Mary Wanless RWYM

2012-01-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

I am sorry, it has been so long since I have written this.... time has flown by with travel, teaching, Christmas etc etc. Enough excuses!
This will end up being about riding, but bear with me as I tell you this story!
My travel included a wonderful holiday in the Dominican Republic before Christmas, and I had an amazing experience sitting in the front seat of a 'guagua', which is a Dominican minivan serving as a small bus, usually packed full of people and quite an experience! Not many tourists make it onto these, and I was rather proud of myself for being so adventurous, and for getting the best seat. (Being packed into the front like a sardine definitely beats being packed into the back like a sardine!) I was enjoying the scenery, the music on the radio, the excitement of heading towards a new place, and the general ambience. It then occured to me that I felt as if I was being carried along on a wave of energy, and the feeling - along with the upbeat Caribean music - reminded me of the 'trancedances' we used to do when I lived in London in my late twenties. I was a member of the Natural Dance Workshop, which often sponsored these, and we would dance into the night to great music, experiencing something that I suspect was the equivilant of 'runners' high'.
I then realised that I had a feeling in the back of my diaphragm that I know goes with my most skilled riding - which is indeed like being carried along on a wave of energy. I am now sure that I must have accessed the same physiology in our 'trancedancing' too, although I never identified it like this at the time.
Fortunately, you don't need to dance late into the night or have a transcendent experience in a Dominican minivan to experience this! It's very simple, though it might take some practice. If you are sitting on a firm chair you should be able to make your hands into fists, put them behind your pelvis, and push against something solid at the back of the chair's seat. Think about the back of your diaphragm, at the bottom of your ribcage, and keep pushing with your hands until that area starts to firm up. With luck you will get a pretty immediate response, but if not persevere and repeat the exercise frequently. Think of your diaphragm as it passes from the back of you to the front of you, and maybe even think of it as part of the wave of energy that could carry you along if you were riding your horse.
This exercise is actually the partner exercise to the one in my previous post, where you pull on the back of the chair. This accesses strength in the front of the diaphragm and the abdominal muscles, and is an essential part of bearing down. Strength in your back adds hugely to this, and who knows, it might even have an effect on the adrenal glands as they sit on the top of the kidneys, also affecting other parts of the endcrine system, and giving rise to the transcendent 'wave of energy' experience!
I hope I am not being too 'way out there' for you here, but really think that there might be something in this. It was a useful and fascinating insight for me, at least, and this kind of physiological change might well explain the 'high' that we can get from riding.

2011-08-12T04:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those of you who commented on the last post. Basic information about learning, what it takes to change habits, procedural and declarative knowledge etc. etc. really should be out there in the big wide world, it would help people so much. It seems ridiculous that it isn't, but such is life.
I had an email from someone the other day, who I think was wanting a quick answer to the question 'What is riding with your core? I hear the words but I don't get it....' She was asking this, I think, without having read any of my work, and really she needs to start with the 'Essentials' book and get the long answer. But it is an interesting challenge to see if I can give her the short answer.
My first big riding discovery, which set me on the path that I have now travelled for the last 30 years, dates to around 1979, and was about how to use your abdominal muscles. I had heard the phrase 'use your back' (not very helpful) but had never heard any admonitions to 'use your front'. I think those words really do get said to people nowadays - although, sadly, they are barely more helpful than 'use your back'! However, there is now a general realisation, largely through the influence of Pilates, that abdominal muscles are important. But within the horse world in general we still do not have good ways of teaching the 'how' of this.
Back in 1979 it felt like I was speaking a heresy, but I had actually discovered core strength as it applies to riding. The basic description has not changed over the years - you pull your stomach in to make a wall, and then push your guts against that wall. You do this naturally whenever you cough, giggle, or blow your nose. This is how you increase the pressure in your insides to stabilise your torso. This last sentence might have blown past you, but it hid the profound bit. Good riders sit so still, and are not wibble-wobbled about by the forces of the horse's movement (like the rest of us) because of the high pressure in their insides.
Physiotherapists call this a 'valsalva', but that term is not much use to the general population! I called it 'bear down', though 'bear forward' or 'bear out' suits some people better. We now have coaches working in German, Danish, French, Polish, and probably some other languages, but no language has a really good word for it. So... you pull your stomach in to make a wall and you push your guts against the wall.
If you want to fast track yourself to a more profound level of this, blow up balloons, without pinching the neck of the balloon as you inhale. (You will have to arrange your tongue in your mouth to make this possible.) Sit in a good neutral spine position as you do it, and realise how you have to breathe, and how your ribs remain expanded even on the outbreath. Sit and breathe like this for a while - you will find it pretty stressful. Welcome to core strength!
Another way into this is to stop your horse, drop the reins, and reach back so that your fingers are behind the back of the cantle. Then pull on it, and feel what happens to your front. It should firm up - there is your wall, now you just have to push your guts against it, and hold this as you ride! Also try making your hands into fists, and pushing back on the cantle. This should make your back firm up, but it is a little trickier to make it work, so be persistent.
The firmer you hold the 'box' of your torso, the better. The hinge of the hip joint has to be movable, but the rest of you must stay still. You bear down to make this happen, to stabilise your spine, and to help you match the forces which the horse's movement exerts on your body.
Good luck!

2011-06-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

As ever, it's been too long since my last post...
I was thrilled to meet someone during my last trip to the USA who read my previous post and was able to go away and make a significant difference to her 'dud leg' as well as her overall balance whilst riding. It always gives me a kick when someone really can take my words and turn them into the feelings/organisation within the body that change both your riding and your horse.
My most recent course back in the UK had a participant from South Africa, who had been working through the books in partnership with a friend, and together they had done a very good job on her baselines. Of course she was as thrilled to hear that as I was to tell her that - and her next step, determined perhaps by the horse she was riding, was to learn to 'slingshot'! (You will only understand the need to the exclamation mark if you have read the last few posts!)
In theory, these success stories should be more common than they are, and every book ever written on riding was written in the hope that its reader would ride better for reading it. Great idea, but I am not so sure how often it really happens! In truth, only a couple of the books I have read over many years have had that much influence on me. The rest were full of nice ideas.
I spent much of my early 20s, when I was working for my BHS exams, reading every book on riding that I could lay my hands on, telling myself again and again 'Perhaps I'll find the secret in this one....perhaps it will be in this one...' I met disappointment after disappointment, and realise now that those books were full of declarative knowledge, that tell us what horse and rider should look like, and how they should progress up through the grades of dressage. But that is presupposing the skillset which the book was supposedly going to help its reader to find!
The answer lies in procedural knowledge, which tells you HOW to do the skill in question. I like to think that I have written the books and articles that put that knowledge on paper, in an accessible, do-able form. When coaching coaches, I talk about learning needing to happen in 'bite size chunks', and no one - however talented they may be - can go straight from A to X.
I recently heard a wonderful phrase used by evolutionary biologists, which I think applies equally well to learning skills. It is 'the adjacent possible', and this is the best that any of us can possibly hope to achieve as the next step in the evolution of our riding skills. But as 'adjacent possible' leads to 'adjacent possible', you get to see miraculous changes, just as you do in evolution.
For a coach to recognise this in practice, she has to honour the pupil's starting point and proceed form there, in bite-size chunks that are each an 'adjacent possible'. This means that she (the coach) gets to cross the skill-gap between her and the pupil, instead of miraculously expecting the pupil to leap across that skill-gap herself. The coach does this whenever she uses the 'puppeteering' school of coaching, in which she attempts to 'ride through' the pupil as if she were a puppet. She also does it whenever she sees that her words do not elicit the response she expected, but she just keeps saying them... because if it were her up there, shoulder in really would work well and fix the problem if she only did it one more time...
Over the years have met at least ten people who have done a stunning job on their riding from the books and DVDs. That is not a very big number, but I am still really proud that those people have proved that it's humanly possible. Many more have made significant improvements from their starting point, and there would be may more still, I am sure, if it were not for the fact that however good a job I am able to do in my explanations, the books and DVDs cannot diagnose YOUR particular starting point.
After all, if you want to get to there, the only way you can possibly do it is by starting from here, and you have to locate that 'here' on the map before you can possibly know if you have to go North or South. Are you a round backed rider or a hollow backed rider? Do you tip forward or back? Do you make your horses too heavy in your hand or too light in your hand? Do they whizz off with you, or lack impulsion? Each of these requires a different direction of travel, requiring a diagnosis which a skilled coach will be able to do better than anyone else. But if you lack that, there are always mirrors, cameras, videos, good friends, and even, so I am told, (though this is undoubtedly on rare occasions), husbands!

2011-04-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

As promised in my last post, here is the antidote to too much slingshot. If you need to, look back at that post so you understand which good thing I am saying you can have too much of! But if the slingshot idea is too complicated for you, worry not. You will also find this correction very effective for the kind of 'dud leg' that we discuss below.
If someone has over-done the slingshot, she will be too far back in the saddle, with the thigh too horizontally out in front of her, and the knee too up. Most people have a leg that behaves like this, even though they have never heard of the sling shot idea! Either way, the rider needs a correction that enables her to bring herself forward in the saddle, and to kneel more down through that thigh. At the same time she also needs to make more push forward from her back, and to direct that push into the thigh and the kneeling posture.
I recently used the idea I am advocating with a relatively novice rider in the USA, who had one leg that looked just like a rider's leg should, and one that looked weak and 'unstuffed', with her knee too up, her foot too forward, and her pelvis too tucked under on that side. You can't exactly say that she was' over-slingshoted' as she had never learnt to do this (and her posture was an aberration of the sling shot idea). But her asymmetry gave her one leg that stayed easily in the shoulder/hip /heel line, and one that wobbled about in front of her. She could barely influence it at all. Whilst hers was an extreme example, most riders can recognise this scenario.
Historically, our fixes for the 'dud leg' have been hard for people to do and maintain, and they have required the slow, progressive 'drip water on the rock' kind of change that can be pretty tedious and painful (in an emotional 'here we go again....' kind of a way). But this rider changed it profoundly in one session, and could maintain it well. Here's how.
I suggested that she imagined we could make a vertical cut in her thigh beginning from her 'front tendon' (where the big muscle of the front of the thigh inserts into the pelvis) and going vertically downwards. Since we do not want it to bleed to much, we put a metal plate on it, and her task was to push the whole of her torso, pelvis and thigh 'up to the plate'. This is rather as if someone put their lower arm against her back on that side and pushed it forwards, towards her thigh.
She could immediately do this, and it changed the entire look of her thigh and pelvis, giving her more 'kneel', and a shoulder/hip/heel vertical line that she could maintain. It was hard work, and it felt like defying gravity, and the position that her body so wanted to fall back into. But it was possible, and highly effective.
I also suggested that she felt the resulting difference in the positioning of that seat bone, and thought of her balance over it being like that of a ballerina on point. Her pelvis would have so loved to have fallen backwards, away from the plate, as if on to demi-point, so that her seat bone pointed forwards. This was probably in fact the bottom line: on that side of her torso she was round backed, falling back to sit 'on her jean's pocket', which inevitably bought her thigh forwards and up. On the other side she she could sit in neutral, with her seat bone pointing down, and a good 'kneel' down through her thigh.
The rewards for this change were huge. Her original feeling that she could not control the 'dud leg' was not great, but along with this she lost so much ability to control her horse, especially when that leg was on the inside. As she 'pushed up to the plate' and got into a kneeing posture, her centre of gravity was no longer falling backwards, and she was able to match the forces that the horse's movement exerted on her body. This meant that her horse no longer felt as if he was dragging her along on that side, and he became lighter in her hand as his back came up, bringing him into carriage underneath her. It was a win-win for both of them.
As riders, we need to be able to draw our centre of gravity back, and also to be able to bring it forward. Leaning forward and leaning back are not the answers to this. To think of the pelvis moving back away from the thigh (as in lengthening the sling shot) and forward towards the thigh (as in pushing up to the plate) are very different, and very effective tactics. It is highly likely that one side of the body naturally tends towards one option, whilst the other side tends towards the other. But knowing what to do about this gives you a huge advantage!

2011-03-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Time - well over time - for a new post!
I have been gadding around America teaching clinics, and have seen a number of long term pupils who have over-used the 'slingshot' idea. Any good idea when taken to the extreme can become a bad idea, just as any cake cannot be successfully baked when one ingredient is out of proportion with the others. My plan was to write about the antidote for the slingshot, but I think I need to save that for another post and start by explaining how the slingshot works.
When a rider needs to move further back in the saddle, we usually suggest that she thinks of her thighs like the elastic in a slingshot, imagining that her knees are at the ends of the stick that would form the 'Y' of the slingshot, and that her pelvis is the stone. When the thigh muscles elongate and come under tension they form a longer, narrower 'V', just as the elastic does when you pull out a slingshot. The knees and the seat bones move further apart through being pulled in opposite directions.
The easiest way to access this is to put the heels of both hands on the pommel, and to make a sustained push back off them. The trick is to do this with your seat bones continuing to point straight down, so that they slide back over the flesh of your backside and do not point forward or back in a way that makes you round or hollow backed.
I am of course assuming that you are in 'neutral spine' with your seat bones pointing straight down as you begin this, which is a big assumption, given how many riders either lean forward or lean back, often whilst also either rounding or hollowing their back! Sitting in vertical and neutral cannot be taken for granted, and once there you might still find that your first response to the slingshot idea is to lift your seat bones within your backside, or to point them somewhere other than down. If you can, halt your horse sideways on to a mirror so you can check that you remain vertical and neutral as you push off your hands.
If you are sitting reading this with a table in front of you, try finding neutral and pushing back off the edge of the table. Experiment until you can feel your seat bones move back over your flesh and your front firm up. This should make your torso feel stronger.
As your seat bones slide back you are bringing your whole torso and your centre of gravity back. This may become necessary on a horse who delights in pulling the rug out backwards from under your feet. He is the lethargic or even nappy type, who attempts to get you 'in front of him'. You can then find yourself sweating away to no avail, as you are no longer in the place where your aids have meaning. You can kick and flail about all you want, but he will take no notice of you until your centre of gravity moves back over his.
Is it difficult, but very effective, to 'slingshot back' instead, using your energy to keep yourself still and firm, with narrow elongated thighs. If you then kick from that further-back-place you will find the 'go' button, as your aids suddenly work. On this kind of horse, you are unlikely to overdo the slingshot - in fact it is far more likely that you will not some far enough back, and that feeling weird will stop you from making an adjustment that is as extreme as the situation
demands.
This may sound paradoxical, but on easier horses, the idea of the slingshot can also help you move the horse's centre of gravity back. As your thighs elongate back and your torso moves back, you need to think of the horse's insides moving back within him (as opposed to you moving back relative to him). Some of the riders who have been doing this for a while are the ones who have reached overkill. They needed to change tactics and find a way to draw the back of the horse towards the front of the horse. But more of that in the next post!

2011-01-15T10:03:00.001-08:00

Oh my, I have just seen that I last wrote this blog in August 2010. I knew I was behind with it, but had no idea it was that long. Oh well..... thank you those of you who commented on how helpful it was (breathing well never goes amiss!) and thanks for your patience, those of you who follow these posts.
Fortunately it is quite recently that Tavia has responded, telling me that a chiropractor has pointed out how distorted her spine and pelvis are. She is sure that this explains her inability to turn her horse left, and wondours if she should give up riding until the treatment - which apparently will take some time - is complete. She asks my advice.
This is a difficult one. The bottom line is that none of us are symmetrical, and we all do the best we can with what we've got. Sometimes I do suggest that people would be better to spend their money on bodywork than riding lessons or training, but I rarely suggest that they don't ride. However, I have known riders driven to tears of despair and frustration by their asymmetry, very upset by the way they feel they are torturing their horses, and tempted to give up riding because of it!
I think I have solved my own asymmetry to a pretty large extent, forging a path that few if any riders have previously trodden. This has been a thirty year saga, but it has yielded knowledge that makes it progressively faster and easier for the pupils who join us. But realise that we are all like the goldfish who would never discover water - we are so deeply ingrained in our asymmetry, and it plays a massive role in patterning how we walk, breathe, drive, and even lie in bed. To step outside it (whether it is based on a significant injury or just on the habits of a lifetime) is inevitably a challenging, demanding process. And because of the goldfish effect, it cannot be done alone.
Realise that the chiropractic treatment will not make you perfect. I think some body workers make the mistake of thinking that all they have to do is to treat a rider and a horse and 'Viola!' they will ascend into a symmetrical Heaven! It is not like that - new neurological pathways are needed to make muscles fire in a whole new pattern. They have to be learnt, and this has to happen against the pull of the old pattern. Only when the new pathways work well can the muscles themselves change significantly.
With or without our help, you will probably spend many years working out how to turn left. The answer can only reveal itself in layers: each one makes a significant difference, and can make you think that you have 'got it!'. But in reality it is only one small step on a long journey. After the elation you will soon realise this, as the next layer of the problem reveals itself (again and again!). You cannot go straight from A to X and neither can your horse - especially if you both have a history of riding during which he has patterned his body around your asymmetry!
So Tavia: read the chapters on steering in the 'Clinic' book and if you can, get some biomechanics based coaching to help you as the bodywork progresses. You almost certainly have a significant rotation left if you cannot turn that way. Work with it too as you drive your car: can you weight each seat bone evenly? Can you stop your upper body from creasing on the side as you go around bends and roundabouts? This is far harder than you think, and a good test of progress. Exercises on a gymball will also help.
Whatever you do, realise that it is about enjoying the journey instead of longing to arrive. Each new insight can give you so much satisfaction, and make your horse's life easier too. Savour them, but at the same time, be ready for the long haul.
Good luck,
Mary

2010-08-30T04:26:00.001-07:00

Let's continue with the theme of breathing.
The following might seem a highly unlikely scenario, since we are talking about a rider and horse who were, at the time, about to make their debut at Grand Prix Dressage. Two years later they were placed in competition in Germany, beating some very big names. But one of my best breathing lessons ever was with Heather Blitz and her horse Otto, who was sold on soon after that German success.
Otto was a tense type, who was pretty unruly when he was first given to Heather to prepare for sale. She really liked him, however, and soon realised his potential, so she set about finding a buyer who would let her train and compete him. Despite her enthusiasm, she has described to me one occasion when his head went up so high that she could see his nostrils! Whilst this was a one-off, he always kept a 'veneer' between himself and his rider, as a way of reducing the rider's influence.
Many horses do this, and it can give them a look that I describe as 'brittle'. A rider can look 'brittle' too - she might or might not sense herself like a china doll that might break, but she can certainly have that look. Seeing this 'brittle' look in either partner immediately makes me question how much breathing is really happening, and I know that changing this can be the turning point that changes everything else.
When the rider does not breathe well, the horse is unlikely to. Even when the rider does breathe well, she may need to use the power of thought to transfer this to the horse. So we like to think of 'breathing down into the pony' . I say 'pony' as we so often teach this to children, but its usefulness spans a spectrum from their first few lessons on our school ponies to top class riders on their Grand Prix horses!
So in breathing down into Otto, Heather thought of her breath infusing both her body and his. It can work well to think of it as a colour. It probably took 20 minutes to begin to really change him - he lost the look of a 'cat on hot bricks', and he also lost his veneer. His muscle quality changed as his movement changed, and it was a turning point in his training. He had finally let Heather in - and perhaps he had finally let go and breathed deeply, in a way he had never done whilst ridden.
I am sure there are sceptics out there thinking 'yeah right', but the power of this kind of thought is incredible. The rider firstly needs good breathing skills herself (which of course Heather had), and then that additional focus. It can work wondours. Try it.

2010-07-15T23:54:00.000-07:00

It's time for a change of topic, and I am going to go for breathing. Breathing whilst bearing down is a cornerstone of riding skills, and hard for almost everyone. Take a few breaths and notice, do your ribs lift at the front? If they do, and if an in-breath makes you taller, you are breathing into your upper chest. This is not a great breathing strategy for life as well as riding. It means that you are likely to be a hollow backed, both on and off horse. Your attempts to fix this will be frustrating, because every inbreath lifts you into that posture.
When you inflate the lower part of the lungs you have a much more efficient breathing strategy, which goes with a much more viable posture. Your lower ribs are allowed to expand outwards, making a bigger diameter and a bigger circumference to the 'circle' of the rib cage, but they are not allowed to lift up.
Anatomically, your diaphragm is like the cap of a mushroom, with its edges connected to your lower ribs. It keeps your lungs separate from your guts, and on an inbreath it is pulled down, making room for the lungs to expand into.
Imagine that someone has bought a big pile of loose shavings, covered them with a big tarpaulin, and put tyres on the edges to hold it down. If the wind gets in under the tarp it billows up. This is like upper chest breathing. Imagine deep sobbing, which is the extreme of this strategy. In diaphragmatic breathing, it is as if there is a suction pump at the bottom of the pile of shavings that sucks the tarp down on the inbreath. This will make your lower ribs expand but not lift.
So imagine this within your body, and maybe put your hands around your ribs, feeling them expand without lifting, and think of the suction happening from low down in your abdomen.
At first, this can feel difficult and stressful, and after a few breaths you will probably be longing to gasp, and lift your ribs. Do this if you must, but come back to the new pattern. Practice whilst driving your car - for you need to master this way of breathing, making it how you breathe all the time, not just when you are riding. I guarantee that you will not breathe one way 23 hours a day, and get on your horse for hour 24 and breathe differently.
In time, breathing 'down' rather than 'up' will leave you taking deeper, slower breaths, and you will supply much more oxygen to your muscles. This will increase your endurance, and perhaps even lengthen your life! It will certainly improve your riding, and it will encourage your horse to breathe too, for he may well take his cue from you. Like people, some horses are naturally much better 'breathers' than others, and good work can change their breathing pattern. When the horse begins to breathe diaphragmatically he usually begins to snort, and this is a sign that his body is releasing in a really good way.

2010-06-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, it seems ages since I have 'blogged' - blame lots of travelling and teaching, with a huge backlog of tasks that needed doing at home. But the last few months have been a very productive time in terms of some new skills and understandings that are enhancing both my riding and teaching.
My last series of blogs have been about the challenges of riding lazy and whizzy horses. Maybe I can bring those two strands together through the following analogy.
Imagine two people standing opposite each other playing a game of catch with a tennis ball. This is a co-operative game - neither person is trying to catch the other one out - and each throws the ball so that it bounces once, giving a reliable rhythm of bounce, catch, bounce, catch, bounce, catch....
Then imagine that one partner secretly substitutes a more bouncy ball, which would speed up the rhythm of the game, and make it much more precarious!
Also imagine that one of them secretly substitutes a bean bag! That is the end of the game.
Our 'bounce, catch' analogy illustrates the energy exchange between horse and rider in rising trot, and we want this to work as if each one were throwing the other a tennis ball. But the lazy horse might want to throw bean bags, which deaden the bounce in the game, making it 'wind down'. Many draft crosses are of this type. The rider might also tend to throw bean bags, and one of my pupils once nicknamed herself 'bean bag butt' (I would not have said this - it's too cruel!) But it was certainly true that every horse she rode tended to 'give up the ghost'. She was a low tone rider, and her body naturally had a 'bean bag' quality that she had to work very hard to change, holding her muscles much more firmly than their natural level of tone.
Many riders throw the horse a bean bag when they want him to go more - they land heavier, dig their seat into his back, and expect this to make him go forward. But they have deadened his bounce, with the inevitable result that he will go less If the horse is a 'bean bag' type, the rider has to keep throwing him tennis balls, and not get seduced into throwing bean bags back at him. If she does this, he will inevitably loose impulsion.
It is not easy to keep 'tennis ball' quality in your body when paired with a 'bean bag' horse! His hind legs have to 'ping' off the ground more than he wants them too, and he has less recoil energy in his tendons and ligaments than, say, a thoroughbred. The tempo has to stay faster than he would choose, and you may need to learn to give leg aids in the way I have described in previous posts. If you nag and shove you are doomed.
You also have to be able to diagnose the moment when his bounce descreases. Most riders 'wake up' then both they are the horse are well into the process of 'winding down' - and by then, it is a huge big deal to re-find 'tennis ball' impulsion. Prevention works far better than cure!
In contrast, thoroughbreds might well want to throw you a bouncier ball than you want them too, increasing both the speed and the force of their 'throws'. Your job is then to slow the tempo, keeping their hind legs on the ground for a little longer than they want them there, especially with the proverbial 'cat on hot bricks' kind of horse. This is the only way that you can regain control of the speed of the 'throws' and the force of the 'throws'.
I wish I had understood this better years ago, as the wonderful thoroughbred horse pictured on the cover of the 'Essentials' book would con me by speeding up the game, and I would match her thrust-for-thrust, only to have her try and speed it up more. It was as if she was saying 'any way you can thrust I can thrust better/faster/harder...' (she was a wonderfully exuberant soul, and loved to run away with people in medium trot!) It was a long time before I realised that my job was not to match her but to slow her. I had to become extremely pro-active to make pauses at the top of the rise and the bottom of the sit that were effective enough to slow down her legs. I had to develop good enough 'chewing gum string rise', and to keep a reliable 'windscreen wiper rise', before I could maintain my ideal amount and speed of thrust. (See previous posts for an explanation of these analogies.)
The tennis ball analogy is a lovely way to talk about the energy exchange between horse and rider. We as riders have the task of creating 'tennis ball energy' in our bodies - and some of us are more bean-bag-like, while others are more bouncy-ball-like. Our horses too have different energetic qualities, and we are (we hope) training them to become more tennis-ball-like.
Next time you ride, think about tennis ball energy exchange, and see if you can diagnose yourself and your horse, bringing you both to the more ideal game of throwing tennis balls!

2010-03-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

One of the responses to my last post asked, 'How does counting 'te-tum, te-tum, te-tum' in rhythm with the horse's front legs slow down the canter? This is a good question, and the answer is that I really don't know, except that it really demonstrates the phenominal power of attention, and it works every time!
Just being aware of the tempo and tuning yourself into it slows it down, and increases the chances that as you begin the canter, you can 'take the horse' instead of having him 'take you'.
This difference is so critical. When 'the horse takes you' he is in charge of the speed of his legs, and the rider is often reduced to 'pull and pray'. She looses the ability to 'bear down' with her abdominal muscles, and to match the force of his movement in every stride. She becomes the waterskier to his motor boat.
I watched a lesson a short time ago in which the coach was working with someone in canter saying things that were totally irrelevant, because with the horse 'taking the rider', only this situation could be addressed effectively. No other change was available to the rider, as the horse and the situation made her so powerless. The rider needed to be told 'bear down', and the lesson needed to be set up so that she had at least some chance of taking the horse - otherwise she was doomed. Counting 'te-tum, te-tum' would have been the best way to turn this around.
When you 'take the horse', you have changed the rules of the game, so that the horse is dancing to your tune, in your way, at your speed. This is a watershed of a difference, that makes so much possible. You can bear down, and you can give your hand forward. But to make it work, you must begin counting from the very first stride, miss that one and it may or may not work. Try it, and prove its effectiveness to yourself!

2010-02-05T09:41:00.001-08:00

Right then, those canter transitions. I confess to often messing up the first few of the day, and many riders do not ride these well, largely because they don't believe the transition will happen, so they over-do their aids.
A common strategy is to 'kick start' the horse into canter by leaning back and shoving with your backside. This means that you end up in waterski position as you 'push' the horse into 'motorboat'. He might just trot faster, or he might canter, but either way you have put your centre of gravity behind his, and will pay the price for this as he races off with you. The more you lean back, the more he speeds off. This is like a rug being pulled out from under your feet. It would slide away from you ever faster as you leant back.
Think of trot like the smooth surface of the ocean. The first canter stride is like a tsunami wave that arises out of it, swelling up and coming back down ready for the next wave or stride. Your aim is to go up with the wave, and come down with the wave, staying vertical throughout. If you fall off the back of the wave (either on the way up or at the top), you are unlikely to get canter, and if you do, you may well loose it after one stride. Many riders who lean back and 'kick start' the horse fall off the back of the wave. A smaller proportion of riders get 'in front of' the wave, and staying on exactly the right balance point is no mean achievement.
Realise that each successive canter stride is like another tsunami wave that you have to stay with.
The canter aid comes from the inside seat bone as much or more than it comes from the lower legs. The front inside shoulder of the horse lifts into canter, almost like taking off for a jump, and your inside seat bone lifts with it. In fact, lifting this seat bone can cue the horse to lift his shoulder, as if he were stuck to your underside. To make this work you have to be well anchored over the outside seat bone. (If all your weight is on the inside one, you can't move it!)
If you have trouble doing this, and/or you have trouble getting the right lead, think of looking over your outside shoulder. This is good advice at any time, as it makes your torso face to the outside, putting your inside hip and shoulder ahead of your outside hip and shoulder. This goes with 'inside leg on the girth, outside leg behind the girth', which you have probably heard
before.
Canter is the four legged equivalent of skipping, and you (like the horse) could skip on either lead. If he has both inside legs in advance of his outside legs you must match him, by putting your inside seat bone and torso ahead of of your outside seat bone and torso.
This also means that facing your body to the inside (and reversing your seat bone position) would invite the wrong lead - especially if you also pulled on the the inside rein and made the horse 'jack-knife'. He would then fall on his outside shoulder as this is the only one that free to move. Result: you are on the wrong lead.
Think of keeping your outside rein and giving your inside hand during the transition. This is a good policy because it helps you not to pull, and not to face to the inside. The horse's inside shoulder is free, and the horse who feels that the hand brake is off will make a much neater job of the transition than the one who feels constrained.
At the same time, the more you can demote the transition inside your head and make it no big deal, the more likely it is to go well. Keep aiming to keep your body lined up, and make this a higher priority than getting canter at any cost.
Good luck!

2010-01-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Back to whizzy horses. As I have said before, it pays to be in control of the speed of the horse's legs in the slower gaits before you go faster: so you want to be controlling the speed of the legs in walk before you trot, and in trot before you canter. Canter transitions are notoriously difficult to teach - and do - well, and most riders instinctively do the equivilant of putting their foot on the accelerator instead of changing gear! If you can sit the trot well for several strides you have a huge avantage over the riders whose only options are rising or bumping whilst kicking and hoping! Improving how you sit the trot may pay huge dividends in the transition itself.
A good canter strike off really helps you canter more slowly, and the horse that runs into canter via a fast trot will inevitably be fast and unbalanced in canter. If the trot is getting faster and faster it is almost always better to abort the transition than it is to keep kicking. Do not be afraid to abort the transition repeatedly, even if it seems that your horse is not 'getting it'. You will teach yourself and him far more by slowing the trot and asking again than you will by keeping on kicking as he trots faster. Be sure though, that you are not pulling on the reins at the same time as you ask for canter. If your body is saying 'I want you to canter, but actually please don't!' you can't blame your horse when he doesn't! If you suspect that this is true for you, what you need is an extra dose of courage, which may come simply from learning to bear down. This is my term for how skilled riders use their abdominal muscles, and I have written about it extensively in my books. It will also help to follow the steps below.
If you think your horse is going to be speedy, the best place the arena to ask for the transition is coming around on a circle towards the wall on the long side. Having the wall almost in front of the horse will help to slow him down, and you have 3/4 of the circle to go before you reach the begining of the long side. Here, the sight of that wide open space will tempt him to motorboat (and accelerate out from under you) and you to waterski (as you lean back, push in the stirrups and pull on the reins). The more to lean back the faster he will go - both in miles per hour, and in terms of how fast his legs go around. So this is a bad idea, and as ever, you need to 'keep up with the horse' so that your centre of gravity stays over his in each canter stride.
When you begin canter count the speed of the horse's front legs. Te-tum, te-tum, te-tum, works well as a way to do this. You need to be sure that you begin counting with the very first canter stride. If you are with an instructor, ask her to count out loud as you count inside your head. Very often just counting like this will slow the horse down. It can be a remarkably effective technique, but you must begin counting with the very first canter stride.
We'll talk more about the transition itself next time!

2009-11-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

WE need to get back to lazy horses, except that I am going to talk about backward thinking horses, who are different to lazy horses in that they invest energy in not going. It is not simply that their batteries run down, it is that they actively attempt to pull the rug out backwards from under your feet. In other words, they actively attempt to get your centre of gravity in front of theirs.
In these horses, there is usually a 'block' within the body that stops energy from getting through - it can be in the loin area behind the saddle, or somewhere around the shoulders. The muscles in that area are locked up, and bodywork (like Chiropractic, massage etc) often really helps them. But by design or default, these are the horses who do not want to work, and they are some of the most difficult, and least fun horses to ride - until they let go.
These horses have discovered that when your centre of gravity is in front of theirs, you are virtually powerless. You can flail about and sweat a lot up there, but not much will happen. The horse might kick out at your leg or stick, and he might be even more nappy than that. But the picture - and the horse's attitude - can change completely once your centre of gravity is back enough to be over his.
All of the techniques I teach become refined over time as riders learn them in layers. I often think of learning being like peeling the layers of an onion, with each layer offering a more in-depth, effective fix. But the outermost layer that I am about to suggest can be really potent if you are able to do it.
Think of yourself like a napkin ring around a napkin (the horse). If the napkin ring were able to move back around the napkin, then more napkin would be in front of it. This is precisely what you want. So think of your knees coming further back, your thighs coming further back, your pubic bone and your seat bones coming further back. There literally is more horse in front of you if you can do this, and your effort has go to into staying back here. You may well feel that you must surely be sitting too far back in the saddle - but go for this feeling, wierd though it is.
If you kick from this place you will probably get a positive result, but if you end up flailing about with your centre of gravity on front to the correct point, you might as well just get off! Do not censor the feeling of 'backness', go for it as strongly as you can, and you are likely to find that it pays huge dividends.
Good luck!
Mary

2009-10-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Back to speedy horses...
It always pays to be on control of the speed of the legs in the slower gaits before you go to a faster one - so do not trot until you controlling the speed of the legs in walk, and do not canter until you are controlling them in trot. Rising trot becomes an important skill here, and the first way to think about slowing the legs is to think of making a pause in the saddle as you land, and a pause in the air at the top of the rise. Each of these pauses happens as one diagonal pair of legs is on the ground, and it helps to keep them on the ground for longer, becoming the antidote for the horse who is like a 'cat on hot bricks'!
That sounds great in theory, but most people arrive in the saddle only to find that they are instantly catapulted out of it! This will inevitably happen if you are hollow backed, and land with your seat bones pointing back. You will also hit trouble if you forget to rise because you are thinking so much about the pause. The trust you make as you rise must match the thrust of the horse's hind leg, and this can be an act of faith on the speedy horse. All your instincts (especially if you are a nervous rider) will direct you to barely leave the saddle. But if you do this you are 'left behind' in the rise, becoming the water skiier to the horse's motor boat! Then, as he 'pulls the rug out from under your feet' your plight can only get worse. it is absolutely critical that your centre of gravity 'keeps up' with his.
Think of the windscreen wipers on a car. They always get to the top of the windscreen, and potentially they could pause at the top and pause at the bottom without this affecting the size of their 'wipe'. If you manage to make the 'full wipe' and the pause both work together you will know - even if you only manage the pause on one sit. It is inescapably different, and the horse's response is instantaneous.
This is a hard skill to 'get' on your own, however, and you will be doing really well if you can translate my words into action without any outside help. I hope you can!
Good luck!
Mary

2009-09-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hello!Time for more about riding the lazy horse....
As well as being tempted to kick every stride, most riders are also tempted to shove with their backside. The lazier the horse, the more riders tend to shove - and the terms 'use your seat' and 'drive him forward' imply that this is a good thing to do. But not so!
Think of riders from the Spanish Riding School, and how still they sit. It is the stillness of the world's best riders that sets them apart from the rest of us as we shove, wiggle, and generally flail around - especially on the lazy horse. The more you do this, the more you show the horse that you are a novice. Think of sitting more still - keeping your body firm, still and lined up, while delivering the message 'Me Tarzan, you horse!'
When you kick from the knee down nothing must move from the knee up. What happens to your thighs, seat bones and backside when you kick? Do you wobble, shove, or jerk? Keeping the same quiet contact with the saddle is not so easy as it sounds!
The movement of each seat bone just keeps it moulded on to the horse's back. It is a much smaller movement than many riders think, and must be controlled by the rider. It must be very reliable - no sudden surprises for the horse. When I look at a rider, I do not want to see movement in her breeches - her outsides (as it were) stay glued onto the same place on the saddle throughout the horse's stride, while her seat bones move over her flesh within her backside. This means that the movements are small and controlled - like those Spanish Riding School riders. Good luck!

2009-09-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

Let's go back to speedy horses..... being able to slow down the speed of your seat bones and slow down the speed of the horse's legs is the key thing here. If the horse moves your seat bones at his speed, then 'he takes you', when you slow them down to the speed that you want and are in control of, then 'you take him'.
Another big factor is breathing. You may well find yourself holding your breath on a horse that speeds off with you - and of course, he may be holding his breath too! It works well to think of 'breathing for both of you' and 'breathing down into the pony'. This may sound like kids stuff, but I have helped one international Grand Prix Dressage rider make huge changes to her GP horse by breathing down into him! It totally changed his body quality, making him much softer and less brittle. Think of the breath as a colour that goes down through your body and into his.
Put your breathing into a rhythm with the horse's walk. Count his forelegs moving, and breathe in 2,3,4, out,2,3,4. Maybe you can do 6's. Make sure you think of the breath going down - many riders are upper chest breathers, who lift the front of their ribs with each inbreath. Try not to do this: your ribs can expand outward, but must not go upwards. That automatically brings the breath more down, and you can amplify this effect by imagining that the breath is drawn down into your pelvis.
Breathing hold the key to so much, and I will come back to it in future posts. If you are coming up to something scarey, deliberately breathe OUT - we tend to breathe in and then hold our breath. If you make yourself breathe out you can stop that from happening, and you automaticaly send a much more calming message to your horse.
All the best!
Mary

2009-08-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

So some tips about riding the lazy horse....
The biggest trap is to kick repeatedly in a way that is usually described as nagging. Riders often lift their heel and turn their toe out as they do this, making more of a nudge than a kick. Sometimes when teaching I get riders to say the word 'kick' to me every time they kick - then I say the word 'kick' to them every time I see them kick - there is often a big discrepancy, which tells us both that they are using their leg on 'auto-pilot'. Many people learn to do this in their early days of riding lazy horses in the riding school, and never loose the habit. The rule is that if you use your leg, you have to mean it, and if you do not mean it, do not use it.
Think about getting out of bed in the morning, and think of telling yourself or someone else that they have to get out of bed. The conversation could just keep going 'You've got to', 'I don't want to', 'You've got to'.... in a never ending cycle of misery for both sides. Once you actually get out of bed, life is much better than it is when you are thinking about getting out of bed! So metaphorically, you might have to 'rip the bedclothes' off your horse. Once you have him out of bed, you might have to say 'Not with me you don't!' if he threatens to climb back in there - this is prevention rather than cure, and is far easier on you and him.
Sometimes I see people who are putting up a big show of trying to get their horse going forward, complete with backside shoving, legs nudging, and a lot of sweat. They are thrilled to be able to tell me that 'I am trying...' - but if they actually succeeded, they would probably be terrified! To try and to succeed are two different options, and for many riders succeeding is an act of courage, and so out of their 'comfort zone' that they make sure it never happens!
More on this next time!

Mary's training tips

2009-08-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

I am finally a real person with friends on Facebook, so now is the time to connect them and you to my blog, and post a new riding/training tip each week. so here goes with my first offering......

If you are riding a speedy horse, your first job is to get control of the speed of his legs. The burning question is: does he move you, or do you move him? Whoever controls the speed and movement of your seat bones controls the speed and movement of his legs. We all like to think that we can slow down the horse's legs by pulling on the reins.. but no chance! The horse will probably get claustrophobic and move faster, not slower! Instead you need to slow down the speed of your seat bone movement, and often to make that movement smaller. Be sure you can feel your seat bones - if you are 'popping up' by tightenning the muscles betwen them and the saddle you will not be able to make this work.
Imagine the tip of a pencil attached to each seatbone. What lines/shapes would those pencils draw in each stride? Are they the same? Is one a deeper, darker more repeatable line, and one a random squiggle? Can you even them out? Can you slow them down, and make them smaller?
Exerpiment to find out the effects this has.
Good luck! we'll talk about lazy hores next time!
Mary

2009-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Finally... I am blogging again! I had to get my webmaster to re-show me how to do it. It seems that I have a brain like a sieve when it comes to computers. Oh well!
It is now April 09, and it seems a long way from July 08. I have made two teaching trip to the USA over the winter, mostly teaching people I know well, and both trips were great fun. They also catalysed a lot of insights, some of which are ideas I could have thought of years ago. It is amazing how just thinking of something in a slightly different way can have so much effect, and how it changes they way that your brain organises your muscles. I still marvel about this even though I have experienced and seen it so many times over so many years.
My own horses, Quite and Merlot, keep demanding that I get better organised. Merlot (who was given to me by some American friends who had had enough of his antics) has, in reality, provided the learning curve from hell. His asymmetry has (of course) played on mine, and I have had to figure out a lot more about both sides of my body. I have also had to become stronger per se. He is now becoming much easier to ride, and way more willing to stay with my agenda.
It has really helped learning about Andrew McLean's approach to groundwork (aebc.com.au), and been very exciting to see how he and Heather Blitz (the American Grand prix dressage rider I have coached for many years) have independently come up with a similar philosophy. Whilst Heather does not use this in groundwork, her ideas about how to 'get through to' the horse
in ridden work are essentially the same as Andrew's. It is very exciting that we now have good ways to address the horse's conscious mind as well as his instinctive responces to the pyhsics of our riding.
Overdale is buzzing, with Karin doing a great job at the helm. We have some new horses at livery and in training, and they are available for people to ride on courses. Our older stalwarts are all doing well, and teaching well. The leaves are coming out on the trees, and the sun is shining, so at least we are all breathing out after a long snowy winter.
I am back to the US very soon for another short trip - including the 'Naked Truth of Riding' symposium in St Paul MN. I am looking forward to this hugely, and plan to have it videod with a view to making a new set of DVDs. This could take a while, though, so don't hold your breath!

2008-07-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is my new blog.... I hope! I have little faith in technology, and even less in my ability to work with it, so I will believe it when I see it up there on the website. My original server gave up the ghost some months ago, and this has added significantly to my inability to get my act together. So my true confession is that I have written nothing since November last year, and it is now August. I would love to say that I now have great hopes for my future blogging, but I am more of a realist than that!

The new 'Ride With Your Mind Clinic' book continued to haunt me through the autumn and into the new year, with pages winging their way between me, my illustrator and my editor. Then finally came the lull before it appeared in print. It arrived on my door step the day before I left for America in February, which was fabulous timing. I am sure that there are few greater thrills in life than seeing and holding the book you have laboured over - the book that was nothing but files on a computer until it is miraculously given substance. Imagine seeing it there in your hand in black, white, and beautiful colour...what joy!

Thus I have had advance copies to sell during my lecture-demonstrations etc, but it has only just been officially published, and reviews are starting to come out now. So I have my fingers crossed!

Whilst writing it, I kept thinking about how much more time there would be once it was finished, but the truth is that so much gets put aside to make time for writing that there is an existential 'catch-up' that has to happen afterwards. I am now emerging from that catch-up, and feel that my head is above water for the first time in a long time. I am now trying to put some finishing touches to my house - having lived for a year with much of the downstairs as a concrete floor I am longing for my floor tiles to be fitted! I also have a pressing need for some more shelves etc., and as the price of oil escalates, I hope to enter the winter with a few more heating options.

Meanwhile my horses are doing well, and I am now the proud owner of five of them. I bought Astro, one of our school horses from Sam Twyman last summer, and have now also bought Golly who was on loan to Karin Major. She took over from Sam as the manager of Overdale, and when Golly's owners wanted to sell rather than loan I could not let such a good horse slip through my fingers. My wonderful pony Ellie is still going strong, and whenever I ride her I learn a lot in the experience. She is a great teacher. Quite, my Lusitano (who is pictured on the cover of the
'Clinic' book) is progressing really well, with big improvements in my ability to access his various gears, and to match his power in 'big trot' and passage. He is also doing really well with piaffe, which gives me great pleasure as when I bought him the owners were convinced that he would never do it. He has started teaching a few lessons to my more experienced pupils, and is now tollerant enough to give some of them their first taste of flying changes, piaffe and passage. Last on the list is my new horse Merlot, a 7 year old warmblood who has been given to me by Page who hosts my clinics in Wellington Florida, (and who appears in the 'Clinic' book). He has only been here for 2 months, and he is not an easy kettle of fish. But there are lots of good things happening as he chills out and becomes more ridable. I shall update you later!
This has been the summer of conferences. In June I spoke at a conference entitled 'This Learning Life' held in the Postgraduate Department of Education at Bristol University, and organised by Professor Guy Claxton. I had so much fun, and revelled in meeting some of the foremost thinkers on learning in both this country and the world. It was exciting and vallidating that they found my 'learning conversation' so thought provoking.

I have just been to Dublin to speak at the Conference of the International Society for Equestrian Science (ISES). I have only just discovered them, and I hope they might be left thinking that they have just discovered me! They are a group of academics including vets, zoologists, animal behaviourists and trainers, who are researching many facets of horse behaviour, and how we can best manage and train them. There were some interesting papers given, for instance, about the stresses of starting horses and travelling them (interestingly, cortisol levels increased much more on a one hour journey than they did when horses were first saddled and ridden).

There were also a few practical sessions, of which mine was one. I had only 25 minutes to work with 2 riders, so it was a whirlwind trip, which I think came together remarkably well considering the time constraints. I hope I really was able to make the point that how the rider sits matters, that our sitting is our primary tool for doing the job of influencing the horse, and that we (and the horse) pay dearly when our centre of gravity/tone/symmetry do not allow us to be precise enough in our organisation.
One of the leading lights of the organisation is Andrew McLean - google him to find out about his approach to groundwork and operant conditioning (the trial and error learning that he believes is the foundation for all of the horse's later responses under saddle).

I am soon off to Denmark to teach a clinic there and to watch Heather Blitz for a few days. So I am really looking forward to that. Heather teaches a clinic at Overdale on 20 and 21 September, and anyone who wants to come and watch should telephone me. I really recommend seeing her in action.

All in all it's an action packed summer - but I hope to be back on this blog much sooner than previously!