The Hardest Thing To Know

The Hardest Thing To Know

Equestrians struggle with this all the time.

How to know when to stop and when to keep going.

When should you end your training session? How much is too much?

When should you push forward to get real change?

Unfortunately, for the mass majority of people this is not something you can just know. It takes a lot of practice, awareness and failing in order to learn.

Here are some helpful tips to help guide you though!

1. The Rest Is More Important Than The Work

Let’s be real clear here though, you still need to do the work or the rest means nothing. A big problem with progression and creating a symbiotic relationship with your horse is lack of rest. This is also the biggest issue with making your horse hate the arena or being worked in general. During your session, say about 20-30 minutes of actual work - you should be offering your horse 3-4 rest periods. Enough time to catch their breath, relax and find some peace. Sometimes this is 30 seconds and sometimes it is several minutes. It can be standing or just walking with no direction on a completely loose rein. But you need to LEAVE THEM ALONE. This provides a physical and mental break and will completely change how your horse feels about what you are asking. Time this break correctly and whatever you were trying to teach your horse will be driven home and progression will be substantial.

2. Adjust Your Idea Of Perfectionism

Stop drilling. Stop making your horse do it over and over and over again. This usually has absolutely nothing to do with the horse and everything to do with making you feel better and more confident about what you are working on. Consider putting yourself in your horse’s shoes. How would you feel if you gave the right answer three times but your rider keeps asking for it over and over again. Are you going to want to keep giving that answer? Or are you going to try to give a different answer to figure out how to make the drilling stop? But then you got it wrong so you get punished and asked harder to do it again. At this point you are so confused so you shut down, fight back, want to bolt to get away but then your rider gets more upset and a vicious cycle ensues. The RELEASE is where your horse understands what you want. Part of the release is getting the “right” answer a couple or few times and then moving on to something else. DON’T DRILL. Then adjust what the right answer is. More often than not it isn’t the full movement you are wanting - especially if the horse is struggling. The right answer today may be a micro movement towards what ultimately you want to get to. Say you are trying to leg yield across the arena, but your horse is struggling. Maybe today you work on 1-2 steps in the leg yield, softly, consistently, with impulsion. Do it a few times then REST and move on to something else. Perfectionism is breaking things down into small steps, getting understanding and consistency in those steps before putting it all together and asking for more.

3. Throw Your Ego Out The Window

“But I can’t let him WIN!” Please get this idea out of your head. It isn’t about winning or losing. When we think like this everyone loses. It is the best way to make your horse hate being with you and kills their natural desire to give. If your horse is really resistant to something, your job is to figure out WHY. It isn’t because they are (insert derogatory term). They are trying to tell you something and your stubborn self doesn’t want to listen. You are the human here with critical thinking abilities. Figure out how to get your horse to do what you want and then how to motivate them do what you want. This doesn’t mean your horse refuses to pass the gate in the arena so to avoid a “fight” you get off and put them to bed. This means you noticed them leaning towards the gate eons ago and actually take notice of it and do something about it then.

4. Fail Forward

Yeah, you’re gonna fail and make mistakes. It’s OK. LEARN from them and do better next time. That’s what failing forward means. Let your horse make mistakes and compassionately guide them to do what you are wanting. Do not be so afraid of messing up that you are paralyzed to do anything. You will release at the wrong time and teach your horse something you didn’t want. That’s ok. Recognize it and learn from it. No one with any great skill got there without failing, a lot. Take ownership of your responsibility to learn, practice and get better. Once you crack the code on timing, feel and awareness - your horsemanship journey becomes magical.

5. Be Aware Of The Hamster Wheel

Aging, do not DRILL YOUR HORSE. If your horse understands and has perfected a movement or activity. Do not do it over and over and over again. Revisit it occasionally, do it a couple of times then move on. Make it your goal that training sessions are fun, foster curiosity, softly challenge yourself and your horse and are realistic. If your horse is stuck on one small step and hasn’t progressed, be ok with pushing a bit to get to the other side. Make sure they truly understand the first step and you didn’t spend one day doing it. But don’t get stuck on the hamster wheel of doing the same step over and over again for weeks with no progression. Try making even more micro-steps and really look at what is preventing the progression. Ask for help if you get stuck here too and can’t figure it out.

Hope this list helps you in one of the hardest things about working with horses.

It takes practice, there is no skipping that part unfortunately. You can make it easier though by having someone with skill, knowledge and proof of product in your corner. Get a trainer or coach to help you and be available for when you get stuck. They made all the mistakes and learned the lessons so they can pass that on to you.

We offer coaching here at IEH for this very reason and our coaching clients have benefited immensely with huge success. Having someone to support you, even half the country away, is a game-changing.

All the most successful people in the world have a coach for a reason.