Several years ago, I was invited onto the Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast with Tom Rosenbauer to discuss the topic of wading. Certainly not one of the sexier subjects in fly fishing, but one that nevertheless deserves more attention than it receives.

During our talk, I called out the fact that I sorta love the clumsy nature of fly fishing; that I think it’s part of the sport’s charm. Things get a little dicey at times, and most of us manage to slip, fall, stumble, and tumble on occasion despite our greatest efforts and sequence of embedded studs in our boots. This act of moving dynamically through unpredictable terrain is a large part of what actually makes fly fishing compelling for our bodies and brains. And at times it also reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously while leaning into some of the more playful qualities of life.

At the same time, this very context can also steer many away from the sport.

What I’ve learned over the years as an angler, guide, instructor, and fitness trainer for outdoors people is that the physical challenge of moving through water is one of the primary limiting factors for many new anglers as they become comfortable with the athletic nature of walking, wading, hiking, and balancing all day long. It also has a significant impact on seasoned anglers as they age and experience changes in their bodies.

But here’s something that I’ve always found to be a bit fascinating: there are a lot of people, in fly fishing, other sports and outdoor recreation, and otherwise, who are very quick to label themselves as inherently “clumsy.” And many of them simply accept the idea that they were born without the ability to move more athletically and that they cannot change this fact.

For most, this just is not true.

More often than not, what we’re coming up against is a lack of understanding of how the human body operates internally and the mechanisms at play as our brain makes movement decisions all day, every day.

No, balance and coordination are not fixed traits. They’re highly trainable, and they’re honestly fairly easy to train, too. But you do need to know the right strategy to train smart in order to get the results you’re aiming for. And that strategy just doesn’t live inside your typical generic fitness programs. First, a quick overview of the why behind what may be impacting your so-called clumsiness.

Your Body Adapts to the Life You Give It

The human body is extremely adaptable. The inputs it receives on a regular basis are constantly shaping and molding how we move, respond, and operate within the world around us.

If our days are largely spent sitting in chairs, on couches, and in car seats, staring at screens nonstop, and moving through highly predictable and fairly stable environments, our bodies become exceptionally good at doing those things.

For that reason, many of us receive very little practice balancing on uneven surfaces, reacting regularly to unexpected disturbances, coordinating movement through constantly changing environments, or skillfully orienting ourselves in space. Those abilities don’t simply appear because we suddenly want them to when we hit the water.

Much like strength, endurance, or any other physical quality, they require consistent exposure and repetition. For most of us, periodic river or saltwater outings just don’t provide a high enough volume of exposure to dynamic environments for our bodies to become really good at moving within them.

Modern Life Doesn’t Ask Much of Our Balance Systems

Like it or not, most of us just are not living lives that even closely resemble those of previous generations. In today’s digital and highly sedentary world, we spend much of our day seated, indoors, and looking directly in front of us.

Our visual system, which is intimately connected to our balance, gets plenty of practice with near work, but far less exposure to the varied visual demands of moving through the outdoor space while on the water.

Our vestibular system, which helps us understand where our head and body are in space, often receives far less challenge, too.

And our proprioceptive system, our ability to sense where our body is without looking at it, also receives fewer opportunities to practice navigating unpredictable terrain.

When all of these components, the visual system, vestibular system, and proprioceptive system, aren’t regularly challenged and refined, our ability to balance can suffer.

This isn’t necessarily a criticism of modern life (okay, maybe I have a few complaints). But it is a recognition that our environments are constantly shaping us, often in ways we don’t immediately appreciate. This is also one of the primary reasons so many young people have fairly poor balance and athleticism reflected in their movement quality. The simple fact is that growing up with a phone in hand while moving through largely unchallenging environments has an impact.

Fly Fishing Asks More of Us Than We Realize

One of the reasons I love fly fishing is that it demands the ability to move in an adaptable manner.

Whether you’re wading a river in the West, climbing up and down banks to access small streams and sneak up on spooky fish, meticulously navigating saltwater flats, or perched on a casting platform combatting 30 mph wind all day long, fly fishing places some pretty unique demands on the body. We’re constantly shifting our weight, organizing our vision, responding to changing conditions, and processing information about where we are in space, whether we consciously realize it or not.

In many ways, fly fishing sort of acts as one giant balance, coordination, and mobility assessment.

Balance and Coordination Are Trainable Capacities

Staying upright and feeling well-coordinated isn’t simply a matter of luck or being bestowed with good genes.

Research consistently supports the idea that balance, mobility, and coordination can improve with consistent practice. And no matter what type of angler you are or where you roam, your balance and coordination will always have a significant impact on how you move on the water.

There are plenty of ways to begin training balance and coordination, but the key is to:

A) Understand and train ALL of the systems involved (too many people just stand on a BOSU ball at the gym for a few minutes each day and completely miss the other essential areas to train).

And,

B) Begin integrating these training strategies into your lifestyle consistently and over the long term.

And yes, even those who consider themselves to have pretty solid balance would absolutely benefit from continuing to build and chisel their balance, coordination, proprioception, movement fluency, and joint strength. These are essential qualities that everyone needs to prioritize.

I originally launched the first version of the Wading Strong online training program in 2021 as a multimedia e-book hosted on my personal website, with several recorded classes included. Many anglers have experienced that program.

A couple of weeks ago, I launched a brand-new and improved version of Wading Strong, now hosted on the Wade Well Online Training Studio platform. Composed of an educational PDF and program guide along with 30 streaming, on-demand training sessions, the program is the foundation all anglers need to improve their balance, coordination, joint strength and durability, and movement quality.

If you’re interested in becoming more confident on the water and building a body that moves more like a supple leopard and less like a stiff and uncertain human, this program makes it incredibly easy to get started.

And even better? You don’t need more than 60 minutes a week (yes, a week, not a day) to make massive improvements.

Substack subscribers get an additional 20% off the program (priced at $67) with the code SUBSTACKWADING20.

Now is the perfect time to get going.

Start The Program.

Walking is one of the most basic and repetitive movement patterns we perform on a daily basis, and it also tends to be one of the most overlooked. We do it automatically, thousands of times a day, and usually without any thought at all. And because it generally feels easy and familiar, it’s very rarely treated as something that’s worth studying, improving, or really paying attention to. But from a movement, mobility, joint health, and force distribution perspective, walking is anything but neutral.

How we’ve been conditioned to walk, and the patterns that we develop over time, impact not just our ability to walk with ease. It has a ripple effect that influences all of our joints, posture, and overall comfort and capacity throughout our entire body.

For those who value walking, wading, hiking, living an active and adventurous life, and even just being able to perform daily tasks pain-free, this is one of the most foundational places to examine.

Every step you take sends force up through your body. And how that force is absorbed, transferred, and redirected hinges on how well the entire kinetic chain is working together, from the feet to the knees, hips, spine, and full scope of our soft tissue network. Over time, walking patterns that don’t distribute load well influence how your body feels, moves, and ages.

Walking is very directly training and shaping your body, whether you realize it or not. And it’s an area where we can quickly make improvements that will have a positive impact.

Walking as a Systems Problem, Not Just a Foot Problem

The foot is often one of the first places where people notice discomfort, but gait (the characteristics that define how you walk) isn’t a foot issue alone. Walking is a full-body process. What that means is that when our feet interact with the ground, the ankle manages motion and stability, the knee responds to rotational and compressive forces, the hip generates propulsion, and the trunk helps manage balance and forward momentum while also transferring force all the way up the spine.

When one part of this system lacks mobility, strength, appropriate range of motion, or sensory input, another part is effectively forced to pick up the slack. Of course, the human body is incredibly adaptable, but adaptation isn’t always particularly efficient or ideal, and it can lead to consequences, often seen in compensatory patterns that can concentrate stress in joints that were not designed to manage that degree of load.

Research on gait mechanics shows that foot and ankle function directly influences knee and hip loading patterns, especially during repetitive activities like walking and running. The takeaway is very simple: how force enters the body while walking, and how it then moves throughout the system, is incredibly important. There’s an upstream and downstream conversation that’s always underway.

The Gait Cycle: More Than Just Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

A full gait cycle includes more than initial contact with the ground. One of the most important and commonly missed phases is what we call “terminal stance,” when the heel lifts off the ground, the big toe extends, and the hip moves into extension just before the opposing leg swings forward for the next step.

This phase allows the body to:

• Transfer load efficiently

• Use the foot as a rigid lever for propulsion

• Reduce excessive demand on the knee

• Share work between the foot, ankle, hip, and posterior chain

When this phase is shortened or skipped over, the body still moves forward while walking, yes, but the workload gets redistributed. Many people unconsciously adopt a shorter and more guarded stride that’s sometimes described as a sort of shuffle and characterized by minimal “toe-off” and limited hip extension. This can happen due to habit, footwear, fatigue, prior injury, or simply years of moving in constrained environments. And it’s exactly why we focus so much of our attention on these particular mechanics and ranges of motion inside of the Wade Well training method.

From a joint health perspective, an incomplete stride often means the knee stays in a more flexed, load-bearing position. Instead of force being passed smoothly through the foot and hip, the knee becomes a bottleneck that’s required to absorb an extraordinary amount of load. Over time, this can contribute to irritation, stiffness, chronic pain, or in some cases, joint deterioration.

Big Toe Extension and Hip Extension: Essential Ranges of Motion

Knowing all of this, there are two movements that play an outsized role in gait: big toe extension and hip extension. When the big toe can extend, it helps stiffen the foot for effective push-off. And when the hip can extend, it allows the body to move forward using large, powerful muscles instead of relying on smaller joints to compensate.

When either of these is limited, the body adapts, and the knee absorbs more force because it sits between the foot and the hip. Over thousands of steps per day, that added demand matters. It’s also worth noting that hip extension does indeed rely upon healthy hip rotation. This is also why we must prioritize healthy 360-degree hip mobility. It’s an area that very directly influences our entire body and most of our body mechanics and movement quality.

Soft Tissue: A Seemingly Small Detail

Human beings have a sophisticated network of soft tissue, specifically the fascial system, that acts as a sort of matrix that’s fully integrated within our entire interior. Our fascia wraps around our bones, muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, organs, and blood vessels.

To put it plainly, it’s our scaffolding that interconnects absolutely everything. With that, it’s important to note that fluid and well-connected movement relies upon healthy fascia that’s well hydrated and able to slide, glide, and effectively transfer force without interruption.

This is why when we’re considering healthy movement, we need to look beyond just large muscle groups and instead consider how our body truly works together in a sort of symphonic fashion. No one area acts alone, and even when we’re discussing a topic like walking, we need to remember that the entire body is involved in the process.

And not for nothing, having healthy feet is indeed essential. More on that topic in my article: Build Your Foundation: Foot Strength, Ground Connection, and Sensory Awareness.

Awareness, Not Self-Diagnosis

How we walk is actually more complex than most realize. Anatomy, injury history, nervous system tone, footwear, mobility, terrain, balance and proprioception, and even stress levels have an influence.

That said, even just a beginner level of awareness is a very powerful starting point.

The next time you’re walking, be it on a sidewalk, trail, or even just around your house, pay attention to what your movement feels like. Are your steps fluid or choppy? Does your heel lift naturally behind you? Can you feel your big toe bend as you push off? Do your hips move slightly behind you as you walk, or do they stay fixed underneath you? Do your knees tend to both bend and straighten? Do your arms swing naturally? Are you able to stand relatively upright?

These self-assessments aren’t problems that you need to immediately correct in the moment, but they do serve as valuable information. And learning how to notice patterns while recognizing areas for potential improvement can be incredibly empowering. We should all have at least a baseline understanding of how our body operates, along with strategies to implement when certain areas are signaling that there may be something worth getting curious about.

Walking Is 100% Worth Studying

For most, walking is the most repeated movement that we perform. Unlike workouts or sport-specific skills, it’s the type of movement that accumulates day after day and in fairly high volume. Because of that volume, small inefficiencies and some of the more nuanced details really do matter.

Walking may be simple, but it’s certainly not insignificant. Paying attention to how you move through the world is one of the most practical ways to support long-term joint health, movement freedom, and resilience across a lifetime.

At Wade Well, I perform in-depth remote assessments with clients across the globe who want a detailed understanding of how their body moves and how their joints are responding so that they know where they should focus their attention to make the most meaningful improvements. Generic fitness, mobility, and flexibility work will always have some value. But understanding your unique baseline and ensuring you aren’t missing any critical blind spots is the smartest way to train and take care of your body.

This morning I was scrolling my Substack feed, catching up on the folks I follow and checking in on what they’ve been thinking and writing about. I came across this excerpt from Andrew Steketee of Flylab that immediately piqued my interest:

“Electricity. Finally, do you have what it takes upstairs to believe big fish are there, even when you can’t see them, and that they can be caught. The ‘fishiest’ anglers–the 10% who catch 90% of the season’s big fish–do so because they have acquired an unrelenting belief. They know the fish are there; they know the fish can be caught. It’s not ‘if,’ but ‘when.’ One of the Green River’s finest fly-fishing guides, Denny Breer from Dutch John, Utah, who’s no longer alive, believed a person’s energy or electricity ‘flowed down their arm, through the fly rod and to the fish when you’re fishing intently and with purpose… but when you turn your head away to fiddle with something, when you stop paying attention, you shut that electricity off.’ This is the closest thing I’ve heard to a scientific explanation for why ‘glass half full’ anglers tend to lap the ‘half empty’ demographic in terms of performance.”

This is a subject I really love because it sits right at the intersection of fly fishing, neuroscience, human behavior, and sport psychology. It got me thinking about a question that may sound a little ridiculous at first glance, until you take a closer look at the science itself: Can you actually manifest more fish in the net?

It’s easy to dismiss the concept of “manifestation.” The word itself has a way of evoking woo-woo images of crystals and high vibrations, at least for me. It feels mystical, and as someone who, for better or worse, loves hard-and-fast science, I sometimes get a little lost once we start talking magical thinking (I need to be more open-minded, I know).

But the neuroscience of manifestation really isn’t magical at all. It’s grounded, evidence-based, and very real, in the most literal sense.

No, we can’t just think a musky or tarpon into existence, nor can we summon a prolific hatch or convince a 28-inch brown to eat based just on positive energy or good vibes alone. But there’s a version of manifestation that takes place every time you step out onto the water with a rod in hand and choose to believe that fish are there and that you’re capable of connecting with them.

This process has a very clear starting point: attention.

The human brain is constantly receiving an extraordinary amount of sensory information. Far more than it can fully process in detail. Deliberate attention and how we allocate our awareness helps determine exactly what gets prioritized within that spectrum of mental processing. And our goals and expectations directly influence that process, too. When you’re actively looking for something, your brain doesn’t passively record the details of the environment around you. Instead, it uses your conscious goals, expectations, and focal points to help direct what receives processing priority (and what does not).

On the river, one angler may look at a riffle and simply see some faster moving water. Another angler may look at the exact same riffle and see various seams, changes in depth, soft edges surrounding a boulder, and multiple ideal holding lanes. The environment is exactly the same, with the difference being what the angler’s eyes and brain have learned to look for. I take a deeper dive into this topic of refining our attention and awareness in my recent interview piece: John Juracek: A Lifetime of Learning to See.

All of which is to say that experienced anglers (and guides) are essentially operating with highly trained attentional filters. Years and decades of fishing create associations between visual information and reward, such as a subtle flash or shadow, a tiny piece of structure, or a small subsurface disturbance that may suggest the presence of a fish. Research on attention shows that stimuli associated with previous rewards often acquires greater attentional priority, sometimes even when those stimuli aren’t especially obvious. Our brains have a way of logging subtlety that’s associated with past reward, even when we don’t consciously realize it.

A lot of these deeply ingrained patterns of observation, consistent focus, and connection surely contribute to those anglers who tend to be particularly “fishy” and make up that 10 percent who catch 90 percent of the big fish.

Their brains have learned what deserves attention and how to hone in on and appropriately solidify their energy and awareness without interruption.

It’s also important to note that our conscious beliefs definitely make a difference, too. If you genuinely believe there’s a fish tucked in that perfect pocket, you’re far more likely to examine it carefully, be intentional about your presentations, and remain persistent in the time that section receives. No, our thoughts don’t make the fish materialize or cooperate, but they do change the angler’s behavior while giving the fish more opportunities to be swayed by our efforts.

Sport psychology has a name for part of this process. Self-efficacy, or the belief that you’re capable of successfully performing a specific task, is deeply embedded in how coaches support the mindsets of their athletes. Research in sport has found a significant relationship between self-efficacy and performance, although confidence alone, of course, isn’t a guarantee of success. The practical value is simply this: when you believe you have a reasonable chance of solving the problem in front of you, you’re more likely to stay engaged long enough to actually work on it.

Which brings me back to Denny Breer’s concept of electricity that Andrew highlighted.

Maybe this idea of electricity really isn’t mystical or abstract at all. Maybe at least part of what he was speaking to is attention, and how that attention is transmitted from your visual field, to your hands handling your rod and line, all the way down into the water itself.

When you’re fully engaged with the pursuit at hand, your eyes are scanning, your brain is analyzing, and your decisions are being made in response to the environment you’re wholly engaged with. When you turn your head to fiddle with something, check your phone, daydream about lunch, or just mentally give up on the run, you haven’t shut off some supernatural electrical current flowing through your fly rod, ala Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan. But you’ve definitely interrupted the attentional system that allows you to perceive and respond to what’s happening in front of you.

So perhaps the “fishiest” anglers aren’t necessarily the ones who believe they can magically catch fish just because they happen to be enduring optimists. I think they may just be the ones who believe the fish are worth looking for and that our time on the water is worth our undivided attention.

The more useful definition of manifestation probably has less to do with controlling an outcome or communicating with the universe through interstellar energetic channels. It’s really just a matter of directing your attention toward the possibility of an outcome and acting as someone who believes. No, we don’t manifest the presence of fish. But we definitely manifest the conditions where the combined effort of our brain, body, and behavior winds up bringing way more fish to hand.

And as many of the motivational speakers of our time succinctly point out, “energy flows where attention goes.” I guess our pal Tony Robbins has been onto something every now and again, after all.

If you’ve put your time in and arrived with a solid and consistent 75-100 foot double haul on the lawn, I sincerely commend you. This is no small feat, and it’s one that most people don’t even attempt, let alone manage to achieve. Now make that same cast 200 times in a day while wrestling with the wind, standing in the sun, wading the flats, balancing on a casting deck, and doing all of it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

For those who willingly invest their time, energy, and resources into these type 2 fun kind of environments, everyone pretty much knows that there’s going to be some considerable preemptive work to be done. And why not? Preparing for a big fishing trip can actually be a pretty great way to stay inspired, set goals, work toward something that’s tangible, keep yourself engaged with the process, and build some serious stoke pre-trip.

There’s one piece of advice I hear all of the time when people talk about getting ready for a serious fly-fishing trip: practice your cast, and practice it religiously. Specifically if you’re headed to the salt, you’re encouraged to spend as much time as humanly possible as you get your double haul dialed while shooting line at distance, casting in the wind, and putting your fly precisely where it needs to land.

This is indisputably great advice–no notes. But it’s really only half of the preparation equation when we’re discussing the casting element itself. There’s a gap, and that gap can’t be filled by the advice of fishing guides or travel agents.

Whether you’re headed to the salt or traveling to freshwater, the reality is that you’re likely to be engaged in a very high volume of casting; certainly much higher than what most of us execute in the normal rhythm of our lives at home. Your casting “reps” can go from relatively low to hundreds of casts per day overnight, sometimes accumulating to thousands of casts across an entire week.

This is a distinctly different physical demand than standing on the lawn for twenty minutes on a Saturday afternoon, even if you are casting a whole lot and also casting a heavier rod.

One of the problems that we run up against is that we tend to think about fly casting primarily as a technical skill. We examine loop control, timing, rod loading, line speed, presentation, and accuracy because those are the things clearly displayed within the movement of the rod and the line itself. The people who teach those skills are very good at seeing them, and most of them are pretty good at recognizing the more superficial and very obvious body movement characteristics, too. They can assess if your shoulder is moving, if your elbow is flexing and extending, and if you’re death gripping the cork. This is a great baseline.

But what’s effectively invisible to any given guide or casting instructor is the intricate physical system that sits beneath the outer mechanics of the cast, and the outer mechanics of the caster. And fair enough, they aren’t trained fitness professionals, mobility specialists, or sports performance coaches. It isn’t their job to understand that level of human physiology or biomechanics. It’s fully outside of their scope.

Your joints, muscles, connective tissues, nervous system, breathing mechanics, and movement quality are all involved in producing your cast. Your entire shoulder girdle has to move freely in collaboration with your rib cage, the range of motion that you have available in your thoracic and cervical spine influence how your upper body moves as a whole, and your elbow, wrist, and hand have to repeatedly manage the force that’s being transmitted.

And it’s important to remember that even when your casting mechanics are excellent and you’re great at leveraging strong rod loading technique, your body is still doing work, and it has to be adequately prepared for that level of engagement.

This is one of those areas where I think there’s a bit of a blind spot in the way we talk about preparing for serious high-output fishing trips. A casting instructor can absolutely help you become a better caster, and you should listen to them when they urge you to practice and practice a lot. But casting mechanics and physical preparation are two very different areas of expertise, and both require a distinct level of dedication. Neither will magically materialize overnight. Plainly put, you have to do the work.

How do you actually prepare your body for that level of casting load?

Building strength before the trip, of course. This is a given and often where people stop, especially when working within more generalized fitness environments. But you also need to build the appropriate mobility that your joints need to move well, while giving your hands, forearms, shoulders, spine, and the rest of the system enough exposure to the demands you’re going to place on it beforehand. And it’s essential to have some strategies for managing capacity, stress, and your nervous system once you’re actually on the water, along with quick and simple daily strategies to use during the trip in the morning and evening.

Dedicated anglers shouldn’t choose between casting practice and physical preparation. The truth is that you need both, and generic fitness just won’t get you to the finish line. Being fit is great, but engaging in sport specific training is how you actually make real progress that shows up on the water.

If you’re the type of person who’s willing to spend thousands of dollars to travel halfway around the world for a week of fishing, it becomes a no-brainer that you should be preparing your body with the same intention.

Traveling Strong is one of my new Wade Well Method online training programs that I developed specifically for anglers who know that getting their casting mechanics dialed is only one piece of the puzzle while they get ready for a big destination trip.

A great cast is a skill, and if you have a great casting instructor in your corner, even better.

But your body is ultimately the thing that has to keep executing that skill, and it’s what often winds up being the limiting factor on a big destination trip.

So having a fly fishing performance coach in your corner is a pretty wise idea, too.

No offense to protein. We love protein. We also love carbs and fat. All of the macronutrient categories are essential and should be prioritized appropriately. And the same goes for the micronutrient categories, too. They actually deserve way more attention–our basic vitamins and minerals have an extraordinary impact on how we move, how we feel, and how our bodies operate.

But there’s another sneaky category that not enough people talk about: food that helps to keep us hydrated.

Yes, none of us are particularly great at drinking enough water, especially while traveling and on high-output destination fishing trips where we’re moving a lot and out in the elements, day after day, for a full week or longer.

Good guides are known to track their clients’ water intake throughout the day, and even supply some electrolyte options as well, whether they’re the more naturally occurring items like citrus or coconut water, or other items like electrolyte powder packets or sports drinks.

This is all fantastic and should continue to be a best practice. But there’s one other area that you should consider building into your health and performance stack as an angler, and just as a human. And that’s consuming more water-dense fruits and vegetables.

This is a pretty simple concept, and it can offer a whole lot of return. Start eating way more melon, cucumbers, lettuce, celery, spinach, zucchini, strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, peaches, and pineapple, for example. These are water-rich foods, and they can help significantly with your overall water consumption.

And not for nothing, you might also consider consuming more electrolyte-rich foods as well, including bananas, avocados, potatoes, pickles, olives, beans, berries, kiwis, coconut, and so on. You can research more comprehensive lists if you’d like, and of course customize based on your personal dietary needs.

What actually happens when we aren’t properly hydrated?

Even mild dehydration can impact balance and proprioception (your ability to know where your body is in space), reaction time (how quickly you correct a misstep or fight a fish), hand-eye coordination (pretty important when you’re tying knots or making a precision cast), and focus and attention (critical when you’re navigating uneven terrain or tracking moving fish).

The research backs this up, suggesting that even slight fluid loss slows down your nervous system’s response time and can throw off your spatial awareness (Masento et al., 2014 found that mild dehydration impairs attention and motor coordination, and Zhang et al., 2019 demonstrated slower reaction times and reduced accuracy in dehydrated athletes).

This is precisely why professional athletes have rigorous nutrition protocols that directly support appropriate hydration. And it isn’t just built into their Gatorade consumption on the sidelines during an actual game.

Moving well and feeling your best while on the water isn’t just a matter of refining your cast, employing strong wading technique, or building your strength, balance, mobility, and endurance. It’s also a matter of what you put into your body, too.

Food is foundational for a reason, and it can simultaneously embrace fresh, local, culture-rich options while also offering you useful body-brain benefits. Don’t forget to look at how you eat more holistically if you want to leverage the benefits of strong nutrition choices.

I was cruising through my inbox this morning and clicked on my message from Flylab. I tend to read most of the articles that they publish, and particularly enjoy the breadth of writers and topics that they cover. And for the sake of full transparency, I do some collaborative writing with them myself from time to time.

I dug into a new one from Jonathan Lee Wright titled There’s a First Time for Everything with the subtitle of “It’s been said that guides have a shelf life...”

First and foremost, go read the piece. It’s a pretty stellar account of his past dozen or so years as a fly guide in Colorado. He speaks to the nuance of the profession and sport, but more importantly, his relationships with clients. He shares a story that struck me, where he discusses in detail an experience with some clients and their physical experience while wading, and his attention to detail when it comes to assessing how his clients move and navigate wild terrain on the water.

That’s only a small part of the story, but it’s one that I really appreciated. Again, go give it a read.

By now you probably know me at least a little bit, and you know that a lot of what makes me tick revolves around my profession as a personal trainer and mobility specialist for fly anglers and guides. So it shouldn’t be surprising to know that the subtitle of this piece immediately perked my ears up.

I sat on the back deck with my morning coffee in hand to give it a read, and was pleased to realize that this was gonna be a good one to share with my community. Here’s an excerpt from early on in the article that I loved:

“It’s been said that guides have a shelf life, and you definitely start to feel it. Medical issues creep in–blown knees, scorched retinas, melanomas and organ mutinies take their toll. With enough time on the water, you will witness Acts of God as well. I’ve seen boulders the size of automobiles shot a hundred feet out of a hanging side canyon by an unseen cloudburst miles away. Thirty foot logs sweeping downstream out of nowhere towards clients under a clear blue sky. Rearview mirrors missing faces by inches from drivers crossing the white line by feet, or surprising a cow moose with calves bedded down in open sagebrush. It can give you the willies.”

Why did I enjoy this particular paragraph so much?

Well, it’s simple. It clearly calls out precisely why I decided to move away from my focus on training cyclists, rock climbers, and trail runners seven-ish years ago, and instead fully moved into the realm of working almost exclusively with the dedicated angling community.

In short, our passion for lives spent on the water requires strong, durable, and athletic bodies that are incredibly resilient. They also require intentional maintenance. And not only that, but we also need to have very sharp minds, heads that are able to move on a swivel, reaction times that can pivot on a dime, and a sensory system that’s totally dialed.

For most of us, our time on the water is not just casual days sitting on the riverbank watching the day roll by. Well, at least not always. Those days are to be treasured, too. But for many, we tend to be fascinated with sporty and skillful movement, whether you’ve recognized it as such or not.

And this is ever more true for the professional fishing guide.

Make no mistake, the vocation is physically, mentally, and energetically taxing, and for most, it requires the same repetitive movements that we see across any other physical job, such as carpenters, painters, chefs and wait staff, landscapers, welders, artists, fitness trainers, and even many who work in the medical and healthcare industry.

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There’s also a prevailing belief that our bodies just inherently begin to break down after a certain age. Sadly, more and more people seem to believe that this line in the sand exists at quite early ages, even as young as those in their 30s and 40s.

But here’s the problem (and solution): how we age isn’t magically determined by a number. Our lifestyle, behaviors, environment, and the way we care for and train our bodies all play a significant role.

Two people in their 50s can have wildly different bodies and capacities, and it isn’t as simple as DNA.

This is also true of two people in their 80s, or two people in their 20s. The broad range of differences that we see is influenced by how each individual has chosen to do life. Exercise, general movement, nutrition, sleep, relationships, stress management—these components all add up. And did you know that our gene expression, aka epigenetics, is also largely determined by our lifestyle and environment?

This concept becomes particularly interesting when we look at those who work or play in more physically active ways. And not for nothing, just because you happen to be a fishing guide and you probably happen to live a fairly active life doesn’t mean that you won’t be subject to the physical demands of your chosen work or passion. Being active can accumulate its own load, especially when we’re engaged in repetitive movement patterns alongside high output day in and day out.

Which is to say, not all guides age the same, not all anglers age the same, and not all people age the same.

Yes, we’ll all experience unique circumstances inside of our unique bodies and contexts across our lifespans, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that we must take some level of responsibility for our bodies.

Like it or not, we are the keepers of our future.

And so while it could be easy to say that fly fishing guides inherently have a shelf life, the entire ethos and purpose behind my work with Wade Well is to firmly refute that concept altogether.

This, I hope, is encouraging.

Yes, we do have autonomy. But yes, that also means that we have to do some work, some of the time, if we want to extend our lives on the water.

I built the Wade Well Online Training Studio for this exact purpose.

It’s for the anglers who want to get started with some very simple protocols and who’re done waiting around. And it’s for the guides who work insanely busy seasons with barely any time on any given day to take care of their own bodies while they’re so busy taking care of their clients every day instead.

If you’re a guide, this resource has been built for you.

And yes, even if you’re in your 20s and feel like you’re fairly fit and invincible, you should start right now and begin building a better foundation. Tend to the areas that get heavily used each day, take care of any compensation patterns that are beginning to crop up, mitigate chronic-use injuries, and let’s keep you on the water doing the work that makes your world go round for life.

Maybe you don’t have to succumb to a short-lived shelf life after all.

Start building the body that can carry you through the career, community, culture, and life that you want to have.

Try The Online Training Studio For Free

For many adults, somewhere down the line we stopped moving like springy athletic leopards, and instead adopted movement, and maybe even a way of life, that more so resembles that of a sloth.

Harsh? Maybe. Dramatic? Sure, fine. But isn’t it at least a little bit relatable, too?

As children, we explore and we move with confidence and very little worry about potential consequences that might arise while we sprint, roll, climb, balance, and take chances all day long.

As adults? We’ve been tainted by all sorts of circumstances across many decades that leave us less likely to move our bodies with any level of true energy and athleticism. Now, some of this could definitely be classified as wisdom, sure. Self-preservation? Also sure. But it can also result in a mindset and way of doing life that promotes fear of movement, rooted in the idea that we’re fragile and frail. Neither of which I believe to be true.

As a coach and trainer, I’m in the business of helping people to reclaim their strength and mobility, while cultivating greater confidence in their bodies and abilities. Plenty of that comes from the type of movement, mobility, strength, and recovery work that I share in the Wade Well Online Training Studio.

But there’s another category of movement that’s exceedingly critical for people of all ages, demographics, and walks of life: that is, jumping.

The human body is engineered to be springy. And most of us have completely opted out of this way of moving. We need to be able to jump, leap, bound, land, produce force, and absorb force. Truly, this type of movement is foundational, even if many of us have lost touch with it.

More commonly referred to as plyometric training in the fitness world, this type of powerful and explosive movement promotes bone density, balance, coordination, joint durability, soft tissue elasticity, fast twitch muscle fiber fluency, proprioception (understanding where our body is in space), sensory awareness, and resilience. Speed and agility is so important to our overall health, even if your day to day activities don’t typically necessitate it in the most obvious of ways. And of course, if you’re an angler, guide, or anyone who engages with and enjoys being in dynamic environments, these qualities are non-negotiable.

I’ve been pondering how I’d like to tackle this one with my community of adventurous movers outside of the work that I do with my personal training clients. Here’s where I’ve landed :

The Wade Well Flight Club.

The Flight Club is a community focused training initiative, and the premise is extremely simple:

1. Join the club - it’s completely free.

2. Read the PDF guide that I wrote on how to start training this stuff (you’ll get it when you join the club). No matter where you’re at right now, you can begin. I’m serious, you can literally start with a few minutes of calf raises every couple of days and that’ll be fantastic.

3. Start training. At home, on your lawn, at the gym, on the trail, riverside, literally wherever. Zero equipment and zero cash needed. Use the calendar in the guide to track your progress.

4. If you’re the type of person who enjoys engaging in community, we’ll be sharing our progress on Instagram while cheering one another on. There’s no pressure to share, but if you’re into that sort of thing, awesome.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. As this gains momentum I’ll eventually do a drawing where one active participant will win a free movement and mobility assessment with me.

Admittedly, this is a bit of an experiment, and really it’s just a chance to build more community around what we’re all doing to take care of ourselves and tend to our bodies. I ran a similar Wade Well walking and rucking challenge five or so years ago, and I felt it was due time to bring this sort of community challenge back. I really enjoy them, and I know many others do, too.

That said, Flight Club is now open. All you have to do is hit the link below to sign up for free and get started. Come give it a try, you literally have nothing to lose. And I could use the motivation inside of my own training too, by the way. We’re all just humans doing our best out here, after all.

Let’s get springy together this season. It’ll probably be fun, and more importantly, it’ll change your body and it’ll change how you move. You’re gonna love it. Let’s go, I’m excited for us.

Join Flight Club, It's Free.

Before we get into it, a necessary clarification: I support any and all exercise. Fully.

Inside of the modern sedentary lifestyle epidemic that’s at the root of our health crisis, I would never throw shade at anyone for choosing to move their body in whatever way is working for them.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the fitness industry does an extraordinary disservice when they constantly contribute noise that screams “You must lift heavy” or “Pilates won’t contribute to muscle growth” or “If you aren’t getting 10,000 steps a day your body will immediately decay” and so on. It’s counterproductive, and more often than not, it immobilizes people by way of fear and confusion rather than motivating them to move more.

All or nothing is not a thing, and it’s certainly not a thing that I promote. Whatever you’re doing – unless it’s causing actual harm – well I think you should keep on doing it. Especially if you legitimately enjoy it. And bonus points if you’re doing some training as well as playing a sport or engaging in outdoor recreation. You’re leagues ahead of most already.

That said, if you’re a dedicated and avid angler who’s determined to stay on the water for a lifetime, it’s worth acknowledging that general fitness does have some considerable blindspots that don’t address some of the sport specific demands that you should consider.

And, if you’re interested in actually maximizing the time and energy that you spend training, using a training protocol that’s designed be a professional coach and angler with efficiency and efficacy in mind (because I don’t actually think that you want to spend 30 hours training each week) is indeed the name of the game.

Now that we got that out of the way, here’s a quick and dirty list of training protocols and strategies that I use with my remote personal training clients, as well as my Wade Well Online Training Studio students, that I’d love for you to consider. It should go without saying that I do all of these things myself, too.

1. Train Barefoot. Barefoot training is extremely underrated. You get to simultaneously build better foot strength (yes, your feet have tons of muscles that need to be strengthened), build your ankle strength, and it also helps with better balance and better technique and form while working out. Have foot issues that make it difficult to spend any time barefoot? I built The Foot Restore Protocol in the Wade Well Online Training Studio to address that very problem.

2. Train with Kettlebells. I’m biased, being that I’m a formally trained and certified Kettlebell trainer, but KB’s are the best training tool out there. Why? Because they’re extremely versatile, and they allow for you to move through all of the planes of motion. There’s certainly a place for dumbbells and barbells, but kettlebells need to be a part of your program.

3. Prioritize Joint Strength Training. I’m also a Functional Range Conditioning Mobility Specialist. This training method is widely used among the general public and also inside of professional sports training. Do not take your joint health for granted, it’s the foundation of all of your movement, and it’s very often the cause of chronic pain. You can find a a full collection of joint strength training sessions in the Wade Well Online Training Studio.

4. Add Weight to Your Walks. Anyone who’s been following my work or who trains with me knows that I program rucking and weighted carries for literally everyone. You can revisit this article on strength training beginners for more on the topic. This one provides serious ROI.

5. Start Jumping. I also program some version of jumping for everyone that I work with. It’s essential for bone health, balance, foot and ankle function, power, speed, and overall movement proficiency. More on this topic coming soon.

6. Sit On The Floor. You’ve heard me talk about it all of the time, and yet, are you actually doing this daily yet? I hope so. Sit on the floor or ground for even just 10 minutes, let it be uncomfortable, switch positions often, and maintain your long-term ability to get up and down from the ground. Do not underestimate the importance of this simple daily lifestyle intervention.

7. Train Your Balance. No, you don’t just “have bad balance” that you were born with and that you’re stuck with for life. Balance is a highly trainable skill, but you have to train it on purpose. And it’s a little more nuanced than just doing single leg standing stuff. Check out the vestibular drills in the online training studio, these are an essential piece of the balance puzzle.

8. Start Stretching Before Bed. Yes, you should be stretching, and nope, most people don’t really want to do it. I get it, it’s pretty boring. Start reframing stretching as being a little less about flexibility and a little more about managing stress and downshifting your body before bed. In fact, just go ahead and do a short sequence of stretches while you’re in bed. There are a bunch of them in the online training studio where I’m literally in bed while guiding you through the session.

9. Take Care of Your Hands. I wish this was a given, but not enough people do it. And not enough people realize that being proactive makes a massive difference. In an article I published back in June ‘The Most Neglected Tool In Fly Fishing’ I clearly break it down.

10. Move More When You’re On The Water. Start paying attention to how you move while you’re on the water, and be intentional about it. Squat more often, lunge more often, sit on the ground more often, rotate your spine more often. All of these “reps” count. Take advantage of the fact that you’re already in an environment that asks for dynamic movement. You’re training your capacity in realtime, but it’s way more fun than working out at home.

It’s the weekend, and I want you to explore the Wade Well Method Online Training Studio and actually begin a movement and mobility practice. It’s time, and putting it off is getting you nowhere fast. I’m 100% certain that you can sprinkle a few 10-20 minute sessions into your week, especially given the fact that you don’t need a gym or any equipment. Just yourself, in bed, on the floor, on your lawn, sitting on the couch…there are options for everyone.

You can pick out one of the programs or protocols, or just jump into any given class session that speaks to an area that you’d like to address (i.e. shoulder mobility, hand and wrist health, hip mobility, balance and coordination, foot function, etc.).

Here’s a 30 day trial, completely free. This Substack subscriber gift is not available to the public, so keep it private.

But do use it. Click the link below to get started.

https://wadewellstudio.uscreen.io/checkout/new?o=234927

There was never a single moment in my life when I’d considered creating a fitness or wellness method, or becoming an entrepreneur, for that matter. Up until I did, that is, at which point it became impossible to ignore the fact that this most certainly was my purpose.

That’s how strongly I feel about this path that I somehow stumbled upon through the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and sequence of mostly average days that have made up the past few decades.

When the concept of the Wade Well Method first started to surface for me, it was during a mysterious autoimmune disease flare-up that was serious enough to convince me to make a doctor’s visit. I distinctly recall sitting in the tiny, sterile exam room while the physician patiently stared at me, waiting for any kind of reaction. “I don’t want to scare you, but all of your symptoms most likely point to MS.”

I must have had a completely vacant look on my face while his words settled in. I sorta just checked out, immediately beginning to visualize all of the parts of my life that were about to abruptly disappear. I found myself almost instantly coming to terms with the idea that sooner or later, probably sooner, I’d be wheelchair-bound for the rest of my life. And all of the many ways that I’d previously moved my body, including fly fishing, would quickly be gone.

But before this turning point transpired in that doctor’s office, we need to rewind to a different life-altering event that took place several years prior.

In my mid-twenties, I witnessed my boyfriend’s suicide. The details are irrelevant to this story, but the fallout and impact are not. The experience fundamentally changed me in almost every way possible. It changed the structure of my brain, how I experienced living in my body, and how I looked at the world and navigated life. And to be perfectly honest, it’s a bit of a miracle that I made my way out alive.

As one might expect, I didn’t know how to process what had happened, and despite having a very strong support system composed of family and friends, I don’t think any of them had the faintest clue how to process what had happened, either. They tried, and I tried, but in moments like these, there just is no user manual for figuring out how to survive this kind of trauma. I transformed into a shell of a human-being. Vacant, empty, lost. I became a bit of a master of putting on a face while trying to move on with my life–running the whole “fake it til you make it” program, so to speak. But I was not making it.

I did what many people do when they don’t have the tools to manage something so extraordinarily difficult: I found a whole host of ways to numb myself, day in and day out. Drugs and alcohol became some of those ways, and over time, my cumulative collection of exceedingly poor lifestyle choices and inability to ask for help started to take a serious toll on my physical health, mental health, and life as a whole. I was later diagnosed with PTSD while also navigating depression and anxiety.

One day, for some reason I really cannot explain, I pedaled past a yoga studio in downtown Minneapolis and decided to drop in for a class. It wound up being a class, and a day, that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The room was hot (I’ve never loved the heat), the movements and postures were completely foreign to me (I’ve also never been the most coordinated or graceful mover), and everyone in the studio appeared to be incredibly healthy and fit, with the appearance of fully having their shit together (random assumption based on appearances that none of us should actually make about others). But none of that seemed to phase me much. I stayed, and what I found as I made my way through the class, was something that felt like slowly waking up from years of being asleep, disconnected, and in a constant state of fight or flight.

In many ways, as cliché as it may sound, I really do credit yoga with probably saving my life. It acted as a sort of life preserver—a throw rope—giving me a way to begin reconnecting with my body while accessing and processing my tangled up emotional landscape. For the first time in my life, I realized exactly how much movement could serve as a form of emotional regulation, not simply surface level exercise or sport. I eventually trained to become a teacher and went all in on extensive education while studying the body, brain systems, mobility, recovery, and the intricate relationship between physical practice and the nervous system.

Not long after that, I discovered fly fishing. Initially, I was very specifically drawn to the physical mechanics and aesthetics of the cast. To my eye, it resembled another potential avenue to move mindfully, similar to yoga posture practice. I’m still enamored with fly casting itself and present it to my students as a movement practice, but of course, over the years, it’s become so much more. What I hadn’t initially realized was the places fly fishing would take me, and exactly how much I would fall in love with the process of exploring fisheries, developing a profoundly in-depth relationship with the ecosystems where I wandered, navigating athletically while on the water and in the woods, and building community around a shared love of the sport.

Fly fishing gave me another way to fully inhabit my body, but it also brought nature, challenge, solitude, community, attention, studentship, and dynamic movement in wild terrain into the equation. What had started as a hobby quickly became a clear and direct extension of all of the other practices that were helping me build a healthier and happier life.

Over time, yoga, movement, and fly fishing started to become woven together. I was moving my body consistently, spending way more time outside, developing deep relationships, practicing meditation, and learning how to pay attention to what was happening inside my body rather than continually trying to escape it. And I was connecting the dots between how I moved on the water with how I moved off of the water. At the time, I really wasn’t thinking about any of this as a sort of interconnected system. I was very simply building a life, piece by piece, that felt increasingly grounded, joyful, and energizing.

Then my health took a completely unexpected turn.

In my early thirties, I began experiencing a series of neurological symptoms that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. At different points, I lost sensation on the right side of my body for a total of six weeks at a time, experienced double vision for many days in a row, struggled with severe fatigue that left me unable to get out of bed, and dealt with vertigo, significant loss of balance, brain fog and memory loss, and ongoing joint pain. Brain scans confirmed substantial lesions, and many of my symptoms were consistent with multiple sclerosis. Despite years of investigation, I still don’t have a confirmed diagnosis, a situation that’s unfortunately very common while our healthcare system continues to navigate the now epidemic of autoimmune disease.

What I did have, however, was a very clear understanding of what I was suddenly at risk of losing. During some of my worst flare-ups, I definitely couldn’t handle a rod or tie flies onto my line, and I certainly couldn’t drive long distances to my beloved driftless trout streams. Cycling was no longer an option, yoga practice was exceedingly difficult, and trying to hold a conversation felt incredibly taxing. I was thirty two years old, and for the first time in my life, I had to seriously consider the possibility that I was going to continue to slowly lose the ability to live the life that I’d worked so hard to rebuild.

That season changed the way I thought about health and my body, and it changed the way I thought about the trajectory of my life. It left me understanding that no, we cannot control all things in life, despite our greatest efforts. And sometimes we can do everything right, and things might still begin to unravel and pivot us into an entirely different direction anyway. But there is always some opportunity to do what we can, when we can, to maintain hope and to stay engaged inside of our own unique circumstances.

I became deeply invested in better understanding how I could best care for myself. I took a microscopic analysis of my life and began addressing my health from every angle I could: nutrition and supplementation, yoga and mobility, meditation, stress management, strength training, contrast therapy, traditional Chinese medicine, time in nature, fly fishing, social wellness (this was a big one), and a more intentional approach to recovery and lifestyle. I also came to understand that while the physical symptoms were real, I couldn’t separate my physical health from the chronic stress, unhealthy relationships, a chaotic work environment, unresolved trauma, and mental health needs I had continued to carry.

Over time, through lifestyle intervention, a geographic move to a place that facilitates far less stress, and the intentional decision to take ownership over what I could control, I was able to move myself into what has effectively been remission from any significant symptoms or flareups for many years now. More importantly, I learned something that has stayed with me and serves as the cornerstone of my work as a trainer, educator, and instructor: health isn’t simply about preventing disease or becoming physically fit, and it isn’t about how much weight you can deadlift or how many bendy yoga poses you can contort your body into. It’s really about preserving your capacity to participate in your own life while remembering that there is no separation between our physical health, mental health, and our desire to wake up each day feeling excited for what’s ahead. Everything that we do and everything that we experience has an input, and our bodies are absorbing and mapping all of it.

That idea eventually became the foundation of the Wade Well Method.

As I continued to expand my education and experience as a yoga teacher, strength trainer, mobility and recovery coach, and fly-fishing instructor over another decade’s worth of time, I began to see that all of these disciplines were clearly pointing toward the same prevailing questions: How do we keep our bodies capable of doing the things we love and that help to keep us healthy for as long as possible? How do we stay strong enough, mobile enough, resilient enough, and regulated enough to keep saying yes to the experiences, places, people, and pursuits that make our lives meaningful? How do we get out of chronic pain, reclaim our autonomy, and continue to stay hopeful and empowered?

The Wade Well Method grew slowly out of that process—not from a business plan, but from years of learning what daily movement, time in the outdoors, real community, and intentional living could do for someone who’d become profoundly disconnected from herself.

It’s the system I wish I had understood earlier: a way of approaching movement, strength, mobility, recovery, nervous-system regulation, sleep and rest, and overall wellness not as separate metrics to be measured, but as complimentary components that help us stay engaged with our lives, fully and completely.

Lately, it’s felt important for me to share this part of my own story, and for you to know a little bit more about why I’ve devoted my entire life and career to this work. If you’re one of my students or clients, you show up as your whole self. And if you’re simply someone who reads my writing or is intrigued by my work for whatever reason it may have piqued your interest, I think you know by now that there is much more to this shared space than fly fishing, fitness, mobility, stretching, strength training, and recovery work.

All of it, and all of us, are here because we’re seeking something much bigger than what’s expressed in our physical bodies. And we’re also here to honor, acknowledge, and live in a way that is an expression of gratitude for what we do have right now.

When we care for ourselves, it’s my belief that what we’re really doing is saying “thank you.” We’re saying that all of this matters, that we’re lucky to be alive and roaming this earth, and that we don’t take a single ounce of it for granted. We’re recognizing that each day is a gift, and that we aren’t in the business of floundering that gift.

Despite the ways our lives may look different, I think we’re all ultimately seeking many of the same things: to feel good in our bodies, to stay connected to the people, places, and practices that matter the absolute most to us, to keep doing the things we love, and to feel present and wide awake for as much of this life as we possibly can.

That’s why we’re here, and that’s why we do this work.

Images by Constance Rosado.

Last week I published In Praise of the Push-Up and broke down exactly why the push-up is of utmost importance for anglers of all demographics and geographies. It’s an exceedingly simple exercise that’s been around for ages, and it offers a ton of return on investment.

A well-executed push-up is a full-body movement that requires and continually builds functional strength, coordination, joint mobility, trunk stability, and body awareness all at once. In other words, it asks your body to work as an integrated system. As a 15+ year personal trainer and coach, I can tell you that I program push-up variations for all of my clients. They’re absolutely foundational.

And for dedicated anglers, push-ups develop the muscles that help you cast, row, pole a skiff, climb over deadfall, push yourself up from uneven riverbanks, climb in and out of boats, and, perhaps most importantly, confidently get up and down from the ground. Push-ups are relevant to life on the water, and to life as a whole.

The purpose of this guide is to give you the actionable steps needed to begin training push-ups, even if you feel light years away from the ability to execute even one strict push-up from the ground right now. I’ll also offer ways to level up and progress if you already consider yourself to be a pro.

We’ll start with a quick breakdown of the primary joint prerequisites and movement capacities required to do a push-up, and move forward with the exact exercises that I recommend if you’re working towards your first pushup, or you have them pretty well dialed and you’re ready to progress.

Read more

Image captured at The Lodge at 58 North in Bristol Bay, Alaska during their first season in operation. Yes I enjoyed my time (I was actually there working), and yes I had a bit of an ‘incident’ on the float plane amidst some rather volatile turbulence during one spirited morning flight. C'est la vie.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ve seen me discuss the physical and mental demands of fly fishing travel at length. It’s one of those areas within our sport and culture that requires a substantial amount of output, even inside of all of the excitement and intermittent moments of chill.

The travel is physical, the fishing is physical, and everything about the experience asks us to step into a very different way of operating. Alongside the fun, the trips always manage to take a toll – some far more than others. To truly feel our best, like it or not, they require some meaningful preparation beforehand, and ideally some strategic maintenance throughout.

Whether it’s a bucket-list lodge halfway around the world, a remote river in the Rockies, or a week on the saltwater flats, the physical and mental demands can sneak up on even the most seasoned anglers and globetrotters.

I’ve experienced this firsthand as an avid fly angler, and I’ve also spent 15+ years studying the other side of the equation as a professional fitness trainer and educator. The more I’ve traveled to fish, and the more I’ve worked with scores of anglers who do the same, the more obvious the glaring gap has become: we spend enormous amounts of time, money and energy preparing for the fishing trip itself, but very rarely prepare our bodies for what’s actually in-store.

I’ve been working 1:1 with anglers while training for these experiences for a long time. And during that time, I’ve also received many requests for a comprehensive online program that won’t break the bank and that’s built specifically for anyone who’d like to begin training but who isn’t quite up for an in-depth remote personal training program. So here you go.

Traveling Strong is a new Wade Well program inside of the Wade Well Online Training Studio that’s designed to prepare your body for the physical, mental, and environmental demands of destination fly fishing. Nope, it’s never been done before, and it was due time I lead the charge.

It’s a movement, mobility, strength and recovery system to be used to prepare before you go, and also to be used each day while you’re there (even if you don’t have cell service on location during the trip).

You don’t need a gym full of equipment in order to tackle this program, and you don’t need endless hours of training. It’s intentionally designed to be streamlined, portable, and extremely efficient and effective, so you can work on the program at home preemptively and take it with you wherever you’re headed.

The premise is very simple: destination fishing does not test one physical quality in isolation. On the contrary, it asks your body to manage long travel days, jet lag, disrupted sleep, dramatically higher casting and movement volume, long days on your feet in challenging terrain, non-stop environmental exposure, sustained visual and cognitive attention, and the accumulation of fatigue that comes from doing all of it again the next day, and the next day, and the day after that.

Most of us don’t live our normal day to day lives inside of this heightened level of physical and cognitive demand, and it very quickly accumulates. And when something starts to feel off, it’s important to understand that it’s rarely just one single weak link. More often, it’s the system as a whole that’s being taxed, which is exactly why my training style takes a full system approach.

The Traveling Strong Program doesn’t require you to train like a professional athlete preparing for a competition or a gym rat cross-fitter. Instead, it uses an evidence based approach to help you build real durability, adaptability and capacity while you show up day after day and actually enjoy the entirety of the experience you’ve invested so much in. It’s about ending the day on the water feeling solid, and enjoying dinner with your people without being completely gassed. It’s also about protecting your body, and heading home ready for your next adventure.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s designed to be inclusive. I’ve trained thousands of people at this point in my career, and they’ve quite literally spanned all age demographics, fitness levels, and physical abilities. From working with professional Team USA rock climbers to 90+ year olds practicing chair yoga and everything in-between, I’m pretty passionate about meeting people exactly where they are, to the very best of my ability.

The program includes pre-trip preparation sessions along with short and simple daily sessions for use on location, with an emphasis on joint health and load tolerance, casting capacity, balance and foot health, sensory and nervous system regulation, soft tissue recovery, sleep, hydration and the small daily habits that wind up determining how you feel on day five. You’ll find joint training sessions, movement, balance, coordination, recovery sessions, foot health, pre-sleep practices, and strength training work.

All of your primary bases are covered, reflective of my comprehensive experience as a trainer and educator. Yes, this program is your one-stop shop.

I’ve designed it for the angler who wants to fish hard (medium-hard is okay, too), move well, recover between days and get the most out of a trip that may have taken months or even years to plan.

Traveling Strong is available now inside the Wade Well Online Training Studio.

If you already have a Wade Well Online Training Studio membership, you automatically have access to the full program. Log in and go check it out: https://wadewellstudio.uscreen.io/programs/traveling-strong-program

The standalone program is $59 (honestly a steal for this type of in-depth training expertise). But because you’re one of my Substack subscribers, you’ll receive 20% off of the program.

Click this link to grab it with the discount already applied :

https://wadewellstudio.uscreen.io/checkout/new?o=p4314003&coupon=SUBSTACKTRAVEL&coupon_source=link_assistant

Your one single body isn’t just consequentially part of your fly fishing trips, it’s quite literally the vessel and vehicle that carries you from beginning to end. Make sure that you’re giving something back, fueling up, and showing up as your very best self.

Looking forward to training with you in the studio. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions. - Lindsay

I very pointedly promised you that my next published article would be on how to begin training push ups, but the persistent mutterings of my suspiciously tender heart–a different but frankly much more vital muscle held within the human body–nudged me to write this instead. We’ll get back to movement, mobility, and strength training soon, but for now, humor me while I get this one off my chest.

I drove through Bozeman a couple nights ago under a smoky wildfire-season late summer sky, mentally running through the happenings of my fairly average workday. One remote personal training session, one IRL mobility assessment with a new client, a private fly fishing lesson, some screen time spent working on new writing and marketing needs, capped off by teaching a yoga class at a local studio in the evening.

But for some reason, there was something about the day that hit me pretty hard during my short commute home. And it wasn’t really the work itself, it was the people that I worked with. I had the opportunity to sit down with several people who were expressing an unusually large amount of their humanity. It was raw and honest, and in it I found myself feeling equally exposed.

In personal training, people are pretty much always opening themselves up to some level of vulnerability. They talk about the reason behind why they’ve made the decision to do this work, why they’re trying to train and take care of their bodies, and what they hope to achieve. Very rarely is it just about aesthetics, especially with the people that I typically work with and the type of training that I provide.

There’s usually something much deeper underneath, often characterized by pain, a disconnect from their bodies, a big change in their lives, or a fear based on something they’ve seen transpire in the lives of others. Sometimes they’re trying to get back to something they’ve known, and sometimes they’re just trying to become a slightly different, healthier, happier, and more capable version of themselves. Most have experienced some degree of discomfort, injury, surgery, loss of mobility, or have witnessed someone they know experience these things.

I’ve noticed some similar parallels while leading women’s fly fishing clinics and retreats, when I’m guiding someone on the water, and also inside of the yoga studio. At the epicenter of all of these spaces, we’re sitting with people, getting to know them, and making a real human connection. They’re allowing themselves to be witnessed, and in that, there’s a certain degree of shared intimacy, even if it feels like a relatively casual and lighthearted interaction.

It’s easy to speak about this in vague or theoretical terms. “It’s not just about the fish” is a phrase that we hear all of the time, and we hear similar language shared in alternate environments: “It’s not just about the training,” or “It’s not just about the yoga postures or the mobility work.” Most of us tend to agree that much of these experiences are indeed at least somewhat about the people and the relationships. But it’s less frequent that we take the time to really peel back the layers and call out exactly what that means.

I think it’s about showing up for each other; holding space, if you will. Becoming a part of someone’s system of support, even if it’s only for a single hour, a day, or a season. And even if we don’t actually know that this type of exchange is actively underway.

We’re all human, and somewhere down the line we all navigate change, loss, and grief. We go through breakups, divorces, the loss of jobs, the loss of homes, and the loss of people we love. We move through changes in our bodies, we experience things that are really hard, and we also experience things that are beautiful and celebratory.

Sometimes all of that is happening while we’re learning how to cast a fly rod, figuring out how to move our bodies differently, or rolling out a yoga mat for the first time. And often times, the hard stuff is actually the catalyst that steers us towards the water, the gym, or the studio.

I’m not implying that all of our shared interactions have to be heavy or particularly serious. Quite the opposite–sometimes it’s the laughter, goofy moments, levity, and “Hey, it’s just fishing” side of what we experience that’s way more powerful, and much more needed, than anything else.

But at the end of the day, all of us are also going to encounter plenty of challenging times. And all of us are going to lean on the people with whom we’ve built meaningful relationships. Especially those that occupy these spaces where we’re able to get out of heads, find our way back into our bodies, and do something that makes us feel good, if even for short and fleeting moments.

I’ve been finding myself pondering this quite a bit while I consider the different paths I’ve chosen. People don’t generally get into being a fishing guide or instructor, a strength and mobility coach, or a yoga teacher for the money. These aren’t careers that are known to produce an extraordinary amount of it, and I’m most definitely living proof of that.

I think that those of us who pursue these paths are driven by something else: an intrinsic desire to take care of others, and to uncover shared connection while doing relatively ordinary things.

We all know the cliche fishing guide persona: the one who’s constantly screaming at their clients about missed hook sets, lined fish, and sloppy presentations. There’s a very similar persona inside of the personal training world, too: the coach who’s constantly barking orders on sets, reps, and form. They’re cliches for a reason, I suppose. But I think there’s another side that doesn’t get the glory that it deserves: the guide who spends decades with the same clients, with invites to family weddings as well as funerals. And the trainer who sits by the hospital bed of a client who suddenly underwent open heart surgery. For those who’ve lived it, they’re also well acquainted with the shared tears of joy when the fish of a lifetime comes to hand, and the shared tears of joy when an extraordinary new PR is reached or a movement stops becoming painful.

When people get into this type of work, they’re signing up for more than just a lifetime spent on the gym floor or exploring fisheries. What they’ve really opted into is a lifetime of human connection, day in and day out. And of opening themselves up to what comes along with that level of relationship.

I think that’s why this work feels like more than just being passionate about fishing, strength training, or mindful movement. It’s about facilitating these experiences for other people, yes. But not just facilitating the activity, also collectively sharing in all that life throws our way. Sometimes words are shared out loud, and sometimes support looks like complete silence while drifting on a boat, taking rest between sets, or lying on a yoga mat. Sometimes the therapy is in remembering that for an afternoon, life can be simple and fun and invigorating.

That’s what I think is at the heart of why most people, and certainly why I, have chosen these paths. Teaching, guiding, and coaching are all really forms of heart work, as fluffy as that may sound. The work changes the lives of the people who book you, and it will equally change you, too.

This might not be the reason that you originally stepped into the vocations, but it’s probably the reason why you’ll stay.

You’ve actively chosen to spend your time with your heartstrings being tugged while you build meaningful relationships with your clients, your students, and your community. And honestly, I can’t think of a better way to spend my days, or my life.

Image : Captured by Heather Hardman. In loving memory of Rosemary–my student, and more importantly, my friend. Pictured with fellow student and dear friend, Susan.

One of the principles at the heart of the Wade Well Method is that movement doesn’t have to be complicated or particularly fancy to be effective and exceedingly beneficial.

There’s a whole lot of noise inside of the health, fitness, and wellness worlds. We’re bombarded with influencers who claim to have the one magic pill that will finally fix your low back pain, “melt” all of the fat from your body, or get you shredded in 30 days. Most of it’s smoke and mirrors. And while there’s plenty of great areas of evolution always taking place in the strength, movement, and mobility industry, sometimes it’s worth setting aside the newest exercises, the latest equipment, and the endless stream of fitness trends to return to the basics.

More often than not, the most foundational movement patterns are the ones that actually matter the most over the long haul. And the push-up is one of them.

I’ve worked with my fair share of professional athletes as well as tons of Average Joe’s as a trainer and coach over the past 15 years, and one of the things that remains true for even the highest level athletes is this: they continue to train the basics. And push-ups in particular definitely haven’t disappeared from high-level athletic training.

Strength coaches across the NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL all still program them for their athletes precisely because of their proven efficacy. They protect the shoulders of pitchers and throwers, build trunk stability, provide full body engagement, and effectively prime the nervous system during training sessions and pre-sport warm-ups.

My thoughts? If they’re good enough for the most elite athletes in the world, they’re definitely good enough for me, and good enough for my training clients and students.

It seems a lot of people find it easy to dismiss push-ups because they’re so familiar. We’ve all seen them since grade school, and some of us surely have vivid and perhaps not so fond memories of the Presidential Fitness Test, where we were asked to demonstrate our physical capacity, front and center, amongst all of our peers.

Public performance pressure aside, familiarity of a very basic exercise shouldn’t be mistaken for lack of value, and just because it’s simple doesn’t mean that it isn’t sophisticated. A well-executed push-up is a full-body movement that requires and continually builds functional strength, coordination, joint mobility, trunk stability, and body awareness all at once.

In other words, it asks your body to work as an integrated system. And as fly anglers, and active people in general, that’s exactly what we’re after.

A push-up develops the muscles that help you cast, row, pole a skiff, climb over deadfall, push yourself up from uneven riverbanks, climb in and out of boats, and, perhaps most importantly, confidently get up and down from the ground. Maybe these aren’t the most glamorous skills, but they’re nevertheless some of the exact abilities that actually determine how capable and independent we remain, especially as we continue to age.

On that note, I don’t think of healthy aging as just adding more years to your lifespan. That’s fine and great and completely reasonable if it so happens to be one of your goals. But what I’m a bit more concerned with is helping you to preserve the capacity to keep doing the things you love. And like it or not, the overall condition of your physical body plays a significant role within your ability to remain an active participant in life, and most definitely in fly fishing.

Back to push-ups.

They also challenge something we don’t talk about enough: the joints themselves. To perform one well, you need adequate wrist extension, healthy shoulder function, and the ability to create stability through your trunk while generating force through your upper body. If one of those components has gone rogue after too many years of decreased movement, the push-up becomes less of a strength test and more of an assessment that tells you exactly where your system needs attention.

If you can’t nail a single push-up today, you’re definitely not alone, and the good news is that almost everyone can begin moving in the right direction.

Plenty will begin with push-ups against a wall at a very slight angle. Others might be able to start at a kitchen counter, dining room table, a bench, or with their hands elevated on a box. Have wrists that aren’t cooperating and managing that level of load? You can improve wrist mobility independently, and regress the amount of load so that you’re increasing your wrist extension capacity over time (this is huge – please don’t overlook the importance of healthy wrist strength and mobility). You can also strengthen the chest, shoulders, and triceps independently, too. And of course you can build trunk strength and stability separately while using a wide variety of movement patterns before putting everything together (yes, if you already train with me you know that we embrace plenty of planks and crawling patterns for a very intentional reason).

Like every other movement skill, the push-up can be broken into manageable pieces, and progress is always possible, assuming you’re willing to do the work.

Can you confidently lower yourself to the ground and stand back up? Can your shoulders tolerate a long day spent casting heavy rods or rowing a boat? Can your upper body continue supporting the adventures you hope to have ten, twenty, or thirty years from now? Those are the questions that I believe are worth asking.

Sometimes the most valuable exercise to prioritize isn’t the newest one, the sexiest one, or the most complex one–it’s the one that’s been proving its worth for thousands of years and continues to do so. The push-up is one of those foundational movements.

My advice? Learn it, master it, maintain it, and continue to progress it. Don’t write it off, and don’t put it off, either. Your future self, and your future days on the water, will thank you.

Next week I’ll be publishing a new Wade Well Tactical Performance Guide, available to my paid subscribers, where I break down each component of the push-up and share my step by step process for building the joint prerequisites and necessary movement patterns required to start training push ups.

Given my background as a Functional Range Conditioning Mobility Specialist as well as a MovNat coach, kettlebell strength trainer, and yoga educator, I take a bit of a unique approach, and one that I think you’ll get a ton of immediate benefit out of no matter where you’re starting.

Reminder that all paid subscribers have access to all of the Wade Well Tactical Performance Guides in the archive, along with invites to all of my Substack Live Classes (the next one is this coming Monday, August 10th). You can also watch the replays if you aren’t able to make it to the lives. See you soon.

Image : Gloria Goni, originally published in this Flyfish Journal Feature.

I was a bit of a late “lover of raw oysters” bloomer, especially given my background in the food and beverage industry, but I’ve nonetheless now been regularly enjoying them for a good handful of years. I’ve become accustomed to seeking them out when I travel, and would go so far as to call myself a bit of an oyster enthusiast these days.

But up until very recently, I’d never actually shucked one myself.

This is a little bit embarrassing to admit, because I’m generally someone who really likes to regularly learn new skills and embraces the process of being a complete beginner. I’m especially keen on most any tactile skill performed with my hands (if you haven’t yet read my article Hands, Effort, and Skill: How Fly Fishing Activates the Brain’s Effort-Driven Reward Circuit I highly recommend it).

I also spend my life teaching people how to move their bodies, how to fly fish, how to step outside of their comfort zones, and how to build confidence through new physical experiences. It’s literally my job to empower people to try new things and believe in themselves.

But alas, I’m only human, too. And I’d somehow created this seemingly insurmountable little barrier in my own mind around shucking oysters.

Somewhere along the line I’d become convinced that I was going to have some kind of catastrophic incident with the oyster knife. I’d imagined myself slipping, stabbing, cutting my hand, or somehow ending up with a story that involved an emergency room visit and a very unfortunate holiday dinner gone wrong. Come to think of it, maybe it was all of those years working in restaurants and bearing witness to chefs and line cooks being ushered to the parking lot, hands wrapped in what used to be clean white kitchen towels, that left a wee bit of an imprint.

So up until this past weekend, I’d just decided to completely opt out of the shucking business altogether. I would happily seek out the oysters, pay for the oysters, and eat the oysters. I’d just let someone else with greater confidence and less paranoia take on the (probably minimal) risk of a dangerous knife slip episode.

The funny thing is that I never actually took the time to look into how to safely shuck an oyster to begin with. I never took even a shallow dive into researching different techniques. I just kinda carried around this vague fear based on my own assumptions and a few instances where I watched people lightly struggle with the shuck, accepted that fear as if it were fact, and politely bowed out.

But over the weekend I had a hankering for some oysters. And I knew that there wasn’t going to be anyone around for me to pass the shucking off to. For one reason or another, I guess I just had my own sort of “coming to oyster Jesus” moment where I decided it was time—that if so many other people were able to shuck these harmless little shelled creatures, seriously, why couldn’t I? I went to the seafood counter, picked up a dozen, and committed.

After heading home and watching a couple of YouTube videos, I immediately learned the method that experienced oyster shuckers use and recommend for beginners that centers around knife-handling safety. Wrap your hand with a towel, secure the oyster with said hand, position the knife correctly, use the right amount of pressure, create stability, and shuck. Quick, simple, safe, and effective. No fear of potential injury.

Folks, I was officially shucking, and shucking like I’d been doing it for decades.

Hilarious.

Suddenly, the thing that had existed in my mind as this rather risky and intimidating venture became incredibly approachable, even easeful. And me being me, I of course got to thinking about the process, the psychology, and the physicality of my oyster shucking journey.

No, the oyster was never the problem, nor was the knife. The problem was in the missing piece: strategy. I immediately thought of another parallel version of this exact same fear that I’ve had around chopping wood.

For my entire life I’ve always loved sitting around a fire, whether I’m camping or hanging in the backyard. Like many, I enjoy the entire ritual of being outside, slowing down, and zoning out while my eyes soften around flickering flames. Sometimes with friends and family, other times alone, I can’t think of many scenarios that don’t benefit from a nearby hearth of sorts.

But for years I’ve mainly avoided chopping wood whenever possible because, once again, my brain immediately jumps to the worst-case scenario.

The axe slips, I miss, and somehow remove a finger. Again, a little dramatic? Probably. I’m actually beginning to wonder who may have had a hand in planting some of these fears into my young and impressionable mind. I can think of a few likely suspects, but won’t call them out here.

Regardless, these types of fears are also just incredibly human.

And these are also elements of the human condition that I see all the time in my work as both a fitness trainer, yoga teacher, and fly fishing instructor. People frequently believe that they’re limited by their ability, when in reality they’re probably more so just limited by their uncertainty.

In fitness, I see people who are afraid to lift any amount of weight because they’re worried they’ll hurt themselves. Others are afraid to move because of a past injury, or because they’ve spent years receiving the message that their body is fragile, and that they need to constantly be on guard and “protect” their knees, low back, or ankles from movement. In most cases, they have mental barriers around movement because they don’t yet have a pathway or strategy that feels safe.

And I see much of the same thing while teaching beginners how to fly fish. When I ask people about their conscious barriers, the answers are always fascinating. Their mental hurdles are always so personal and fully shaped by their own unique history. Everyone has their own version of the oyster knife, whether it’s characterized by a fear of falling, a fear of wildlife, a fear of injury, a fear of safely handling fish, a fear of looking inexperienced in front of others, or just a general fear of the unknown.

What I’ve learned as an educator and coach is that the answer is not in forcing people to just push through the fear, but instead to cultivate a strong strategy that’s custom-fit for them.

Our nervous system is designed to be constantly evaluating safety—that’s literally its primary objective. Its work is in keeping us alive and avoiding what’s perceived as a threat. Before we try something new, take on a challenge, or move outside of our comfort zone, our brain is asking a very basic question:

Am I prepared enough to do this? Is this safe?

This is where coaching, teaching, and mentorship become so powerful. A great coach doesn’t just tell someone to be more confident and expect confidence to magically materialize. Instead, an experienced coach creates the precise conditions where confidence can actually develop.

They’re in the business of understanding the person standing in front of them, learning about their history, observing their behavior, and providing the appropriate tools and strategy for that individual.

They provide the information and support that allows the conscious mind as well as the nervous system to say, “Okay. Maybe this is something I can do.” And that’s exactly when something pretty amazing happens: We do the thing.

We shuck the oyster, chop the wood, step into the river, stand on the bow of a boat, pick up the kettlebell, or begin the mobility practice. The barrier was never necessarily the thing itself; it was simply the absence of a pathway.

Neuroscientists often describe the brain as a prediction machine that constantly uses past experiences and available information to attempt to forecast what might happen next. When we lack necessary information, skill, or experience, our brain has a tendency to fill in those gaps with assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions are protective and very useful, but they can also become limiting when the perceived threat is much greater than the actual risk.

Existing within a culture that has a tendency to lean far into individualism and the “figure it all out by yourself” mentality, I think at times we forget that there’s a balance to be found somewhere between simple guidance, strategy, and support, that then better enables the confidence needed for us to take action.

This is one of the reasons I love teaching movement, coaching strength and mobility, and leading fly fishing education so much. There’s something deeply empowering about watching someone move through that moment where uncertainty transforms into capability. And it isn’t because they just muscled themselves through fear, but because they were given the knowledge and the tools to experience safety and express courage at the same time.

Before we decide that something is too difficult, too dangerous, or simply not for us, let’s start by asking a different question first: Do I actually lack the ability, or do I just need a clear strategy that supports my brain, body, and nervous system? This is what gives us the ability to practice discernment, make informed choices, and build the lives that we want.

And I think we all could use those moments of climbing the mountain and arriving on the other side from time to time, even in those cases where the mountain just so happens to be as small as an oyster shell.

Most of us spend the majority of our lives moving in straight lines while we walk down sidewalks, sit in chairs, and maybe climb some stairs here and there. Even for those who have a solid workout routine in place, many movement patterns like deadlifts, front squats, back squats, and treadmills and most exercise machines we use exist in those same straight lines. But when we step out onto the water, the context immediately shifts. More often than not, fly fishing asks your body to twist, rotate, reach, sidestep, balance, and stabilize. In other words, your body wasn't built for straight lines alone.

First and foremost, I’m good with straight lines, they’re a big part of life. By no means am I suggesting that we should stop regularly moving in these ways, or to stop training in these ways. Keep those lifts and the treadmills cued up on repeat. I know I will.

It is, however, essential for us to have a heart-to-heart about the importance of expanding our movement vocabulary so that it includes more variety, more positions, more postures, more shapes, and more planes of motion. Staying stuck inside of just one movement direction is where we run into serious trouble over the long term, so let’s briefly discuss why it matters and some very simple solutions that you can implement immediately. You’ll probably be a little bit shocked by the hugely positive influence this will have on how you move and how you feel once your build some consistency.

Walking, running, sitting, even your typical squatting or hinging movements all exist primarily in the sagittal plane, defined by moving forward or backward. But as anglers (and also well-operating humans in general), we also need to have full capacity to move in all of the other primary planes of motion, too. We need to move in the transverse plane, which is defined by twisting and rotating. And we also need to move in the frontal plane, which is defined by side-to-side movements.

All of these planes of movement show up when we’re on the water, whether we find ourselves executing them on purpose or wind up in a circumstance where they appear consequentially. For example, think about how your body responds while balancing and perhaps unexpectedly slipping when you’re wading. More often than not, you’ll find yourself rotating and maybe even stepping out to the side. The same is true while we navigate around obstacles, and while we play fish.

Not only do we want to have these movement capacities—these positions and ranges of motion—available to us so that we’re able to move and respond more dynamically and effectively, but we also don’t want to “surprise” our nervous system or soft tissue network with sudden movements that are unknown and haven’t been mapped and flagged in the neuromuscular system as being safe shapes. This is where a pain response can sometimes unexpectedly arrive and, in worse cases, acute injury—when the body doesn’t feel prepared, familiar with, or well supported in any given position.

You know how the current pickleball craze has become notorious for producing an incredibly high number of injuries amongst adults? Here’s the primary reason: people are suddenly moving into all sorts of planes of motion and joint positions that they haven’t used in a very long time, and the system has become deconditioned and ill-prepared. This exact same scenario can, at times, make an appearance for anglers who find themselves suddenly moving in ways that their bodies have long forgotten how to access. And yes, it’s been known to show up in daily life, too. We’re all familiar with the ‘rotating and reaching into the backseat of the car and suddenly tweaking our back’ scenario, yes? This is a perfect example of the body having a less than ideal response while moving through a movement pattern that isn’t executed with enough regularity.

There’s another issue to be addressed: overall tissue health. Our joints are designed to move through their full range of motion, and to do so regularly. All of our muscles exist so that they have the opportunity to contract and support, and even our matrix of fascia—the connective tissue that envelopes every part of our body, including muscle, bone, joints, tendons, cartilage, organs, and blood vessels—also needs to slide, glide, move fluidly, and transmit force throughout the entire system. When we don’t move throughout all of the planes of motion, these mechanisms stop operating well. They lose hydration and the flow of vital nutrients, they become stiff, and they don’t communicate amongst one another or work as a cohesive whole. Our bodies simply require frequent movement in order to function well.

So how do we tackle this modern-day dilemma and introduce better movement, better hydration, and better health to the system? It isn’t particularly complicated, but it does require some intention. The answer is that we need to begin regularly integrating more varied movement into our lives, whether that be sneaking it into our daily activities or prioritizing some basic movement practices and routines. Here’s a list of examples. Pick your poison:

• Side-stepping

• Diagonal reaching, twisting, and rotating

• Yoga

• Pilates

• Martial arts

• Sports (most of them are dynamic by design)

• Kettlebell training

These are just a few examples, but you get the idea. You can certainly just make it a point to purposely rotate your spine more often in your daily life, and you can side-step in your day-to-day, too. But overall, these lifestyle integrations can be difficult to stay consistent with, typically offer a low volume of exposure, and will only get you so far (though they’re still better than nothing at all).

It’s far more productive to consider the importance of incorporating a consistent movement practice into your life that includes regular exposure to all of the planes of motion. Many types of yoga are known for incorporating movement through all of the planes, and the same is true of the other movement modalities that I listed. I’m a certified functional kettlebell trainer and personally love to strength train specifically with kettlebells for a few reasons:

• They’re low profile and relatively inexpensive, so they’re easy to use for home workouts and are travel ready while roadtripping.

• They’re extremely versatile and dynamic, and they facilitate training in all of the planes of motion.

• They’re incredibly efficient. You can build muscle, strength, conditioning, power, coordination, and also get your cardio in with some very simple kettlebell circuits. For the person who wants a lot of bang for their buck, they’re hard to beat.

All of that said, for those of you who’re members of the Wade Well Online Training Studio, you know exactly how much I prioritize movement and mobility classes that touch on all of the planes of motion.

If you’re looking for a simple way to begin, the studio is a perfect place to start, with the bonus being that I’ll be adding a kettlebell program to the already very robust library of nearly 100 classes later this fall.

In the meantime, let’s get to work on incorporating more varied movement into your life. You just might be surprised by its ripple effect, and may even start to magically clean up some of your stiffness, low energy, and even some of the mysterious chronic pain or soreness that you haven’t been able to figure out.

Paid Subscribers : During my next Substack Live Class, coming up on Monday August 10th, we’ll be diving into this subject, and I’ll be demo’ing a handful of my favorite exercises so that you can use to start getting these multidirectional movements integrated in your life. See you soon.

Image : Constance Rosado

Last weekend I took a few days to escape the current heat wave that’s been overtaking southwestern Montana this season and head to the hills, gaining a couple extra thousand feet in elevation in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area to do some casual car camping, exploring, and decompressing.

With drought conditions on some of our rivers, new hoot owl restriction alerts cropping up in my inbox most mornings, and suboptimal sleep leaving me a little less than cool, calm, and collected, I decided to steal away in search of some cold water to fish and a place where I could relax a little more, sweat a little less, and enjoy some of the last days in July.

High-output backpacking adventures and many miles on my boots weren’t on the agenda this time around. One night in a small National Forest campground and another at a dispersed spot overlooking Pilot and Index Peaks seemed perfectly sufficient. At nearly 10,000 feet, the wildflowers left every stretch of grass looking like a Jackson Pollock—dripping with white, yellow, purple, and red—my breathing immediately became clean and crispier, and it actually felt reasonable to toss a few logs on a fire each night.

I lugged my SUP along for the first time this season and secured my low-key plan to paddle, float, wander, maybe catch a few lake-bound brookies, all while eating well, sleeping well, and taking a break from work, screens, and pings.

This was my first opportunity to pull the paddle board out this season, and what I immediately remembered was: Oh yeah... this is definitely a challenge.

Being that I hadn’t stood on an inflatable board with the notorious Wyoming wind pushing me across the lake while trying to cast, paddle, and manage my balance, I had a momentary, semi-rude awakening while realizing that my body’s been absent from this type of movement for close to a years time. As always, it was a complete blast and solidified my continued love for fly fishing from small watercraft. It also asked for something very different of my body than the wade fishing and full size raft floating that I do far more frequently.

Given my background as a movement and mobility trainer, I can’t help but use moments like these to make even just a casual assessment. My quick mental inventory usually looks something like: Okay, how’s balance feeling today? What about coordination? How stable or unstable do I feel while moving up and down between standing, kneeling, and sitting? How does my nervous system feel? Do I feel confident or unsure of myself? Is my breathing steady or shortened and stressed?

Throughout the day I found myself regularly moving through many positions: standing, tall kneeling, deep kneeling, and several different seated variations. Every shift required me to adapt to what we call “perturbations” in the movement world—small changes or disturbances that require your body to quickly analyze, respond, and reorganize itself.

That meant plenty of stability demands, a good deal of joint mobility throughout my entire body, along with coordination, balance, and continuous problem solving. One of the things that I actually love most about fly fishing from my SUP is that is offers far more movement variability, with options to touch many different physical positions.

The following day, I spent a solid chunk of time fishing the mid-size creek that flows out of the lake.

Again, I was reminded of how physically demanding technical small-water wade fishing can be. And while I do explore these types of fisheries quite a bit closer to home, I’ve learned over time that each one has its own unique set of environmental nuances. This specific stream was littered with boulders of all sizes, slick vegetation, dicey footing, and countless opportunities to lose my balance if I stopped paying attention and being deliberate with my movement.

It opened up another opportunity to take stock of how my body was moving through these environments while noticing what felt solid, what felt more challenging, and places where there might be opportunities to continue improving. One of the things I love most about fly fishing is that it allows for me to assess my baseline movement capacity on any given day, and it also offers me a way to build better movement fluency and body awareness in real time.

I’m almost always paying attention—at least a little bit—to my physical experience while I’m fishing. I’m noticing how my body feels and how it’s interacting with the environment around me.

This has nothing to do with judging, overanalyzing, or comparing. It is, however, about using a physical practice like fly fishing to develop a greater relationship with my body itself. Especially given the fact that many of us exist in a fairly fast-paced world with countless distractions pulling our attention toward a more cerebral mode of operating, the opportunity to steer some awareness back to our bodies, our senses, and our felt experiences is something that I consider essential to our health and well-being.

While I’m out on the water, I also think about these experiences through the lens of natural movement.

I’m a MovNat Coach, and one of the core ideas behind the system is that human beings evolved while moving dynamically through natural environments. We lifted, carried, climbed, balanced, crawled, ran, jumped, threw, caught, swam, and navigated outdoor terrain as part of everyday life.

Being that I also hold a degree in Anthropology, it’s not surprising that I fell into styles of movement training that embody elements that center around ancient mankind and more traditional global cultures. I’m fascinated by how human beings have historically moved, and of course the implications of sedentary culture and the slow deterioration of our physical health and movement capacity post-industrial revolution.

On that note, today, many of us spend much of our time in relatively sterile and highly predictable environments, then having to recreate movement and physical stimulation inside a gym or studio setting in an attempt to reclaim capacities that used to be built naturally in our daily lives.

For me, fly fishing offers an outlet to essentially reverse that equation, where the outdoor environments we move through return to being a nature-based version of the “gym”, so to speak. It’s an opportunity to squat, lunge, hinge, climb, balance, move slowly, move swiftly, move skillfully, and allow our bodies to do the things they were biologically designed to do.

On this particular outing, while I had ample opportunity to do much of the above, what stood out most was the work and challenge around my balance. It reminded me of the simple, and maybe a little overused phrase we frequently hear in the fitness and mobility world: use it or lose it.

If I want to continue enjoying SUP fly fishing, then I need to keep doing it with some regularity, and I also need to continue training the physical prerequisites that make it possible when I’m off the water, too. The same principle is true for technical small creek wading.

The environments we choose to fish and the modes we use to travel through them become some of our best teachers, and in many ways they’re also some of our best training partners.

Next time you’re out, I encourage you to pay attention to how your own body is showing up for you, and how it is that you’d like to continue to move while maintaining your long-term relationship with fly fishing and the places it takes you. It’s never too late to make improvements, and tending to our bodies is always time and energy very well spent.

And if you’re interested in exploring movement and mobility training that hones in on very specific styles of fly fishing, stay tuned for the upcoming release of a handful of new Wade Well Method online programs. We’ll be taking a deep dive into use case protocols, destinations, and target species so that you have a clear and direct path to achieve your movement goals.

It’s been too hot to fish in Southwest Montana, and it shows in my recent ramblings about famed tennis players, fly anglers, and the well-documented instances of complete and utter meltdowns. This is a slightly self-indulgent piece, inspired by one of my friend's recent social media posts about cracking a cold one—guide and client seated side by side on the porch after a long day of yelling at each other from opposite ends of the boat. I made an honest effort to weave in a bit of my philosophy on performance and human behavior, but mostly it was an excuse to entertain myself for a few hours yesterday afternoon while watching an embarrassing number of "professional athletes flipping out" videos on YouTube. Enjoy.

If you’ve ever been on a hosted fly fishing trip you’ve probably met a John McEnroe type character. Or maybe you are one. You know – the angler who becomes completely unhinged after breaking off a fish. The guide who’s laying awake, staring at the ceiling, still replaying what should have been a failproof gimme shot at a permit. The person who lands a handful of picture perfect fish but still spends all of dinner ruminating about the one that never made it to hand. Disappointment can be a common emotion for the dedicated angler. Blatant and overtly dramatic outbursts? Those are common enough, too. Every sport has its own John McEnroe, and fly fishing is definitely no exception.

John McEnroe became famous for his very colorful arguments with umpires while chucking rackets and delivering some of the most memorable on-court meltdowns in professional sports (including his iconic 1981 Wimbledon blowout). No one can forget John Daly’s full send of his 6-iron into Lake Michigan. Tiger Woods has always been know to regularly unleash choice words after a poor shot. And Tom Brady has never been shy about letting more than a few strong words of frustration fly. Oh, and the Mike Tyson incident? Well, you know how that story ended.

And let’s not forget about the coaches aka the fishing guides. Lou Pinella’s dirt kicking tantrum that led to his ejection at Wrigley Field may look suspiciously familiar, especially for my performance driven saltwater fishing friends. Sports fans love these clips because they’re emotional, unfiltered, a little over-the-top, and if we’re being honest, in most cases pretty funny. Mainly because they’re simply very human. Suddenly, these larger-than-life athletes become surprisingly relatable–not completely superhuman after all.

Fly anglers aren’t usually smashing graphite rods over their knees or launching their rigs into the drink, but we have our own version, and I bet you’ve seen it unfold more than once. It’s the four-letter-words being carried across the water as far as the ear can hear and the thousand-yard stare while the skiff gets pushed back to shore. Fly fishing may be a different kind of sport, but for those who live and breathe it, it can carry the exact same kind of emotional investment.

It’s easy to dismiss these moments as poor emotional regulation or as making what should be a fun hobby into something that holds far too much pressure. And sure, maybe sometimes that’s true and we could use to not take ourselves quite so seriously. But I think there’s another way to frame these visceral reactions, too. More often than not, I believe what we’re seeing isn’t someone who cares too much about “winning”. I think we’re really just seeing someone who cares deeply about the craft, and who has decided to put an extraordinary amount of effort forth.

Nobody spends years learning to double haul incredibly long distances, refining precision presentations, studying fish behavior and changing conditions, then traveling across continents and spending thousands of dollars on the pursuit because they feel blasé about it.

The frustration doesn’t come from a lack of perspective or maturity, it comes from the fact that they showed up hoping to execute something they’ve spent years or even decades working incredibly hard to master. I think these instances of really big feelings demonstrate a very human response, and to take it one step further, I actually find the ‘try hard’ sentiment to be exceedingly refreshing. Indifference doesn’t impress me; I tend to think it’s cool to care a lot, set goals, do the work, and allow for yourself to feel and fully express disappointment and frustration. But for the record, I don’t endorse the Mike Tyson approach to emotional regulation. We have to draw the line somewhere.

I think we’ve become a little too quick to celebrate being nonchalant. We treat emotional detachment as if it’s synonymous with being grown up, while rolling our eyes at people who wear their passion and enthusiasm on their sleeves. But I really can’t think of a single circumstance where indifference has built much of anything of value. The people who care enough to occasionally get frustrated are often the same people who care enough to practice, to learn, to mentor others, to act as stewards of the ecosystems, and to keep showing up season after season.

Where I do think performance separates itself isn’t in avoiding emotion altogether, but in being able to regulate and recover from it. Every athlete gets frustrated, every angler gets bummed about fish they could or should have landed, and every guide gets a little rattled by shots that don’t produce the outcome they’re hoping for. The difference isn’t whether your nervous system reacts, but in your ability to reset before the next cast, the next day, or the next trip. And that is a trainable skill, and one that transfers to all areas of life, too.

So yes, maybe every fly fishing trip does have a John McEnroe or two. Hopefully they leave the throwing of gear to someone else, but I don’t much mind the occasional expletive loudly hollered after a lost fish. In some strange way, I find it reassuring that people are still capable of caring this much about anything. Fly fishing just happens to be one of those rare pursuits that's equal parts sport, personal growth, mindset practice, relationship builder, and yes, something that touches the spirit, too. Especially for the more spirited individuals within our sport.

Spoiler alert: this isn’t just a problem for fly anglers, it’s honestly most everyone. But there are some interesting circumstances at play specifically while we’re on the water that have a tendency to result in low back soreness for a lot of people. As a trainer, it’s a complaint that I hear more often than anything else.

“My back always tightens up halfway through the day.”

“I can only fish for a few hours before I start aching.”

“I love being on the water, but I pay for it for days afterward.”

Different versions of the exact same story, and it’s one that’s been shared with me on repeat throughout the entire duration of my career as a functional movement and mobility professional.

Low back pain and discomfort is one of the most common physical maladies I’m approached with from anglers of every age and experience level. Guides talk about it, destination anglers talk about it, people who fish six times a year and people who fish two hundred days a years talk about it. And people in their thirties and forties mention it just as often as people in their sixties and seventies. Research suggests that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of people will experience low back pain at some point in their lives, making it one of the leading causes of diminished mobility and disability worldwide. If your back’s been bothering you, you’re not unique, you’re certainly not broken, and there’s plenty you can do to start pivoting away from pain and back toward better movement while continuing to do the things you want to do.

Time On The Water Is More Demanding Than It Looks

Fly fishing asks way more from our bodies than most people really give it credit for. We hike unstable terrain, scramble over rocks, repeatedly cast and rotate, and spend long hours both standing and moving a whole lot.

We rarely fish on perfectly stable ground. We wade through rivers and flats with shifting currents beneath our feet, stand on the bow of a skiff in rolling water, balance on rafts and drift boats, and navigate shorelines covered in rocks, sand, mud, and uneven surfaces. These environments require the body to make thousands of small adjustments every hour, and the low back often becomes one of the places where those demands accumulate. Why? The low back is a central hub for force transfer between the upper and lower body.

We Simply Don’t Move Enough

For many people, the issue isn’t necessarily just the fly fishing itself. It’s that their time on the water has become one of the more physically demanding things they they do. We spend much of modern life sitting in the same static positions, driving, staring at screens, and moving through a relatively small number of positions in our daily lives.

Our bodies evolved for variety. Walking, rotating, reaching, squatting, lunging, climbing, carrying, and changing positions while moving through all planes of motion with frequency are all part of our biological inheritance. When we spend most of our lives in a small handful of positions and then ask our bodies to spend eight hours navigating and responding to a very different set of demands and stimuli, it’s not particularly surprising that certain areas become irritated. In many cases, our ventures on the water acts as a catalyst that exposes the movement limitations and capacity deficits that have probably been present for many years.

It’s Rarely Just a Weak Core

One of the most persistent myths surrounding low back pain is that it means you have a weak core. Heard that one before? Most have. While comprehensive strength and stability throughout the entirety of the trunk can and absolutely should be part of the conversation, it’s rarely the entire story alone. The low back exists within a highly interconnected system; no one part of our body acts or exists in isolation. What happens both above and below has a full and direct impact, and again, our low back is constantly managing force distribution between the upper and lower body.

Sometimes an irritable low back is influenced by limited hip mobility or reduced thoracic (middle spine) rotation. Sometimes breathing mechanics, chronic bracing, rib cage flare, prohibited soft tissue glide, pelvic position, or even gait mechanics and foot mobility play a significant role. Other times the body may have limited movement options overall, and the low back begins taking on more work, more load, than it can sustain. The challenge, or perhaps better described as nuance, is that two people can experience very similar symptoms for entirely different reasons. Developing a better understanding of your unique body is key.

Pain Doesn’t Always Mean Damage

This is where modern pain science becomes incredibly helpful. Pain is a very real felt sensation, yes. But contrary to popular belief, pain doesn’t always equal tissue damage. Our nervous systems are constantly gathering information (felt, lived, and consciously thought) and making predictions about safety. Sometimes pain is the body’s way of encouraging us to pay attention and change something.

In circumstances where any given area of the body feels overloaded, underprepared, or threatened (even when this is just a perceived threat), the nervous system may send a pain signal or stiffening even when there’s no actual serious structural problem present. The research affirms that many people with significant tissue damage (seen on imaging) have little or no pain at all, while others with relatively unremarkable scans experience considerable pain or discomfort. To assume that all pain equates to structural tissue damage is just plain false. The brain controls the pain response, and there’s more complexity within this mechanism than many realize.

More Capacity, More Options

One of the unfortunate things about low back pain is that it’s known to create fear around movement. People stop bending, rotating, lifting, moving dynamically, regularly walking, or doing the activities they enjoy because they worry they’re causing further damage or they’re anticipating an inevitable pain response. The paradox being that for many people, the integration of more appropriate movement is actually a large part of the solution.

We need to begin thinking about the long-term goal as being not just arriving at a place where you no longer feel chronic back pain, but to build a context where your body has more options, more resilience, and more capacity for the things you love to do. I don’t buy into the idea that we’re fragile, but in order to operate within a body that can tolerate long days on the water, recover more effectively, and adapt to the demands of challenging environments and versatile movement, we do have to be intentional about our lifestyle as a whole.

The Wade Well Perspective

Well rounded performance and functional movement training always focuses on this single absolute truth : no one part of the human body acts in isolation. While everyone hopes for a quick solution to any given problem, the reality is that a comprehensive look at the full system really is needed in order to understand the mechanisms at play and what needs to be addressed.

That being said, there is one thing that, from a very generalized standpoint, most all people will benefit from : more high-quality movement in daily life and a better understanding of their own body. Sometimes that starts with actions like ensuring that you’re taking a couple 20 minute walks each day or using a standing desk so that you inherently access a greater variety of positions. And of course anyone who’s been following my work for a while or who trains with me knows that I insist upon daily floor sitting to access a wider range of joint positions while simultaneously solidifying our ability to get up and down from the ground as we age.

What To Do Right Now To Accelerate Progress

If low back pain has been limiting your time on the water or impacting your day to day life, I have some solutions for you.

Attend this Thursday’s Substack Live class on Low Back Pain. All of my subscribers, both free and paid, are invited to this one. It’s an open Q&A and I’ll also be demo’ing a handful of recommended exercises and movement patterns that are proven useful for most.

Join The Wade Well Online Training Studio, where I offer on-demand movement, mobility, recovery, and strength sessions designed to help anglers build more resilient bodies with minimal equipment and just a few minutes a day. It’s an accessible place to begin if you know you need more movement and more variety in your routine but don’t want to commit to a full-blown personal training relationship with me.

As a thank you for being a part of my Substack subscriber community, use this link to get 20% off of the Online Training Studio Annual Membership :

https://wadewellstudio.uscreen.io/checkout/new?o=228650&coupon=SUBSTACK20

START WITH THESE SESSIONS IN THE ONLINE TRAINING STUDIO TO START ADDRESSING YOUR LOW BACK (you can click on the links to quickly access them) :

1. DAILY FOUNDATION : Spine, Hip, & Shoulder Mobility. Joint Training Session.15 Minutes.

2. SEATED WARM-UP : Movement Session. 7 Minutes.

3. BREATH & DOWNSHIFT : 3D Breathing. Restore Session. 3 Minutes.

4. FULL BODY RESET : Recovery Session. 7 Minutes.

Complete all of these classes 2-3 times a week for 6 weeks. They’re short - stack a couple of them together or do them independently. Just get them in, and remember that anything I teach from the floor in these classes can be done from a bed or couch if you aren’t able to get up and down from the ground. Follow the protocol above and send me a message letting me know how it’s going, I love hearing about your progress.

If you’d like a more individualized and in-depth approach, I offer remote movement assessments and comprehensive coaching and programming. Together, we look at your specific history and assess current movement, mobility, balance, breathing mechanics, joint range of motion, recovery metrics, and the unique demands of your life on and off of the water. Personal training is for those who want to clearly understand why their body is responding the way that it is, while building a custom plan that actually fits you.

Looking forward to seeing you at the live class this Thursday. Share this with your friends, too.

For many years now, people have been writing extensively about the leadership lessons that can be uncovered through fly fishing. Patience, adaptability, perseverance, and the ability to slow down and trust the process are the themes I often see referenced inside of blogs and corporate retreat website copy.

Businesses have been taking leaders and teams to rivers, oceans, and wild places in search of better strategy, better conversations, and a little perspective for an incredibly long time. There’s tremendous value in all of that, and the market’s pretty well defined. Borderline saturated, even.

That, however, isn’t the ‘fly fishing x business culture’ conversation that I’m most interested in.

As someone who’s spent much of my career working at the intersection of movement, outdoor sports and recreation, fly fishing, nervous system regulation, and human performance, I find myself asking a different question entirely.

What if fly fishing isn’t just a metaphor for better leadership? What if it dramatically changes the conditions under which we think, recover, solve problems, and make decisions?

The question that interests me isn’t what fly fishing teaches us about business or leadership. Instead, I’ve always been more interested in better understanding why so many high performers seem to do some of their very best thinking on the water. Some time back I published Why Fly Anglers Write: Fly Fishing, the Brain, and Clear Thinking, which offers some excellent insight into the neuroscience behind the creative thinking engine while on the water.

Over the past fifteen years I've facilitated dozens of outdoor experiences, movement workshops, and fly fishing programs for everyone from dedicated anglers to founders, executives, and corporate teams. Through my work with the Wade Well Method, I've spent much of my career helping people use intentional movement, time outside, and evidence-based nervous system regulation practices to build greater physical and cognitive capacity and ultimately feel and perform better. Time and time again I’ve witnessed something unfold in real-time when we step out onto the water, slow down, and fully arrive within a physical and visceral operating system. People begin to think quite differently.

This seems to be especially true for high performers. They don't need more data or another productivity system.. They need environments that allow their minds and nervous systems to operate differently.

Founders, executives, and leaders often spend their lives in a constant state of output. They’re decision-makers, problem-solvers, and they spend inordinate amounts of time putting out fires and carrying the weight of their companies and the people within them. The pressure and the demands are relentless, and their minds become incredibly skilled at moving quickly, reacting efficiently, carrying an enormous cognitive load, and remaining in a near-constant state of vigilance.

But high performance has a cost, and existing in a state of non-stop overdrive doesn’t always create an ideal environment for contemplation, refinement, clarity, and execution.

The nervous system adapts to the environments where we spend the most time – we’re products of what we practice. If we primarily operate in a state of urgency, we become very good at urgency. And if we spend our days hustling between meetings, emails, and high-stakes decisions, our brains become skilled at staying locked in a state of vigilance. What often gets lost is the true capacity for reflection, perspective, and deep thinking.

This is one of the reasons I continue to see so many high performers repeatedly return to the water, mountains, and desert—anywhere spacious enough to facilitate a shift in state.

For some, it isn’t always about just finding environments that allow us to escape our work (okay, sometimes it is), but also because the characteristics of the external landscape create the conditions necessary for the internal landscape to fully switch gears.

Researchers have studied the relationship between natural environments and cognitive performance for a good long while. Time spent outdoors has been shown to restore attention, reduce mental fatigue, and improve our ability to solve problems and generate new ideas. Some of our best thinking arrives not while we’re trying to force it into existence, but while we’re moving our bodies, observing and interacting with an external environment, and giving our minds enough real estate to both wander and follow an uninterrupted stream of consciousness.

Fly fishing is particularly interesting in this regard. It’s demanding enough to hold our attention and spacious enough to let our minds breathe—which also happen to be the exact conditions needed to access flow state. As the noise settles, urgency has a way of softening its grip, and real conviction gained through clarity is better able to make its way to the surface.

Whether you’re watching a trout rise in a river, scanning a saltwater flat, or waiting for a school of tailing fish to appear, fly fishing asks for your presence.

It invites focus, but not force.

There are moments of concentration, yes, but there are also long stretches of walking, rowing, poling, drifting, and observing.

Most of the important decisions that I’ve made in my own life and business haven’t happened while sitting or standing at my desk. And over the years, I’ve watched founders, executives, and business owners experience the exact same thing. The breakthrough conversation happens “out there”.

A difficult decision becomes clear as day while standing in a river, and a problem that seemed impossible suddenly feels manageable after a few hours standing on the bow of a boat. The water doesn’t magically give us the answers, but it does create an environment where those answers have ample room to emerge organically.

This is why I think we need to start looking at fly fishing and outdoor experiences differently.

Not necessarily as a luxury, an escape, or another wellness intervention to stack onto an already full schedule. Every leader would do well to treat at least some of their time on the water as a form of cognitive and professional development—a nervous system reset that brings better brain-based balance to the system.

The ability to step away from constant stimulation, move our bodies, and create moments of decongestion may be one of the most important performance skills we can cultivate in modern life. The next breakthrough in your business probably isn’t going to materialize in a fluorescent-lit conference room or yet another marathon-length strategy session.

The question of how we create the conditions for better thinking, better recovery, and better decision-making sits at the center of much of my work through the Wade Well Method. Success isn't exclusively built through more effort, more information, or more optimization. More often than not, it's achieved by learning how to deliberately shift our state, sharpen and diversify our lens, and create enough space for clarity to rise to the surface.

Image : Dylan Barker