Ep 210: Understanding the “Why” - Part 4
On this episode, we are covering part four of our series on the introductory meeting at our clinics talking about foundation horsemanship. In case you missed the previous episodes in this series, you can get caught up here:
The Value of Committing to Repetitions
The commitment to the repetitions is one of the most important things you have to accept and embrace as a trainer. At every clinic I do, I’ll go over an exercise, explain why we do it, how to do it, where the release is, and talk about feel, timing, balance and muscle memory. 95% of the people there begin working on repetitions of that exercise, but I’ll always have one or two people that do 2 repetitions of an exercise, then sit there and look at me. They’re missing the point.
You don’t do 2 repetitions and say, “okay, I’ve got it.” If you do, you’re only cheating yourself. You’re cheating yourself out of developing the muscle memory needed to establish signals and triggers with your horse.
The commitment to the repetitions, first and foremost, is for us. The horse is the beneficiary of our established muscle memory. If you don't commit to the repetitions, you're not gonna have the muscle memory. The consistency of your feel, timing and balance will not be there without the repetitions.
There's a reason why great ropers practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and make run after run after run after run – it's the commitment to the repetitions to establish and reinforce their muscle memory.
Start Where You Are
Start where you are. Understand that no matter where you're at in your training journey and your horses training journey, just start where you are and start progressing. Don’t look around and compare yourself with everybody else.
Everybody’s situation is different. Some people are in a situation where they get to spend the majority of their time training horses. Some people are in a situation where they get to spend a fairly minimal amount of their time working on that relationship and training their horse. Life happens. We all have distractions and other things that are pulling for our time. And, that’s okay. Just start where you are today. Pick out your one thing that you are going to commit to to get 1% better today, and just move forward from there. Again–it’s about progress, not perfection.
Run Your Race
Run your race. Make your plan. Stay the course. You may have a particular goal in mind that you want to accomplish, which is great; but, I’m always less concerned with the results and more concerned with the plan that you create to achieve those results. It’s your system that matters.
Oftentimes, we get discouraged when we don’t meet a self-imposed deadline with our training. If I told you that we're going to develop a system and you're going to apply it every day, and in the next two years or so, you’re going to have exactly the result you are looking for…would you do it? Of course you would. But the problem is that, when we get into the weeds of training every day, that two year timeline seems like a long time. We get distracted by short term results.
Trust me–just stick with the plan. Keep applying the simple steps over a long period of time. You may not notice significant gains in the short term, but I promise, the commitment will pay dividends in the long term.
Be Present
When you step in that stirrup, be present. Because every move you make up there, that horse is trying to read what that means. I've been up there, waffling around, digging around for my phone, doing this, that and the other thing, and my horses are down there underneath going, “okay, what does that mean?” Every time we make a change in our body position, our horse is dialed in trying to figure out what we are trying to communicate to them.
Be a good communicator. Be a leader. A lot of times you can be up there thinking, “I’m riding, so I’m doing some good.” That’s not always true. You can be up there working real hard and going the wrong direction just because of the way you're applying it and your lack of being present.
It doesn't take any more effort to be present than to not be present. It's just controlling your thoughts, controlling your thoughts and controlling your attention span. Make every minute in that saddle count in every way possible.
The same is true with people. You're going to have the opportunity to really influence people that are around you, just like you are your horses. Be present with everybody. The more present I am with my horses and with my friends, my family, my employees, the more effective I am, and the more efficient I am.
Embracing Failures
Failures are your quickest path to success. Let yourself try. Give yourself the opportunity to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be okay with doing things you’re maybe not great at. When you give yourself the opportunity to fail or suck at something today, here’s what happens:
You learn from it. You get better. Failure is the quickest pathway to success, and making excuses is the slowest pathway to success. Letting yourself fail will accelerate your rate of success because you learn you move forward.
We all want to be perfect. None of us want to be frustrated, humbled or embarrassed. And so if something doesn't go right, then we beat ourselves up. No–give yourself the grace and mercy to recognize, you know, I failed, but I was trying hard. I’m going to learn from it now. Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from moving forward.
Soft Hands Don’t Always Make Soft Horses
A lot of people stress the importance of soft hands–myself included, at one point in my career. I’ve started to realize that there is a difference between having “soft” hands and “slow” hands. “Soft” hands don’t always make soft horses. Clear signals make soft horses.
Your signals are what stimulates your horse's mind to tell the body to look for this response or try to find this release point. That's where the signals are everything. If you're really good with clear signals, what happens is your horse starts to read your body language and read that feel. And because your signals have been clear, they understand where the release is.
Sending clear signals is a matter of understanding where the release is and being extremely precise with the release. Clear signals don’t necessarily mean that you have to be harsh or firm with the amount of pressure you apply–it just means that you need to be precise. Ask once, wait for the response, then immediately release.
Smooth is Always Fast
When I was competing, my goal would always be that, whatever event it was in, I would want everyone to say, “man, it didn't look that fast.” When you slow your hands down, you rarely interrupt your horse’s momentum. Momentum is everything. You have to keep smooth forward motion. That smooth forward motion is critical in the timed events.
Conclusion
I hope this episode series has given you some valuable tips and insight into my training philosophies. If you are coming to a clinic next year, I encourage you to re-listen to these episodes before attending. You’ll be one step ahead once you get to the clinic. Hope to see you down the road soon!
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