Teaching Progression

So this moment the other day that I described yesterday, the one that showed me how far I had come as a rider and instructor, actually had way more to do with the latter.

I've been teaching for a long time now, kind of on and off in intensity but now it's ramping back up and I'm seeing a big difference in my teaching. It kind of goes along with my riding progression too, so I figured I'd put these posts back to back. Also I have way less time to write last minute blogs so I wrote a bunch of these kinds of posts to put up when I don't have time to write.

Here are some differences I've noticed in my teaching.

I have no teaching progression pictures so how about TC
progression pictures? October 2017

To August 2018

Way More First Toolkit

I still teach a lot of second toolkit, don't get me wrong, I think it's important for riders to understand what things should feel like and what they currently look like. None of my clients have access to mirrors, so telling them that the horse is off the bit is necessary for them.

However, I am VERY aware of what toolkit I'm working in and I make sure that when I use second toolkit language, I back it up with first toolkit language. Like "and ride him rounder by drawing him up under you with your calf and grabbing onto him with your upper inner thigh, think about dropping your shoulder blades into your back pockets and engage the lats, add 20lbs to each elbow but continue pressing the knuckles forward against that resistance" unless I'm teaching Peony where it somehow always becomes real R rated real quick.


Willingness to Help Clients Cognitively Restructure

As an instructor, it's super easy to operate within a client's current framework. Rider comes to me telling me that their horse is a dick and that they can't get him forward... it's easy for me to give the rider a whip and talk about the importance of free forward movement, while also implying heavily that their horse is a dick.

It's WAY harder for me to break down the rider's fundamental understanding of what forward is and how they are blocking it in their body, how it isn't the horse's fault. When someone hears that they are the problem or that their framework is wrong, it leads to them being... way harder to teach. It's easy to lose clients if you challenge the way they view their horse or the way they view dressage. It's real easy to retain clients if you tell them what they want to hear and push them along the path they're already on. You can even make it seem like you're being truthful while still just operating within their framework.

Being candid and slamming a client down a bit is HARD. Especially when you're dependent on your training income. It also sucks to have to confront someone just generally, especially when it's a sport they love so much, and especially when they're at a high enough level where they know they're not bad at this. Dragging someone kicking and screaming back to the basics only for them to shit on you and tell you and everyone else that you're a bad instructor... that's fun. But that's the risk. And until recently, it was a risk I hated taking, so I didn't take it often.

October 2017

August 2018

Working on my Teaching

Ever since the first Mary clinic, I've been focusing on my teaching as a skill to be developed. Riding Alexis' horse with her helped me understand recently that me taking lessons on different types of horses helps my teaching quite a lot. Riding TC well is important to me and it will be the primary focus of where I choose to put my money, and don't get me wrong, what I learn on him can be applied to a lot of different types of horses, but riding other horses with my trainers is important for my teaching.


More Confidence

Teaching new riders when you're first starting out is nerve wracking. I used to get a lot of anxiety going to teach new people.

Now that I'm working harder on my teaching, new riders are exciting to me. I see people riding and I want to get my hands on them, I want to Mary them, which is a silly thing Kate and I always say. I feel confident that I can help a lot more people than before.

In addition, if I can't help them, no biggie, I don't want clients to ride with me and be like "eh there are no other options so I'll settle for Megan," I realize that my program is not for everyone. And I also realize that I want clients who are dedicated to my program. And I just plain like teaching people who are fun to teach. If I feel like I can't teach someone or that they don't match with me, I'm okay with pulling back and sending them elsewhere.

Being a dick in October 2017

Being a dick in August 2018

Slowing it Down

Just like my riding, my teaching has been way more focused on the basics. I'm still a big planner and like to put my agenda on my riders a bit (unless they give me theirs), but I am way more dedicated to their education than their achievements. I want my riders to understand exactly what is happening under them and know how to get to that place. Whether that means an entire lesson on how well stuffed each side of the horse is (happened more than once recently) or an entire lesson on a twenty meter circle (can count on one hand the number of times I've had anyone to do anything but that), who cares. I want my riders to be educated.

Maybe this comes from the majority of my riders riding with me once a week or less. I want them to be autonomous and to think about their own training and their horse's training as something they are in charge of. I am there to guide and to educate, they are the trainers. Not that I would turn down someone who wants a more involved trainer, but it's hard with my full time job, my commute, and my own horse. Oh and I like to sleep and have a social life sometimes. Blasphemy.

October 2017

August 2018

I'm really excited with how my teaching is going these days. I know I still have so much to learn and so much this year is going to help with that. I am, of course, attending the Mary Wanless Workshop in early February. AND I'll be doing the L program this fall! Lots of learning coming up for the next couple of years!

Stability and Instability

One of the many interesting things I learned in the A Session of the L program was the desirability of the horse's balance being unstable while the rider's balance is stable. Since then, I've used it a TON in my lessons, so I figured I'd write it all down.

Cutest pony ever

On a side note, one of the things that Mary Wanless talked a lot about at the instructor dinner at her workshop last year was buy-in. Many instructors teach second toolkit stuff, telling the rider what the horse needs to be doing in order to be more like our ideal horse ("rounder" "get him bending more" "more angle" "kick his hind legs under him" "half halt to shift his weight back onto his haunches" etc). Riders get it in their mind that, while maybe they could sit a bit better, they're effective riders, they get results, so rider position gets put on the back burner.

First toolkit teaching is very different, it focuses very little on the horse and more on what the rider is doing to influence the horse ("engage your lats" "foot light" "bear down") that will help the horse become more like the ideal horse. It's a really effective way of teaching, but it requires more thought from the instructor, who has to see the horse as it is, think of what they'd rather the horse look like, then let the rider know what their body needs to do.

Need to get more stable

I have some riders who want primarily first toolkit instruction, most of these riders are somewhat subscribed already to the biomechanics stuff, some of them have hit a wall and want to hear something different than just hammering on their horse all the time, and some are just happy to do whatever their instructor says. There are some riders though, who really don't subscribe to the first toolkit type of instruction. They don't understand that by becoming more secure in their position, that they will be able to influence the horse better, they think they're fine the way they ride. And why wouldn't you think you're fine if the last time you were told to make major changes to your posting mechanic was when you were nine years old.

This idea of stability vs instability has created a lot of buy-in for my riders in terms of rider biomechanics. So that's been nice! It's also had the effect of immediately putting a lot more tone in my low tone riders' positions.

I'm quite dislodged here lol

Back to the theory. The L program slides showed two images, one a sumo wrestler and one a gymnast, both in balance. To maintain balance, the sumo wrestler takes a wide stance, lowers their center of balance, they won't be moved from this position easily. To maintain balance, the gymnast gets narrower, walks along the beam, they can easily move from this position if they need to do another movement, or if someone walks by and shoves them off the beam (how rude).

The rider should be like the sumo wrestler, unable to be moved by the mechanics of the horse. They should be sturdy, in a wide stance, with a lowered center of gravity. Their balance should go unchanged regardless of what happens. If you walk up to a sumo wrestler and push them, they will not fall. Same with a rider, as you're riding, what would happen if say, Kate, came up to you and tried to shove you sideways, would you move?

The horse shouldn't be unmoveable, how ridiculous would dressage be if we rode sumo wrestlers? The horse needs to be like the gymnast, balanced, but the balance needs to be easily changeable by the rider. So the horse needs to get narrower, more responsive to the rider.

In order for this to go down though, the rider's stability has to be there first. Riders who are particularly stable will not be affected by their horse. They will not slide off to the outside during lateral work (hello yes this is me), they will not be left behind in the medium trot (hi also checking in here), they will not be dislodged by a fabulous canter mechanic (okay I'm working on it).

A stable rider can then affect an unstable horse, and again, unstable does not mean unbalanced. An unstable balance is balanced. The horse is balanced, but the balance is different between a collected pace and a medium pace, a canter and a trot. So the rider needs to be stable to be able to change the horse's balance.

My lats could be better here, also my leg gets so externally
rotated and I pull my thigh off of him

An unstable rider does not inspire a horse to be narrow, to be moveable. Horses want to be in balance, so when an unstable rider is on them, they will become wider, they will find their own balance and keep it amidst chaos from the rider. They learn that they can't trust the rider to remain in balance, so they find it themselves. These horses are then hammered on by riders who want to feel them be more responsive, more balanced. When they're the ones who are unstable.

I was teaching this concept a bit ago while a beginner lesson was going on. The kid was so cute, the pony was much cuter. The pony was on the longe line trotting and you could see how stable he was, how wide he got. The kid was practicing her posting like most kids do, learning about being balanced. She'd sometimes get left behind, post too high and then come down a bit hard, missing a beat. She was learning to be in balance and the pony was providing her with a very stable balance to do it on.

Then back to my rider, who was riding a green horse, we were working to get the horse in balance. Green horses tend to get off balance, then try to catch their balance in whatever way they've learned how, this one got quick. At first when the horse got quick, my rider got dislodged, slipped a bit sideways, got a bit left behind, the horse pulled her arms too straight. We stopped and talked about stability, looked at the beginner and saw how stable the horse was. I said she needed to be the stable one if we were going to be affecting the horse's balance. She then came out with more tone, more strength to her position, we had a quick discussion on timing of half halts and the horse was more balanced than we'd been able to get. So was my rider.

Still so excited by how good he is in the bridle in this bit!

It was so cool to see such a stark change in both horse and rider. It didn't take a change in equipment or harsh aids to get this speed demon to sit down and be more balanced, it took a change in my rider's stability. The minute the horse couldn't dislodge the rider, the horse's balance became dependent on the rider's, and she could move the horse around, including into a more balanced state.

I've been thinking a lot about this with TC too, the new bit has changed how my mechanic interacts with him, it's pulling me out of stability. I can feel now when that happens, because he loses tone and gets real wide, almost like he's saying OKAY I AM READY TO CATCH YOU WHEN YOU FALL.

So I've been working hard to maintain stability while dealing with the new weight in the reins. It's hard, but TC does feel more balanced and more rideable than he has been, so that's been fun to feel!

The Amnesia of Expertise

Alternative Title: Why I don't want to take a lesson from Charlotte Dujardin after reading her book (but would totally let her ride my horse).

This is another Mary Wanless concept that I think about often. Mary talks about a dilemma in the horse world (and probably in a lot of sports): the people who are the best riders are often not the best instructors, but to gain traction as an instructor/clinician, you need to be a good rider. The problem is that unless you work at your teaching skills, the further away you get from learning a concept, the worse you are at teaching it. 

There's no picture to illustrate this so look, TC last year!

I will tell you a story to illustrate this. Rico and I were just starting to compete at Fourth level for the first time back in 2009 and things were going badly. I was riding with a trainer who was (and is) a pretty fabulous rider and horse trainer. She's one of those riders who, from the moment their butt hits the saddle, the horse absolutely transforms under. I wanted to ride like her, to be like her. I still kind of do, in some ways at least.

I didn't have her ride Rico much because I was the one who wanted to train him. Many of her students had her ride their horses a bunch and then took one lesson a week or so. But I wanted to learn to train horses like she did, not just learn to ride the ones she trained. I was taking about three lessons a week in her least expensive partial training option. The last time I ever took that many lessons! I miss it a bit... 

The main problem we were dealing with was that Rico was really heavy in the double bridle and mostly not on the bit. My arms hurt to ride him, I had rotator cuff pain. But we were struggling through it hoping to show Prix St George one day.

We did make it eventually... not with that trainer though

I was in a lesson one day and getting frustrated. I had heard "rounder" for like, the fifteenth time that day, and for probably the two hundredth time that month. When I'd hear that word, I'd do everything I could think of (it mostly included pulling on the reins) to get Rico to get his head down. My arms were hurting, I was getting sick of the repetitive phrases (with more exasperation in them), and I just needed to take a fucking break. 

So I stopped in front of my trainer, took a breather, and said "I'm clearly not getting something, could you just break it down what exactly you physically want me to do when you say rounder? Like, let's just go back, how do you get a horse on the bit?" 

Unknowingly, I was hearing second toolkit words (the ideal horse would be rounder than yours) and asking for first toolkit words (here is what you need to do to get your horse to be rounder). Instead of being told anything productive though, I got told these harsh words "Megan, you're a Fourth level rider, you should know how to get your horse on the bit by now."

A few more not so positive things happened after that (erm, she got on) and I gave thirty days notice that very day.

It wasn't that she didn't know how to get a horse on the bit. She just couldn't explain it to me. She hadn't had to *put a horse* on the bit in years. She just got on and they were right there. She couldn't understand why I would need to be told how to do it. She just thinks *rounder* and her body automatically adjusts to achieve that goal. Her trainer says *rounder* and she just does it. 

I, on the other hand, needed a lot more

Mary calls this the amnesia of expertise (or expertise-induced amnesia), where there is a degradation of connection between what the body is doing and the way that the rider describes what they are doing. She talks about the wordscape and the brainscape. The brainscape is what the body is doing, while the wordscape is how the person describes what they are doing. 

My previous trainer had a well developed brainscape, she could (and still can) get ordinary horses to do amazing things, but she couldn't say much more than "rounder" or "more angle" when I was riding my shoulder-in that day. Her brainscape and her wordscape were not very well connected. When she thought to herself "my horse needs to be rounder" she did a lot of stuff she couldn't put into words to get the horse rounder. So when she'd teach me, she'd just say what she said to herself: "rounder" and expect me to get it. It was frustrating to her when I didn't comply.

Trainers like this get upset because they think their students aren't listening to them. I'm also sure I pointed out a fatal flaw in my dressage trainer's abilities when I asked her to tell me how to get my horse round and she fumbled. Instead of internalizing that though, and working on it, she put it back on me, which is really typical. Mary said that trainers are quick to decide that they're teaching a bunch of idiots rather than reflect back on themselves to decide that maybe their teaching could be better. 

Rico and I at Fourth before I started riding with Tracey

I've experienced this too, as a trainer. For example, it's really hard for me to teach people how to post the trot for the first time at this point. I've had to do it for various people who come to my parents' ranch and want to ride. I struggle to tell them any more than "just go... up and down... a bit."  It's not that I'm bad at posting myself, or that I can't post. I can improve someone's posting, I can teach someone how to ride lateral work or how to get their horses straighter or more through... but please don't ask me to be the first person to teach someone to post.

I think it's important for a trainer to recognize this in themselves and to continue learning at all levels. The majority of a dressage trainer's clients are those at the lower levels, so you'd think that the motivation would be there. But you see so many trainers who just can't explain shit to save their lives. But people keep paying them because they produce great horses, or ride well themselves, or have students who do well (possibly on horses that have been trained by the trainer). Or they just don't know that there are better instructors out there.

Some of this is that teaching and riding takes such different skill sets. And there are a lot of clinic opportunities for people to become better riders, but much less for them to become better teachers.

Mary mentioned that it was a little bit a catch-22, that the best teachers are often not the best riders, but it's the best riders who are getting to teach clinics. Look how expensive some of these people are who have clearly spent a lot of time perfecting their riding... but maybe not as much time perfecting their teaching. But how is all of that riding experience going to help them when I need help learning to do something that they can do in their sleep? Something that may have come so naturally to them that they didn't even need to slog through it the way I am doing right now?

After a couple of years of riding with someone who could
explain shit

So to circle back around, why do I not want to ride with Charlotte? Well, first of all, if you read her book, you'll know that she taught her first horse to passage based on watching a video and fiddling around a bit. There's no way that someone who learned to ride passage like that will be able to teach someone the intricate details of how exactly to ride the movement, it clearly came very easy to her. But hey, if Charlotte wants to put in a training ride on TC, by all means, please put the changes on him, and passage while you're at it, thanks! 

Second, in seeing some of her clinic recaps, it all seems very second toolkit, which was what the problem was with my first dressage trainer in the story above. If I wanted to know what TC should be doing to be a more ideal version of himself, I'd post a video on COTH think about riding with someone like her. But I don't see a lot of HOW in the teaching recaps, maybe I'm not reading the right ones. Because I'm sure that just like she said in her book, dressage came so naturally to her that she'd struggle to explain exactly what she's doing in the same way that I can't explain how to post the trot to someone who doesn't know how. 

This is obviously not bashing her as a rider or a clinician. So many people get a lot out of her! But I'm just saying that for me personally, I need more first toolkit than second at this point. I've had a lot of second toolkit already. 


Have you experienced this phenomenon?

Just a Diamond Now, No Rough

A week ago I went and audited a new-ish to me trainer who comes into the area on some Monday evenings. She doesn't come to my barn, so I figured it'd be a few weeks or months before I'd be able to haul to her. After being really excited about her lessons, I was chatting with her and some of the other riders afterward and they mentioned that they needed one more person for the next week to make the clinic happen. I said "well, I'll do it if you can come to me!" and fast forward a week, we had our first lesson together!

So much has changed since my last lesson in October on him (with a different trainer). TC has gone from a solid Training level horse to one that I hope is at least capable of going First in like... less than a week (just a schooling show).

His connection has improved loads, we spent the whole winter working on impulsion, and he's beginning to carry more weight behind. I've also radically changed my way of thinking (and sitting) since the Mary Workshop and despite not having a lot of help with second toolkit stuff for TC, I've had a lot of help on the first toolkit stuff on various horses at Kate's barn and on TC when Kate came into town a few weeks ago and this last weekend.

Um... who is this horse?

So going into this lesson I was really excited (also excited that Peony offered to come watch and video for me!). Tanya is someone I've ridden with before, mostly on other horses, and every time I audit her, I get something major to take back to TC. So having her help with TC (especially now that he's the most perfect animal) was really exciting!

Tanya started out by asking me to tell her about TC and I threw random soundbites at her. Last year at Training, this year hopefully First, my position is real questionable, want to do a schooling show this coming weekend, horse very good, kinda lazy in the heat today. I picked up the trot and she watched for a bit before starting to teach me.

And what commenced was the best lesson I've had in YEARS. I'll try to make it somewhat readable.

Riding a bit of shoulder-in

We started in posting trot and Tanya got a good look at our baseline. She said some really nice things- TC is very steady in the bridle, he reaches well into it, he's very loose through his body and he keeps his hind legs under him well. Yay! That's all I've been working on!

Pretty early on she had me go into shoulder-in. The shoulder-in was good but Tanya wanted me to bring his shoulder around a bit more, so she had me do shoulder-in to a 12 meter circle thinking about touching him under with the whip and then shoulder-in again, which really helped. She also had me take him back over his hocks a bit more in it, to think a bit like rein back, half halt on both reins.  She had me shorten my reins a bit and take him a little more up and out with his nose as well, which would end up being a theme.

From there, we went into right lead canter. The first thing she noted was that I am not using my flexion pattern/slingshot as well as I could, to pull TC's forehand up a bit more. She wanted me to half halt a bit more to put TC back onto my seat and onto his hocks. I did and she said no, more. And I did again and she said "no, like almost halt him" and so I really did and he sat down and then she had me do quite a few of those bigger half halts. I was to keep my reins shorter, my outside rein better connected so he was straighter (almost thinking counter position), his poll more up, and to keep him quick behind.

Warming up

At first, I was skeptical. I told her, I've never been told to put him up, I've been told to get him down, down down, long and down, down and low and long. She said YES, you've done that, and you've done it great and he's down and round and in a really lovely Training sort of way. But, if I want to show First level, he can't be like that. He has to be up and out. And I was on board with that, especially after feeling what it did to TC.

The canter completely and utterly transformed. Tanya found a bit of canter that she liked and said that "this is a more grown up canter" and after that, TC needed a walk break.

From there, we went into trot and did some trot-walk-trot transitions from sitting trot. Immediately Tanya noticed that I was driving with my seat too much and explained to me that the energy needed to come from my leg and that the seat organizes the energy, it doesn't create it. I tickled TC a bit to get him more powerful under me and then thought about adding more spring to his gaits and we found a much better trot that I could not sit. About two minutes in I said "I am so tired" and Tanya said "it's been two minutes" and ignored my pleas.

Learning to sit down

We continued working on the transitions and she wanted him to be more crisp about them. I kind of tried to explain that it wasn't him, it was me. I kept having to breathe when we got to walk and couldn't catch my breath enough to get back to trot. That big fancy trot is WAY HARD TO SIT. She said that I needed to get fitter. On it, okay.

From transitions, we went into leg yields and the first one didn't go well. Tanya wanted me to make sure that TC really knew what I was asking for by opening the door a bit more. She had me bug him a bit about it and shuffle him over and then after that he was like OH YAH LEG YIELDS I GOT IT and zipped sideways every time I asked. Man this horse is cool.

After that, we cantered to the left. The left lead has plagued me for a while. If you remember, it was the lead I was on where Kate had to tell me a thousand times not to pull on the left rein and then I asked her if he was blatantly off the bit that way.

Work that booty, TC

I knew that Tanya would want a more uphill canter, so I immediately got him to a better place uphill. She demanded more, so I half halted. She said no, head up. So I looked up. And she was like "no... his head, but also yours could come up too." I put his head up and she said more, to almost feel like he was off the bit. And I, of course, had a big mouth and complained "he feels off the bit here though," and she didn't care what I had to think. Put him more up and out. So I did and HOT DAMN did he canter. With his neck up and out he has a lot more room under him for his hind legs and he's very happy to put them there. The horse doesn't have a no in him. I had a stupid big grin on my face and I think he did too.

He felt incredible in that place. He felt like I could do anything I wanted with him. Lead changes? Sure! Counter canter? Sure! Half pass? Sure! Canter-walk? Of course, and we did that. Tanya said that he was just there for it so we may as well. Sometimes you just see they have a movement in them and you should just do it.

We walked a bit and then she said to put him together and do a turn on the haunches, so we did and she said that it was quite good. I felt like I didn't have enough set up to do it properly, and she did admit later that he had one step that stepped out (knew it) but that it was really good. Phew! I haven't had any mirrors to practice those!

Warm up

We went back into trot and really addressed the trot. She wanted him up, out, under, and more suspended. I wanted him to be a PRE or something. Or a giant taco. It's hilarious to watch the video because I'm just barely hanging in there as she's demanding more and telling me how good it is. Then there's me having these existential moments like what is dressage anyway, why am I doing this?

She said that he had a fancy shoulder and that I needed to develop this trot. She loved his instincts in the development. I could put my leg on and ask for more trot and his first move was to snap his hind legs up and under, putting himself more into my hand. And that's when I dropped the mic reins and left the arena because I'd just won dressage. No but I can't explain this feeling I got on him in that trot. Like who the FUCK is this horse? When did he replace my dorky baby horse with the lateral canter?

But actually what horse is this

She had me set up and ride a medium trot, in response to which I asked "do I have to sit it?" and she said "uh, yeah" and so I did but I felt like I wasn't going to have abs after it. The first one was a bit rough for me so I didn't really go for it. The second one was absolutely amazing. He came up and flung his front legs out to the best of his current abilities and covered ground like he never has before.

We let him be done after that and Tanya had great things to say about him, which was a relief. She said that he had three good gaits and said that this work seemed easy for him. She said that I'd done an amazing job getting him to this point, but that it was time to make the move toward more uphill balance and collection. She said that his type could be very low tone and heavy, but that she was pleasantly surprised at how much he pumped himself up.

She said that if I could get this to be our norm, that we would score very well at First level. And I said yay, and she said no, VERY WELL at First level. I asked about Second this fall, like in October and she said yes that we'd for sure be ready if we got him on this program.

The fancy shoulder

I'm absolutely amazed and so happy with this horse. He has grown into such a super star. Watching the videos (going to work on getting a compilation video soon) I just... like... who do I think I am owning a horse like this? I think all the rough is off of this one, he's for sure a diamond now.

Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Takeaways

Despite getting quite a lot of things for my own riding, I went into this clinic wanting to focus on my teaching of the Mary concepts. I feel as though I understand them, I can talk about them, I can see them, but the actual teaching of them can be a little tricky.

First, I don't take a lot of biomechanics-focused lessons, and you teach the best what you are currently working on. Second, these are relatively new concepts. I, like many of us, started off in dressage by riding with very second-toolkit trainers. Tracey, who I began riding with in 2013, just six years ago, was my first first-toolkit trainer.


Increasing my Mapped Area

One of the main things that Mary drilled into us was how trainers find it way easier to teach the things they've been taught or the things they've struggled with. Elite riders tend to be those riders who have "natural talent" or their natural movement patterns are good. Unfortunately our elite riders are often our high level clinicians. No one is going to pay me $350 for a lesson! They're going to fork that out to someone who has been to the Olympics though.

The above graphic shows the linear path from beginning to end, which no one will ever take. The shaded area represents the areas of the path that the instructor has mapped. On that mapped area for me is my rogue left hand, I can see one of those instantly and can help someone fix it, my faulty posting mechanic, which I cannot unsee at this point, my previous tendency to run a lazy horse off its feet.

The pathway inside the blue area is a rider who I can teach in my sleep. But the line that ventures outside that blue area is a rider I would struggle teaching.

My main goal right now is to identify the movement patterns that come naturally to me, to determine what it looks like when my rider does not have this movement pattern, and to learn to teach it. I think I'll be taking a lesson in a few weeks that will be very interesting. Most of the lessons that I take are focused on what I am doing wrong, but I think my teaching would benefit from a lesson where the instructor tells me what I am doing right. Requesting that will be interesting, I think saying "I'd like to ignore all the things I'm doing wrong and just have you tell me how great I am" is maybe not the right way to sell it.

I worked hard for those movement patterns

Riders who have had success are harder to get to buy-in 

At the instructor dinner, I asked a question about new clients, specifically how to take a rider who has already been successful and help shift their perspective. These riders are harder to convince. They've been rewarded for what they've been doing. I've had numerous students come to me wanting to work on the harder stuff, hell, I've been that student coming in saying that all I need is a pirouette and I'm ready for PSG. When really the reason why I'm struggling to get to PSG is my fundamental understanding of connection, straightness, and collection.

So instead of the rider wanting help to expand their knowledge so they can do something different and stop bashing their head against the brick wall they've hit, they just want someone to help them bash it harder and more effectively.

As you get better as an instructor, you get higher level students. It's not hard to get the kid who I'm teaching to buy into this stuff, she's been on this planet for less time than I've been doing this sport. It's not hard to get my Training level riders to buy into this stuff because I can get them to improve their bear down and suddenly their horses come on the bit.

It IS harder to get my Fourth level riders to buy into this stuff. They're so close to PSG, they want their silvers, they want to school pirouettes and piaffe and passage. And they've been rewarded for their work already.

Mary's advice to me personally was to give my upper level riders just enough rope to hang themselves. Put them in an exercise that I know won't work unless they have correct biomechanics. Like doing transitions within shoulder-in, oh but you've got to get the neck longer, I need more energy, more cadence, more engagement. How are you going to do that? Well, by bearing down. Can't do that while doing transitions within shoulder-in? Hey let's go back to the circle and see if we can do it there.

I'm excited for gaining new clients, and I would like to find some more upper level clients, but I'm starting to feel like I'm valuing my lower level clients more. They take less convincing!




Types of Riders I will Teach

Knowing what types of riders I may teach on what types of horses is really important. Mary drew this diagram for us:

This is only one small diagram of the types of riders you could acquire as a trainer. The hollow backed rider on the hot horse, the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse, the round backed rider on the hot horse, and the round backed rider on the lazy horse (out of curiosity, where do you fall on this spectrum?). I've for sure been the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse (Larkin, Leo, Rico), the round backed rider on the lazy horse (Rico), and the round backed rider on the hot horse (TC).

Some trainers have a lot of bubbles (concepts they are good at teaching) in some quadrants and not others. Theoretically I'm quite good at teaching a hollow backed rider on a lazy horse since I spent a long time being that rider. Now I'm more round backed and am on a much more forward horse, so the recency effect says that I'll be good at teaching this type of rider too. The other quadrants, maybe I'm not as good at teaching.


Other Teaching Takeaways

- It's important to find a common language with your students by asking them to describe what they are feeling in their own words and then using those words

- You cannot change a habit until you can feel it, so you must help the riders feel what they are doing because it is difficult to feel their habits

- Is your trainer (or you) a teacher who rides or a rider who teaches? Best to find a teacher who rides (but I am a rider who teaches, sorry clients lol but hey this is why I go to these workshops)

- This weekend I found out that I struggle to differentiate between rider tone and rider movement patterns. I want to think way more about this before I start writing more than this observation down though.

- I'm way better at seeing front-back mistakes than side to side mistakes. Therefore I need to come up with some tests to have my riders do so that I can see the side to side mistakes better. If I can't see it, I can ask questions (can you feel your seat bones, does one feel heavier than the other, which movement patterns feel more like home to you, etc).

How to Train Your Basilisk

Another weekend another new place for TC and I to check off! This time, it was hauling out for a lesson at Tanya's home facility. Of the five potential teaching Mondays in July, I'm out of town for three of them, so the odds of me getting a lesson (or two, I'd love two) with her were a bit slim. But then I remembered that horse trailers can be used to transport horses to lessons. So I emailed her and asked for a lesson!

I got up early Saturday morning to haul the two-ish hours to Tanya's barn. I was really dumb in that I triggered my anxiety the day before, so I got maybe 4 hours of sleep the night before as I sat awake buzzing with intrusive thoughts. FUN TIMES.

We got there with plenty of time to spare, which was on purpose because one of my friends from my old barn was there! So I threw TC in a stall and paddock (they were all TC proof, yay) and went down to watch the first half of her lesson before tacking up. Let me just say that my friend and her horse look AMAZING! It was great to see their progress in the last few months since I've seen them.

Accurate depiction of the horse I had on Saturday morning

TC had unloaded great and walked around like he owned the place. He seemed okay in the stall and paddock that I put him in, though screamed a few times since all of the horses in the barn were in the very generous turnout paddocks (for the bay area at least). Once in the cross ties, he was really nervous and screamed and danced. I thought he might rear himself tired but alas, he did not.

Outside again, he was okay, though I could tell that we were going to have a hell of a ride. I got on and the first thing Tanya asked was how the show had gone. We're friends on facebook so she knew it was a disaster but wanted to hear from me first hand.

My main problem, and I relayed this to her, is that he is very different off the property sometimes. Not all the time, sometimes he's totally normal. But sometimes he's a nut. Like last time we took a lesson (here) I told her I basically didn't practice any of it because he's been so behind my leg and quiet that a lot of what we worked on just isn't applying. Then you add into it that I just don't get much practice riding him when he's a buzzy asshole and it's a recipe for disaster at the horse show.

Case in point

Luckily, TC was basically the same horse he was at the last show- extremely explosive. He's not being bad as much as he's just enjoying the hell out of his life and wants me to know it/also enjoy it in the same way (that's not how I enjoy life though...). We picked up the canter since I am more comfortable in canter when dealing with his antics and he struck out at a feather, leaped over a bird shadow, struck out when he saw a piece of dust, and nearly stopped to stare at the horse loading into the trailer... all while being mostly fine in between. Not like... amazing... but fine. Not bucking or bolting or slamming to a halt and rearing, so, fine!

Now, I don't expect my dressage trainer to help me with this kind of stuff. This is some zero toolkit bullshit that would be helpful to have like... a cowboy-type help me through. I came prepared with my long lines and clicker just in case I had to just pay the world's biggest ring fee. But Tanya was super fucking on it. After the first leap but before I got him back to me, she basically told me to do what it took to get TC's attention. That ended up being to kind of grab his face and turn him in a tight circle while thumping him with my leg. Get the ear on me, get his attention on me, I am more interesting than anything else going on.

From then on, every time he went to even prick his ear out away from what we were doing, I was to do the same thing. Within about five minutes, I had my horse back. He was like "hey man, why such hard work, pls can we not do the tiny circles" and completely relaxed into doing his job. We walked.

Soooooo I have a few things to say about that. First, DAMN I can't believe my previously reactive panicky dickweed of a horse actually allowed me to kind of muscle him around. This was NOT a horse who you could muscle for a good several years there. In the past, that would have lead to him busting through my aids and positively galloping away with me and/or having a giant meltdown and rearing, then galloping away with me. Second, FIVE MINUTES!?!? IT WAS ONLY FIVE MINUTES!!! I spent FORTY minutes cantering him at the last show and he didn't calm down, what the actual hell.

Thinking about being naughty but then being worn
out after five minutes. I'm down with this!

Tanya and I talked about this for a bit and I had a few realizations while we did. First, I tend to wait until TC does actual bad things before I get on his case about them. Tanya asked me, why do I trust him so much? I dunno. I mean, I do really trust this horse. He never gives me the feeling that he wants me to fuck right off. It's more like "WAHOO LET'S ATTACK THAT BIRD, WE ARE THE BEST BIRD ASSASSINS" than anything else.

He's not dangerous, he's not mean, he's just... distracted and having a damn good time of it and wanting to have fun with me. So I trust him to not harm me... but I don't trust him not to put on his sunglasses and say something like "it's time to throw a... foul ball" right before the The Who starts to play.

Well, he's seven years old. He shouldn't pull this shit anymore. And it's up to me to address the mental state behind it rather than waiting for the physical shenanigans. And she's totally right, he'd scare the hell out of his future amateur with this shit. He needs to just get down to business at a new place. He's not afraid, he's not spooky (he walked right up to the judges booth and stuck his face in the dog's face), he just thinks I've taken him to the playground.

Second, I tend to tiptoe around him too much. I try to kind of hold it all together, mask it over, get through it, you know? This was necessary when he was young and dumb and not tiptoeing would lead to, say, him rearing every day for two weeks when I got on him (actually happened). Or him bolting every other minute (also happened). When I had, as Tanya put it, not as much software installed. And personally, for our relationship, it was necessary so that every ride wasn't full of asshattery. And it was good for my confidence to not operate under the assumption that every ear flick was going to lead to some bullshit.

Now though, I have all the tools I need to get him focused on me, but I'm still using the old operating system that kind of turns off sometimes and I have to kick it to reboot it while it goes flying through the air attacking a piece of arena fluff. I have ten meter canter circles that will wear him down (without him running sideways out of them), I have a good half halt (that no longer leads to him shutting down and rearing), and I have the ability to kick him (without him running away with me).

This ball of tension at our first schooling show of the year last
year (first one back since rehab) was not going to let me kick
him without a huge explosion

Being able to just be a little strong with him for five minutes made the rest of our ride super fun. TC was visibly in a better mood once as he had boundaries and was like "Oh okay we do the working today, maybe playing later then, mkay." He never offered any bad behavior once as I made it clear that a momentary loss of attention meant 10 meter canter circles. He had his little ears all pushed forward and was so proud of himself at the very end. And I was grinning like a fool with what we got out of him once as I was able to channel that athleticism into something spectacular.

So that was the first five minutes of the lesson.... Stay tuned for tomorrow when I talk about all the fun stuff!

Mary Wanless Workshop: Truncated Theory

I wanted to talk a bit about the theory that Mary went over at this clinic but it's SO hard to 1) put it into the correct words and 2) dedicate just one post to it. So this is going to be just a taste of what we went over. I'm sure that I will be touching on this stuff and more later on. I don't have tons of time, so these are literally just my notes from the sessions. I tried to clean them up but I'm still catching up on sleep and apparently my rapid typing at work was annoying a coworker. Not that I... write blog posts... into my email... at work.

Very sorry for any confusion, please ask me questions and I may come back and edit this post later!

Accurate

Unconscious/Conscious Competence/Incompetence

There are two things we need to address when we want to make improvements: the present state of affairs and the desired state. We need to be able to answer the questions: what is happening now? and what do you want? The latter is far easier to answer, while the former we are often not conscious of. Once as both are defined, bridging the gap is obvious. The hardest part is defining the problem.

Unconscious Incompetence: the state of not knowing what you don’t know. This is the state most riders coming into lessons are in. Once as you know that there is more to look for, you will find it.

Conscious Incompetence: the ‘Aha!’ moment. When you begin to learn what is happening. Changing from incompetence to competence takes changing patterns. We all have patterns of movement that are wrong and need to be changed. This is difficult.

Conscious Competence: making the conscious effort to change. Over time, it becomes easier to change patterns. Think of the rider biomechanics as a jigsaw puzzle. At first it’s a mess but relatively easy since all you need to do is find edge pieces. Then it gets harder as you start separating out the colors. Once as you have most of the puzzle done, finding the last bits are easy. The almost-finished jigsaw puzzle means more of your neurology is engaged and less parts of your body get stuck or out of line. It take 10,000 repetitions to get there. As we get better, we need to remember what it’s like to be a beginner. Mary spoke about a dissection workshop she did where the instructor had two things that he’d say to people as they were learning: “What a mess” when the person had done it wrong and “Let me do it” when the person had a question. Whatever you are working on in conscious competence is what you are best at teaching. It’s like seeing a car you just bought everywhere.

Unconscious Competence: when you’ve completely mastered a skill, you are working on autopilot, you forget what you learned so you forget how to teach it. Expertise-induced amnesia occurs when we forget that there was a time where we couldn’t do it and we do not know how to teach it. Good riders tend to not be as good at teaching. There is a loss of empathy in the distance between rider and coach. When the student is an upper level rider, there can be a “hard sell” to get them to change since things have been working for them so far. The curse of expertise means that it’s very hard to pass on your skills, and through generations, there is loss in language. Unfortunately to get yourself noticed and hired for these big clinics, you must be an elite rider, but on a scale from ABC being the basics and XYZ being the harder stuff, we get Xs presented as As because riders at the XYZ teaching people at the ABC level don’t remember what it was like to not know A so they assume everyone already knows A.

But how do you sell the ABCs when people think they’re ready for the PQRs?

But go back to real basics...

Toolkits

Kate wrote an AWESOME post on this. Much better than my tidbit here.

In training horses and riders, there is the cause (the rider), the effect (the horse) and the ideal effect (what we want the horse to do).

Prior to introducing the cause (rider), we must start with our “zero” toolkit. This is all of the training basics for the horse. Mary likes Andrew McLean’s work. Teach the horse the basics using operant conditioning. There is a frightening number of horses who are clueless on the basics of stop, go, turn front legs, turn back legs.

Between the cause (rider) and the effect (horse), there is the first toolkit. This is all about procedural knowledge, the knowledge that answers the question “How to do this?” 

Between the effect (horse) and the ideal effect, there is the second toolkit. This is all about declarative knowledge, the knowledge that answers the question “What should it look like?” Most interventions by dressage trainers come in here with instructors saying “poll up!” “more impulsion!” “circles rounder!”

Different trainers are good at different toolkits, but you have people who have skills in one of these toolkits who deny the existence of the others- it’s like the blind men and the elephant. Most dressage trainers use the second toolkit, they ignore the first two. Many natural horsemanship people think that doing more ground work is the answer to all problems, even riding ones. 

Side note: go order the game Telestrations (get the after dark
version if you have a sense of humor) right now

Brainscapes and How Much We Lose in Language

There are two places where we store information about our riding: the wordscape and the brainscape. The wordscape holds all the words and phrases we know about our riding. The brainscape holds the neurological patterns of our riding, our feel. We need to create links between our wordscape and our brainscape, where words and patterns of our riding connect. Upper level riders have a more developed brainscape and can’t often describe things in good enough vocabulary. Lower level riders have a more developed wordscape, they can talk about things but can’t execute the behavioral patterns. This leads to asking an upper level rider how to get a horse on the bit and being told “Well I don’t bloody know.”

Mary thinks that people have tried to make riding so simple that it’s idiot proof, but then this way of instructing people just creates idiots.

Lots of trainers don’t want to learn. Instead of running into a problem with a student and thinking “I don’t have the right tools for this,” the trainer thinks “I am teaching a race of cretins.”

We lose so much in language. The girth used to be further back and people have been saying “foot at the girth” for a long time. The girth got moved forward and no one noticed, they keep saying it, yet this means that the rider’s leg is forward and they are not in balance.

In teaching, we have a feeling that we want to teach our students to have. Our feeling is in our Right Brain and we translate it into words in our Left Brain. From those words the student understands them in their Left Brain and then they perform the movement and feel in their Right Brain. There are many opportunities for slippage to happen here. Between RB1 and LB1 (instructor feeling to instructor words), there may be the feeling of “doing nothing” because of expertise-induced amnesia. 

Once you are in a room for long enough, no matter how much the room smelled when you entered it, the room no longer smells. You no longer realizing what you are doing right, how can you convey it into words? You could also have a lot of stuff happen in the loss from LB1 to LB2 (instructor words to student understanding). Think of the leg at the girth, there is a lot lost in language. There also could be loss in LB2 to RB2. At the end of the day, what is the chance that both RBs align, that both brainscapes align?

Step One: Make sure your horse has a shoulder. CHECK.
Wikihow has the best pictures

Turning is Not What You Think

How many people have heard to match your shoulders with your horse's shoulders (I have told people that)? Too many. How many riders have problems losing the outside shoulder (I do)?

On our feet, we go: turn left = face left, turn right = face right. On a horse, we do not turn in the same way. We are more like figure skaters. Imagine a figure skater pushing off of their left leg to go right. Which direction are they facing? If they face the right, they're going to fall down because the force is going in the wrong direction. 

On a horse, our shoulders and hips need to go forward, inside leg slightly forward, outside leg slightly back and turning will be easier. The forces of the rider must match the forces of the horse, and when turning to the left, the force must go right to left, outside to inside. When the rider turns wrong, the horse falls out because the rider is adding to the centrifugal force of the horse and sending the horse to the outside, popping the shoulder.

So a horse popping the shoulder is a human problem. When you see a horse in the field trying to go to his mate (Mary then gets up and runs sideways), he's not saying "I'm not quite making it!"

Rough diagram of the SFL and SBL

The Superficial Back|Front Lines 

If you imagine that your spine is a tent pole holding up a tent, and one of your guide ropes is taught and the other is loose, in order to even out the guide ropes, do you tighten the long one or loosen the short one? You tighten the long one or you'll flop your tent pole over! Loose guide ropes don't transmit force, only tight ones do. We are trying to match the forces of the horse, so our guide ropes must be tight.

A lot of the time we ask the horse or the person to stretch the short line (stretch over the topline, stretch tall) when we really need them to shorten the long line (bring the stifles closer to the elbow, be short).

Your back line is made up of slow twitch muscles. If you slump or slouch (like I do at work), you create a longer back line and massage might make you feel better, but it just lengthens those lines even more. The answer is to shorten the back line instead. This is the same thing in horses. Making a horse go in rolkur just lengthens the topline. We do not need to lengthen the topline, we need to shorten the underline (their front line).

SBL (topline) and SFL (underline) in horses

The Landau Reflex

In riders and horses, growth happens in the stretch zone (vs the comfort zone or the panic zone). Some horses and riders have a very small stretch zone, they are either comfortable or panicking. The idea is to make the stretch zone larger in both horses you are training and riders you are teaching. 

In a worst case scenario, the nervous rider will be in the fetal crouch, but most people actually do the landau reflex when they are nervous. This is a lengthening of the front line. Hands up, shoulders back, feet down. This means that when most trainers say "stretch tall, heels down" when riders are nervous, they're actually putting riders in the wrong position. Heels down (often the rider shoves the feet down) can mean pushing the rider into a less stable place, and stretching tall makes the rider less stable. So not only are you putting a rider into a typical panic response when they're nervous, you're making them less stable. 

This happens in horses too. And the reason why this is so so so important to me is that TC is the KING of the landau reflex. No wonder when I started getting him pressing so well into the bridle and over his topline that the bolting nearly stopped. TC gets nervous and his first instinct is to retract his neck and drop his back, then run away. This is a very typical fear response.

Mary stresses making riders feel secure in the tack by shortening their bodies (not slumping though), creating stability using the bear down (stay tuned), and snugging in their thighs, among many other positional changes. 

Landau reflex! Me too, to an extent, my hands stayed low. See
how pressing my leg down made me stand up? Not safer like that.
Well, safer for my back, which is why I do it. 

Here are some random bits I wrote down during the demo riders:

- If he is a -7, you need to be a +8 to get him in the positive zone. This resonated with me with TC because he can come out anywhere from a -8 to a +8 or so, and I need to be able to match him to bring him back to equilibrium and then go from there. 

- Torso should be like a cereal box, you can tilt the box by opening and closing the hip angle, you can distort the box by hollowing or rounding back. I (me, Megan) distort it by having a hollow back, which means my superficial front line is too long and rigid, while my superficial back line is too short and floppy. Instead of trying to lengthen the back line, I need to shorten the front line.

- Sit like you’re kneeling, when you don’t put weight into the thighs, you put it into the butt and you create a hollow part in the horse’s back

- Force from your body keeps you forward with the horse, like when the rider is on a longe line and is holding the front of the pommel. If the horse was a hippity hop (the ball that kids hop forward on), you have to deliberately move forward with it or you’ll fall off. With a horse, you have reins and the cantle so you don’t fall off the back. You have to match the horse’s force inside your body.

- There are three forces that can dislodge you: centrifugal (to the outside), up and down (bouncing), and acceleration/deceleration (front to back)

- Snugging in with the thigh is different than gripping with the thigh. Snugging in means even contact with the horse, matching the horse’s shape, while gripping deforms the shape of the horse.

- Imagine the hip has a pen and it is writing Ms as the rider rides. Riders sometimes ride tall narrow Ms and sometimes ride flat low Ms. One rider rode Ms with bellbottoms, meaning they paused at the bottom of the trot. 

- Changes always feel bigger than they look. Take video and pictures to help riders. 

- Riders are too into relaxation (how often are you told "relax!" as a rider?), not enough into stabilization

- If he (horse) pulls the rug out from underneath you, you have to stay on the rug!

- Pull your back armpit tendon toward your front armpit tendon

- Tummies can do three things: guts hang out, guts sucked in, make a wall with your abs and push your guts against it (last one is correct)

- If riding was a dance, you do not follow, you lead. Following the horse is incorrect.

- Does the disorganized rider disorganize the organized horse, or does the disorganized horse disorganize the organized rider?