A session needs a shape. Warm up, drill, review last week, then one new thing, all inside an hour.

What the instructor says

• Drill first. Ten minutes of warm-up, then long-distance, shooting, loop, horizontal casting and tip casting drills — the blocking and tackling of fly casting. 15 to 25 percent of every session, at the start; over a week, at least a quarter of the 6 to 8 hours he puts in.
• Then review, then one new skill. Ten to fifteen minutes on last week, then ten to fifteen on a new skill; 45 to 60 minutes total, and three 45-minute sessions a week is workable.
• One sub-skill. Pick one area and improve it: five minutes of nothing but a mend around a 25 ft cone. No more than two or three things a day.
• Tape and cones every session. A tape at least 75 ft and six or seven cones at 20, 30, 45, 50 and 75 ft, so you know where 40 ft is.
• Grass every day, water once or twice a month. The exam may be run on water, so roll casting on water is not optional.

Putting it to work

1. Warm up on tasks 1, 6 and 8, then 20, 30 and 45 ft on each shoulder, 50 ft dominant for the double haul (task 14) and the start of the 75 ft task (task 15).
2. On a bad day, do not skip: consolidate what you are already good at.

Source

From the FFI CI walkthrough series by Dayle Mazzarella (Chapter 3 — FFI Casting Instructor Certification Tasks, Fly Fishing Coach International), lesson 1 part 2, 00:00:33–00:06:48, and lesson 1 part 3, 00:01:29. See the video library for the series and the CI exam section for the tasks; terms follow the FFI Fly Casting Definitions.