviously, I questioned it back then because I was teaching

programs at, you know, Western at the time and teaching 30 kids at a time, it's very different

than teaching a one-on-one lesson and all of them would say, Marvin, get the rod in her hand

as quick as possible and just let them flail away for the whole three hours as just ridiculous

opinion because you're just watching them all do whatever dysfunctional movement there is and

none of it's good usually. I mean, that's not, that's not trying to be main, it's just the truth,

if you look at backcasts of in a lesson like that, you're just looking at a bunch of property

lines with no tension and I mean, just nothing but mistakes, I mean, that's not productive.

I don't know, I just think a lot of that philosophy has changed with a lot of this latest stuff,

like from Nick Winkelman and the language of coaching, there's a lot of good books out there

that support like what we're saying and and I think that's really where we're where we're heading,

you know, I know Gary's been really in tune to that Gary Borger too with the classes, the all-day

classes and he's very, very in to make him sure that they film themselves, that they film what

we're going to try to get him to dayfars and then they really understand them when they go home

what they're trying to pull off, you know, because without that, how do they go forward?

Yeah, and I think too, you know, like I like the class I taught was probably 75% classroom,

25 hands-on, but I would say, you know, people get pre-saturated pretty quickly with the hands-on

stuff, right? So, you know, it's just like we talk to people about, you know, having short 15 to 20

minute practice sessions, it's really kind of the same thing with the hands-on stuff in class and

you kind of were going to hit that saturation point pretty quickly.

Yeah, and I mean, I've thought about this today since we were going to talk about, you know,

tonight, when I was kind of going over it, there is times we do teach to performance, but

in general, if it's a bigger numbered class, we really can't do that. So, I mean, a good example

where we actually teach 100% to performance is you pull a little kid out of the crowd,

you've got everybody watching you for a demo and you're going to get the kid cast in 40 feet with

nice loops in under two minutes. That's 100% teaching to performance. There's no time to talk about

understanding. Does that kind of make sense? I mean, there's ways to do that. I mean, you do that to

get a big result for the kid and then everybody golf clubs and everybody's happy. But my point is,

you can't run something like that. When you could do that with the class, obviously, too.

But then what happens when it starts to go south, I mean, there's no concept whatsoever,

what to change, and that's the problem. We have to go over the understanding a little bit

to where at least they know what to look for. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, right? Because,

you know, you and I worked together to put together that introductory class, and that's really,

you know, kind of breaking all those foundational things down and it was kind of interesting,

kind of working with the students and Lancaster, you know, trying to tell them like, you know,

because it's a little bit of a change, right? That system, I mean, a lot of people don't have that,

you know, whole arm casting with the drop the elbow thing. And so we work with people,

videotape and switching back and forth or not videotape, but, you know, taking video on phones,

but, you know, and, you know, they were like, well, what should we start with? And, you know,

the students in that class, they were having trouble dropping the elbow. And so I said, well,

you know, the first thing you got to do is you got to get that ingrained. And then from there,

you can start refining the other pieces of the system, but, you know, kind of trying to get people

to roadmap. And in that class, you know, we gave people probably, I don't know, gosh, a half a

dozen drills that are going to help them with path pause and path. And, you know, that in a video

camera, you know, in 15 minutes, three times a week, and you'll get better. Oh, yeah, that's a fun

part of it. And I noticed that with a lot of the, at least the last half of the show season,

I started using this a lot just because so many people come and they think the fundamental

movement is trying to throw the baseball to home plate like a shot put, you know, me with a hand

just travels horizontally straight ahead. And that's hard way to cast. I mean, you're really hard

to generate any kind of speed. So we started incorporating that a lot of Marvin with these classes

to where the handle tribal straight ahead and the loops going out. And it's not a bad loop. It's

not a tailing loop or anything like that. But I'll say out loud, 1,000, 1,000, 2, 1,000, 3, 1,000,

and 4 before it lands on the water. So then I've given the example, okay, now you're in beliefs,

trying to throw in the wind might be in Montana and it's blowing 30 knots. Do you want to line

the takes four seconds to get out there for 40 feet? And then you show them the pull down, which is

like anybody could do it at a hundred years old, just by dropping your elbow and it's down

in less than half a second. I mean, which one do you want? Because, you know, that right there proves

it all. So it's funny to look on their faces once you show them that they realize they're moving,

their hands straight ahead and then they see the difference. Then they know it's not a trick

or a gimmick, you know? And they're like, I want that one. Then they try to get, like you said,

why is it so hard for them to just drop their elbow? But it's funny. It's kind of funny because

once they see the light and they do it the first time, you know, you can see this big smile come

across their face. And it's the first time they've ever felt really that kind of speed. Yeah,

then you know, the whole thing is right. You're going to cast a lot during a day. So, you know,

the biggest thing is you kind of refine this stuff and you can use less and less energy and

have a much better cast and you don't get off the water than today, feeling like you need rotator

cuff surgery. That's right. As I was other things that you up for injury a lot greater too. So,

yeah, there is a lot of styles and a lot of people want to talk about this style versus kind of

like Kung Fu with watching the old black belt theater movies as a kid, the monkey style versus,

but I mean, so much in casting, I think really does go back to basic fundamental movement.

It's not like my opinion or Marvin's opinion. I mean, this goes back to studying really

way back to 1856. I mean, it's very hard for somebody to come in there and say, no, that's a horrible

style because that's what the best in the world have done for world records and accuracy for over

160 years. So, it's not just our opinion. It's what all goes back to the base of that tree, you know.

Yeah. So, you know, you see their Newtonian or quantum physics and for casting its Newtonian

physics and you can't change the equations, right? Now, it's still the same. Yeah. So, you got home

and it's kind of, you know, we've had this nutty weather. I think it's been kind of true kind of

everywhere east of the Mississippi, basically. And you got home yesterday and it was snowing and

which is kind of shocking and it's like down on the 20s again, but, you know, gosh, what in two weeks,

you start your guide schools, right? Yeah, we had the first one on March 20. I think it's the

25th is the first one and then we're right back into it. After that, you know, it's one in April,

two day school and April is a bunch of three day schools going on and it's just yeah, at least,

at least I get to stay here instead of jumping on an airplane every week. So, I'm kind of excited

to be staying put for a while here. Yeah. And of course, also means private casting lessons and

the guiding thing will start to ramp up here is, you know, we got what less than two months before

DH Burns off in Western North Carolina, but if folks want to get in touch with you, where should they

go? The best thing really is Mike Brown Flottersh.com that has an email in the cell number, they can text

it or leave a message or whatever. I mean, off of that's just by far easier because the DM stuff,

a lot of times I don't look at that as much. So, I'm not, I don't have on my profile of digital

influence or do you have Marvin? So, that tells you how much I look at it once a week, once a month.

Yeah, you need to get that squared for 2026, 2027, but you know, before we hop this evening,

I just want to thank everybody that kind of came out, came to the classes, said hello that we got

to meet at the shows. It's always great to meet listeners and it's always interesting to see,

you know, how far away people are that listen to the podcast. So, I appreciate that everybody and,

you know, if it's warm enough to fish where you are, get out there and catch a few, otherwise,

you know, tie some flies and wait until you can get out and practice your cast and then catch a few fish.

Tightlines, everybody. Tightlines, Mack. Tightlines, Marvin.