Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Questions

Another year, another Mary Wanless Workshop! This is the third year in a row I've gone and it's turning into one of my favorite (and most exhausting) weekend of the year.

For those of you who are new, I tend to post an entire week's worth of biomechanics/Mary Wanless themed posts. So if that's not your thing, check back next week! To find the old posts, see here:

2018
Post 1 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Structure
Post 2 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Truncated Theory
Post 3 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Realignments
Post 4 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Unexpected Emotions
Post 5 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Effect

2019
Post 1 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Lead Up
Post 2 - Mary Wanless Workshop: More Truncated Theory
Post 3 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Riding Takeaways
Post 4 - Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Takeaways
Post 5 - Mary Wanless Workshop: The Non Emotions

I was beyond thrilled to be able to attend this year. I thought my niece was going to be born this weekend, so I had paid for it and then hoped she'd be early or late. She's a good future pony rider because she came early enough for me to be able to attend the whole thing! Thanks kiddo!

Best demo riders (you may recognize the one on the gray)

Once again, it was an amazing weekend! I've got a ton to share but it's tough to organize it all, so I'm still figuring out what I want to write about for the rest of the week. I do have a couple of really cool things that came out that I'm super eager to write about, but if there's anything that you're particularly interested in, please let me know.

We began talking about teaching, with Mary saying that we need to help our clients answer two questions:

Where are you now?
Where do you want to be?

Many people know where they want to be, as they point to Charlotte Dujardan or what not, but they have no idea where they are right now. How far along the scale of Beginner to Olympian are you? I honestly have no idea. I'm in the pocket that you fall into when you don't have anyone buying you super fancy horses? Is that a place to be?

We spoke about what struggles we, as a group, were having with our teaching:
- Focus: we assume all of our students pay attention, just like we do, that everyone has the same level of focus that we do.

- Influence: how do we get our riders to have more influence over their horses? When you first start riding, you tend to not have any influence, then obviously when you canter down centerline at the Olympics, you do. When does this shift happen and how?

Lab time

- Self Direction: I doubt anyone who blogs needs this, but many riders struggle to draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions. Many riders don't feel like they have "the right" to ask for more or make mistakes. I honestly don't have this issue because all of my clients are either clinic clients or only ride with me once or twice a week. Plus I give them a ton of homework always and ask a lot of questions. The trainers who were complaining about this have a lot of full training clients who only ride in lessons.

- Responsibility: what responsibility does the student have? What should they do with the information. Many trainers get bored teaching the same lesson over and over again, honestly, I've dropped a few clients for that reason. In addition, there is SO MUCH INFORMATION to impart onto someone, it really hit me this weekend that if I only see my trainer for four hours a month at max, there's no way I'm learning enough to get good at this sport. If you want to get good, it takes more than just lessons to do it.

- Selling change: change is terrible, I hate it. Even the smallest changes (like when Mary asked someone to bring their collar bone forward about an inch) feel ENORMOUS (and the person thought they were going to fall off the front of the horse) and awkward. It takes a lot of deliberate practice in a position that feels uncomfortable and wrong. How, as a trainer, do you sell it?

- Fear: we talked a TON about fear, including a deep dive into polyvagal theory, which deserves its own post if I felt like I knew enough to write it. But Mary says that very often a fearful rider will "have more competence than confidence" and a rider who is too bold will "have more confidence than competence."

We look our most cultish all doing the same
things, but really, it's all amazing

We then walked our way down this question: Are you a rider who teaches or a teacher who rides?

I'm definitely a rider who teaches. If you put a gun to my head and told me I could either ride horses or teach people to ride horses and I couldn't pick both, well, sorry clients, I'm getting me an amateur status.

But in the last several years, I've worked very hard to improve my teaching. Previously, I just taught what I'd been taught. The problem with this is that I'm bound to only be good at teaching the things I have problems with. If any of my clients pull on the left rein, I'm set! What if they don't though?

Anything that naturally comes easy to someone, they are shit at teaching. And the further away the trainer is from the rider's level, the harder it gets. It's been a very long time since I cantered for the first time, I could not teach someone how to do it now. They'd probably fall off and it'd be my fault for talking to them about the specifics of the canter mechanic rather than just telling them to... literally have no idea how to end that sentence because I DON'T KNOW.

Mary encourages trainers to remember to keep our implicit knowledge of these things. Remember back to my first time cantering (I don't, I was like 3 riding double on the trails, I don't remember cantering alone either) and remember those feelings so I can teach from it. I fucking can't though.

This is what Mary says is a huge problem with our upper level riders because they aren't teachers, they're riders. They have automated so much of their riding (because you have to) that they teach PQRs instead of ABCs. So Carl Hester says "I row my arms in the extended walk," but that's just what he thinks he's doing, he's also doing ten thousand other things that he has no idea he's doing. But come on, everyone, let's all go row our arms and get 10s!

Nicole, our most intrusive friend

I thought those were super interesting questions to answer as trainers! I think the more self reflective I get about teaching, the better my lessons get. Like I said, I love riding and want to be a good rider first and foremost, but I also do love teaching and want to get better at it. I want to be like some of the higher level trainers we saw ride at the workshop: fabulous riders, fabulous horse trainers, and fabulous instructors.

And this workshop has been one of the best decisions I've made to continue working to achieve those goals!

So basically, it was an amazing weekend and I can't wait to share more. I also have really exciting, related news happening tomorrow. I'm auditing Mary's riding clinic and am also having my very first physical therapy appointment for the SI injury I had 9 years ago. Looking forward to fixing this thing once and for all. More on those later!