Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 7 February 2026
In a recent FP I wrote about the role of the triceps for the fly caster and how it is related to pain from fly casting. These discoveries have been the key to understanding the pain I have been having in my elbow with a really big flare up in the summer of 2024. Since then I have been experiencing pain in the area below my right elbow. The pain has been from pretty sever and the arm feeling numb and stiff. To quite good from time to time. But never feeling completely good.
After a whole year had passed I thought it was as good as it was going to get. It felt quite good with some small flare ups from time to time. I thought that was how it was going to be for me and that it might get better sometime if I kept working on the exercises for the forearm. A part of pain management is acceptance. So I had accepted that I would experience pain from time to time and was happy that I was able to cast and keep practicing.
Then I realised that my triceps was having a lot of tension. Some parts almost felt like touching bone, that is not good or normal. A relaxed muscle in good condition is soft. Not soft like fat but soft and not tender to touch. So I started to work on it a bit with massage and when I did my elbow started to feel different. Feel better. That is what got me into researching how my elbow problems could be related to this and its role in fly casting. I learned new things about self massage, how to do that better and things to not do here. I got a better understanding of eccentric training for muscles that has gotten stiff to protect it self.
I am still a bit scared to say that my elbow is good now. But it is so much better than before. I just didn’t know how bad it was before. It feels like my elbow has been opened up and been cleaned from gravel and got a good lube up. I have learned how much pain I was experiencing that I had compartmentalised. There are a number of things I do each day that I now realise I was bracing for pain. That I was expecting a small jolt of pain but it isn’t there any more. Like pouring a glass of drink, I’m expecting a jolt of pain to happen. But it isn’t there any more. This is also part of pain. Expectations, you expect pain and you can experience pain from that or alter your movement patterns. This is part of the recovery, the body has to learn that the pain is gone and to not expect it any more.
Dramatic pause.
I started to write this a week ago. And since then I have had one serious session. The weather is soo not helping at the moment. There is a strange kind of cold weather going on now, you cannot escape it, so practice is impossible to get in. I found one hour of indoor casting. And cold weather is shit for nerve pain. But one intensive hour of distance casting and no flare up in the “elbow” so I guess I’m doing something right. So my new discoveries and plan seem to work.
As stated above. My elbow area, that is a better description than elbow, feels better. The expectations of pain jolts are getting tuned down all the time. What I’ve done is briefly outlined in the FP about the triceps but I intend to write a bit of a more comprehensive instruction there.
Other things going on at the moment. This Saturday, perhaps today’s I should say, there is a workshop with the Swedish federation going to be arranged. Five hours Teams meeting on Saturday. Yay. But I really like the work they do and want to do contribute where I can. And hopefully a nice meet-up with some casters on Sunday.
A bit scattered FP this week I think. A lot of things going on this week. My dog had a bit of surgery, nothing big fortunately. But she hates the funnel she has to wear to leave the wound a lone and wakes us up a couple of times each night. To keep her away from the stitches. She doesn’t seem to interested in them, but we have to play it safe.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: I think you can actually see on this picture how cold it is.