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Issue Thirty-two, Part 1 of 1
6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Training
Sometimes the best way to improve our riding isn't by learning some intricate exercise or by spending years or thousands of trainer-dollars to unravel the mysteries of some dark, mystical phenomena (such as "collection" or "throughness"), but rather by making a few small and simple corrections that can make "all the difference" in not months, weeks or years but minutes. What follows then, are a handful of subtle changes you can make to improve your riding in short order. I'm a big believer in the concept that a "one percent improvement" each day means a one hundred percent improvement in just three months and ten days so take heed, little changes add up to big improvements.
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1) When riding, we can (or should) only work on one thing at a time. (Not per ride, but at any given moment.) Example: You want to teach your horse to move diagonally to the right, but instead of moving his shoulders away from your left rein, he turns to the left. Here's incorrect: You quit asking for "diagonal" and take a moment to steer the horse back onto your "original path." You're thinking "We'll start over." The horse is thinking "Right, left, straight, move here, move there, make up your mind." You're confusing the devil out of your horse. Now, correct: If your horse mistakenly turns to the left, keep your pressure, and concentrate on causing those feet to move diagonally against your new path. Do not stop and reposition the horse. Know from the outset that you'll end up meandering all about the pen.
2) Stop riding dead-headed and start noticing things. Study the mechanics of your horse: "When I do this, I get that" or "This is always followed by that." Save these random scraps of knowledge, compile them, chew them over, and begin consciously collecting training snippets you can put into place not just today, but tomorrow or the next day. Dissect things: If you notice that your mare moves her hip (sideways, a "turn on the forehand") better to the right, than the left, then look down and ask yourself what's different between the two sides? If I made the bad side look like the good side before asking for the movement, would I have better luck? In this case, if you see that she naturally carries her shoulder more to the left (and therefore her hip more to the right), experiment to see if this natural stance is what's making the difference. Can you improve the "off side" with lessons learned from the "good side"? Try by first asking the shoulders to move slightly to the right (to reflect the body positioning on the "good side"), then ask for the hips to move to the left. You can cut out the stutter step you've added later when the horse understands your cue, but in the meantime, you've gotten your point across by using your brain.
Tip: Thinking as described is the real difference between a professional horse trainer and the casual rider. Too many riders think "My horse is a jerk and won't pick up the correct lead." A pro diagnoses the problem: "This horse won't pick up his left lead because he won't move his hips to the left. I'll gain that control through exercises a, b and c." Learn to break things down and to see the true "limiting factor" and you'll start fixing these issues yourself.
3) Begin collecting a list in your brain of "what's more important" for any situation. How many times have you set out to teach one thing only to have something else fall apart? Should you ignore the new problem or fall back in your training and deal with it right away? That's where experience comes in and why I'm suggesting that you build this "Compendium of What's More Important."
An example: You begin working on hip control but the horse keeps moving slower and slower. Any energy you had is quickly disappearing. Maybe the horse just plain stops. Is it more important to keep with the task at hand ("That hip's gotta move no matter what") or to deal with the speed issue? (An aside: Horses naturally slow down every time we pick up the reins. Teaching them to move through this pressure is absolutely necessary.) In the situation described, your priority should be speed control. Forget the hips momentarily. Get the horse moving out immediately and obligingly then return to the hips. Because, simply put, you need movement to train. If you're working on hip control today, but at any time feel the horse "not moving out," then back off on your rein pressure and/or "goose" with your legs as necessary to get that horse moving fluidly. Take this a step further: If today we learn that movement is our priority when training those hips, remember this tomorrow when you're working on the shoulders.
4) Release your pressure on the thought, not the action. Trust me here, when you read this, you'll think, "Yeah, makes sense, okay." But sometime in the future, you'll be riding and this simple suggestion will hit you like a ton of bricks: "Holy guacamole, THAT'S what he was talking about. Genius!" As simple as it sounds, it's really one of the greatest concepts I've come across in horse training, (thanks to Josh Lyons), it's just that important. Following faithfully this one easy rule will so simplify, galvanize and improve your training that you'll want to put a statue of me up in your room. In a nutshell, it's this: Don't hold the rein pressure till the horse actually plants his leg here or there or moves his body like this or that. Instead, release when you think the horse understands your request and is ABOUT to comply. Think of it this way: If you bat a ball at a window when do you know it's going to break the glass? Do you wait till the glass actually hits the floor before you run? Or as the ball first touches the window? Or when you see that "If it keeps going in that direction it's going to break the window"? From now on, release the reins when you think the ball's sure to break the window.
There are several reasons for prescribing this: One, releasing sooner tells the horse more clearly what it is that caused the release. Less interim time means fewer things for the horse to consider: "Did I get a release because I dropped my head, because that guy scratched his nose or because that fly landed on my ear?" Two, releasing when the horse "is thinking correctly" is an easier thought process for us humans than releasing after we've gone through a checklist: "A) Flicka stepped correctly. Check. B) Flicka softened her neck. Check. C) I have Flicka's attention. Check. D) Flicka's attitude is good..." Blah, blah, blah... Three, releasing on the thought keeps us from "picking apart" the horse's actions. I asked the foot to step there. The horse understood and did just that. But maybe the head is slightly out of alignment and I continued to hold the reins and, in so doing, I've just muddied the waters and confused the horse. Releasing on the thought MAKES YOU keep things simple. (Try it it makes training a whole lot more fun.)
5) Take notice of the speed control you have through your transitions. The control you have as your horse moves from a trot up and into his lope or as your horse goes from walking ahead to backing up is a telltale sign. It's a major indicator of just how much compliance and understanding you have not just at that particular moment but it telegraphs just what's going to happen when something spooks it on the trail or when you ask for a movement in the show pen. In other words, resistance under restrained circumstances grows exponentially worse when emotions run high. The very next time you ride, test your horse. Does it lift up into the lope like butter or does it throw its shoulder and rush things? Can you be trotting forward and get a backup with virtually no stop in between or do you have to finagle, threaten and negotiate? For safety's sake, if for no other reason, you need to address this: If your horse takes 10 feet to stop at a trot, he'll take 40 at a lope. If the cliff comes up in 39, you're toast. Reading the signs today can save your bacon tomorrow.
Work on this. Get out there and build total control through your transitions. Take the "stop" out of your back ups. Practice for twenty minutes walking or trotting forward, then backing, working furtively to remove any trace of a "stop." For twenty minutes you're either walking forward or backward. Keep things calm and business-like. Practice moving from a walk into a trot (and later from a trot to a lope and any other combination you can think of). Ask for speed and don't allow your horse to break into the trot until his head and neck are soft, (read: He ain't pullin' on the reins.) Give the horse a slight release any time he softens through the reins, a total release if you get into the trot with a soft head and neck. If he wants to pull through your rein pressure, ask him to move his hips left or right. They're not crazy about moving their big ol' butts, so it's a great disincentive. Practice till your horse weighs nothing as he speeds up or down or changes direction. He doesn't lunge ahead, he doesnt pull on you, his attitude is patient.
6) Today your horse might believe that you expect him to move in one of three, four or five speeds: "Walk, trot, lope, run like hell." But this isn't true. In fact, he has an infinite amount of speeds that we might request and he needs to learn this. A trot shouldn't always mean "4 mph." It might mean 4, 14 or 6.345 if I so desire. This is a big deal. Building in unlimited speeds does more than simply give you "more gears from which to choose." It also brings about far more willingness (and hence control) from your horse. To borrow a line from "Cool Hand Luke," it goes a long way to "getting their mind right." In the same way that controlling the colt's direction in the round pen builds respect, building excellent speed control into the older horse seems to have a parallel and positive effect on the horse's brain. They go from "going through the paces," to really being in tune with their rider.
While there are as many speed control exercises as there are trainers, you can create your infinite gear box like this: Pick up a trot and egg your horse into the fastest trot he'll trot before breaking into a lope. If he breaks into the lope, (and he will because it's actually easier for him), just bring him back to that fast trot with pressure to the reins. Travel for forty or so feet, then sit down, push your feet and weight down onto the horse's back and through the stirrups... and think "slow." Always begin your requests by changing your body or seat position (so it becomes your cue), then follow up if need be by adding necessary pressure to the reins or squeezing/kicking with your legs. Now you want to see the slowest the horse will trot before falling into a walk. (Remember, you need to "make mistakes" here in order to see what the boundaries are so expect them and accept them.) When you establish that your horse's slowest speed is "x" and the fastest is "y," work to broaden the boundaries. Do what it takes to cause your horse to travel at "x-1" or "y+1." While you're doing that, you'll additionally find yourself with ever greater control of all the speeds in between.
End of Issue Thirty-two, Part 1
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