CL Fitness

For those of you who regularly compete, do you do anything to keep your body in tune for CL stunt? This morning NPR had a nice piece about fitness for specific activities, and I had to wonder what y'all do. Leonard's thread on the overhead 8 produced comments on body flexibility.

Any thoughts on improving reflexes or fine motor skills?

CL stunt success is far more related to the flyer's skills than the capability of the airplane, which is most of our focus in this forum. I never considered "fitness" as part of those skills until today. Let's face that many of us old CL geeks are indeed getting a little long in the tooth.

Comments or suggestions?

Drink a lot of beer, sniff a lot of flowers...
Hang out and shoot the breeze with your mates, when you can.
It's a hobby after all; enjoy yourself, because that is really ALL that matters, win or not.

Larry,

I think you've asked a good question and you've prompted me to thought. I don't know that any particular physical conditioning applies except maybe general good health practices. The curing of dizzieness comes with time and so doesn't require alot of preparation. I will tell you that I have stood in my shop and turned around for 5 minutes or so at a time in the spring before I fly,it does seem to help me.

More then anything though I think mental preparation is most important. I lay in bed at night and go to sleep flying the pattern. This mental reinforcement is invaluable because it makes alot of the things you think through into automatic actions. I remember when I was in the Air Force I practiced emergency procedures for shutting down a J79-P17 under emergency conditions never once thinking I'd have to. One day it happened and before I knew it I had carried out all the emergency steps and extinguished a tailpipe fire. In a circumstance like that there is no time to read the checklist, immediate action is the only thing that will bring it under control. Our models are not near as demanding as that, but the principal of mental reinforcement applies to anything.

I also have adopted the policy of not flying when I'm tired regardless of how beautiful the weather is. Concentration is important and if your tired you ain't got none!!

For the combat pilot: Karate, weight training, and plenty of long runs to improve wind will all contribute something. Some wing- shooting, maybe substituted for with skeet/trap, couldn't hurt.

Better yet, bribe the officials to match you up with some other old coots who don't know any better than to try keeping up with the younger hot shots. (This is where a couple of coolers full of some premium brands of processed barley waters in that 16 Oz can size that others here keep mentioning, is probably a very good investment for me, despite the fact that indigestion made me give up the nasty habit of drinking that stuff some years ago.)

Kiwi

I agree with your observations. Your reference to mental preparation and reinforcement brought back memories of my USAF days. In UPT, we memorized three basic rules for dealing with an emergency:

1. Maintain aircraft control.
2. Analyze the situation and take the proper action.
3. Land as soon as conditions permit.

This became instinctual and saved my bacon more than once. Thank you USAF!

With regard to 16 ouncers, "12 hours between bottle and throttle" is still a good policy. I don't have to remind anyone that we don't bounce back like we used to in the old days.

Finally, DRINK LOTS OF FLUIDS (water, Gatorade, etc.) Yeah, I know we old geezers don't have the bladder capacity that we used to have, but look at the downside of having to pee every 30 minutes or so.

As an aside, I just got back from the Knight's Joust contest at Whittier Narrows (CA). I only spent a couple hours there but wanted to see Keith Trostle's Rabe Bearcat in action. Very impressive and he was leading when I left. Weather is great (overcast, cool and light breezes).

Good point; however, I don't think I'd be able to do much about a major conflagration these days. The volume and pressue available are somewhat diminished!

You're right... It's all just for fun.

I know that an afternoon's flying is exhausting. Actually I run out of ability to concentrate before I really get fatigued. It's surprising that flying is as physically easy as it is. Just try holding a control handle at arms length for 5 minutes and see what your arm feels like.

My other "hobby" is distance running. I've finished 20 full 26.2 mile marathons (slowly, lately) and maybe 500 other shorter races. It may have a slight positive effect on flying CL, but only that. I do think that degree of heat acclimation can play a role in those extended summer contests, but this can be achieved in a variety of ways, many of which do not involve much preparation of an athletic sort.

Far more important, as other posters have suggested, is mental preparedness. And I wouldn't mind having better reflexes, or at least coming up with some sort of training that would improve them. And, of course, pure practice is the key. I'll take an overweight, out of shape guy who flies 40 times a week over Mr. Triathlon whose out there once a week any day.

I've often wondered how you could best combine running and model airplanes. I guess the solution is Free Flight and Hand Launched Glider, without dethermalizers. You know, chasing them over hill and dale.

I have two friends who love stunt but no longer fly because they no longer have the flexibility to look over their heads. Admitedly, both are in their seventies, but both fly radio (and that involves a lot of looking up high) so it's a shame they can't fly stunt. Mind you, I also have a mate who's about the same vintage who can't hang onto a stunter anymore - he doesn't fly radio either. But this suggests to me that despite JAK's light hearted attitude, which I agree with, we do need to look after our bodies or we'll become one of those boring old farts who sits on someone else's model box and tells everyone how it was done in the old days, only we'll become that about ten years early.

Mental agility. This is critical in stunt, unless you like building. If you ain't alert, you wont be flying - you'll be picking up bits. Mental alertness comes from a fit body. Sorry, too much sitting in front of the box with a bottle of the right drop and a block of Mr Cadbury's finest will not aid this year's stunt program. I know. I spend my life on a keyboard and am used to getting out on the flying field and finding my brain's back on the workshop bench.

But do we need to be super fit?

No, but it aint gonna hurt.

So, what am I doing about it?

Well, there's half a carton of Southwark Bitter (beer) in the fridge along with a block of Peppermint Cream chocky next to it, plus a nice murder mystery on tele tonight...

I'll get fit tomorrow.

Cheers
Richard
who has very fit fingers, and an expanding waist line

"...we do need to look after our bodies or we'll become one of those boring old farts who sits on someone else's model box and tells everyone how it was done in the old days, only we'll become that about ten years early."

Last year at Brodak's, I saw Bob Palmer wearing a T-shirt from the "Bob Palmer Classics" which read "The older I get, the better I used to fly". I thought that was a neat T-shirt... but Bob wasn't sitting on anybody's flight box and he is in his 80's.

I guess we only become boring old farts if we want to be boring old farts. Old we can't control but the rest we can

Hunt had a good one (not about Bob Palmer!) - "Either you're making history, or you are history"

This post was originally very, very serious, but it went a little goofy. I got jokes as responses. I was REALLY seriously looking for training things that you top guys do that you think make a difference in the way you fly.

In the spirit of the elbow-bending posts, good post, but you are dodging a major physical issue. What do you do about your hair blowing over your eyes in the overhead eight?

I WAS serious...
People all age at different rates, according to their genetic structure, and there is nothing you can do about that. What works well for one person doesn't for another. The mind is 90%, the physical is 10% or less. There is no real final answer to your question in other words. The best excecise for flying C/L, IS flying C/L...
This IS a hobby, and you are supposed to relax and enjoy it. When you take it so seriously you start worrying about things like this related to it, it is time to quit and find another, and that is NO joke.

In general, most activities, even supposedly "mental" ones, accrue some benefit from physical fitness.

I understood, but he is asking a question that only HE can answer. Outside of C /L, does he like cycling, rowing, running, skeet shooting, tennis, fencing, sailing, scuba diving, etc., etc.? All will help with Stunt. He has to answer his own question, no one else can do it for him.
The very best training (physical or otherwise) anyone can ever do for any activity, is by actually doing that activity itself. You want to be a PA ace? go out and fly it, a LOT....
It is like me asking someone else about staying in shape to ride motorcycles (not so easy a hobby either!). I have been biking over three decades now, and when I reach the point where I don't know what I personally need to do to continue, it is time for me to sell the bikes and quit for good.

JAK

P.S. As for the hair in the eyes, either cut it so short it doesn't matter, or else pull it back and put a bandanna around your head, same thing I do on a bike. Good pair of sunglasses and you are all set.

I used to wear ball caps on the flying fields most times, just turning them around backward when in combat (competition anyway, sometimes in fun- flying two in a circle, making passes at each other, with or without using streamers, I'd leave the hats right side forward). I still wear such caps, but over the last 8-10 years or so, most of the hair near the front and on top has vacated the premises, so there's not that much to blow around, except right above my ears . . now the caps are keeping my scalp from getting a sunburn!

Kiwi

Keep 'em flying!

I believe he already had some notion as to his own opinion.

Keep 'em flying!

Best wishes,

At speeds below 80 mph, you need propeller cuts to break the plastic table cloth streamers. Mike and I hit each other's streamers several times each with our planes' wings without getting cuts, and I REALLY would've been short of breath if I hadn't also hit the ground and got a short rest while the broken prop was changed! Our match was decided on air time only.

(No, it wasn't in my favor!)

I should be running for part of my daily two mile walk, I guess!

Kiwi