Episode 225: Calculated plateaus in training and showing

Episode 225_ Calculated plateaus in training and showing.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 225_ Calculated plateaus in training and showing.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Stacy Westfall:
But the challenge is remembering that while you are striving towards growth and improvement, physically or mentally, it's important to build in plateaus, because the plateaus will ensure that you are properly pacing things, both physically and mentally.

Announcer:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill, this is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple: to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Stacy Westfall:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and in this season of the podcast, I've been discussing lessons that I've learned through showing horses. Showing has hugely impacted my development as a rider. And I find that most of these lessons are available without showing, but they're often a lot more clear when explained from the showing perspective. I think today's is a perfect example of that, but you be the judge. I will also openly admit that I am advocating for an improved overall perception of horse showing in general. Statistically, the majority of horse owners do not show, which means that many of you who are listening likely don't show. And I'm hoping that this season of the podcast does two things for those of you who don't show. I hope it serves as a glimpse into the horse show world from an angle you may have never heard discussed before. And for those of you who do show, I hope it serves either as a reminder of lessons you have learned or an encouragement for new ways you can look at the things you're experiencing. In today's podcast, I'm going to teach about creating calculated plateaus, which also comes along with the problem that I often see people have when showing. But before we go there, let's anchor this in the idea of why show at all.

Stacy Westfall:
One of the many reasons I show is to test myself and to test my horse, to test our knowledge. But another reason that I really enjoy showing is because it's a place where I can surround myself with other people who love horses and who are daring greatly. Are you familiar with Brené Brown? She wrote the book titled, Daring Greatly: How the Courage To Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. It's a great book, and if you'd rather watch a video, you can find her on YouTube. She's got some really famous TED talks and there are lots of video clips of her out there speaking. Her book title, Daring Greatly, actually comes from a quote that she shares from Theodore Roosevelt. And this is the quote: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…" Theodore Roosevelt.

Stacy Westfall:
Brené Brown titled her book Daring Greatly and I believe that is something that you can experience when you attend horse shows. One of the reasons I love spending time at horse shows is because the showing part is actually real quick. The rest of the day is spent hanging out with horse people, eating together, feeding horses, cleaning stalls, helping someone else get tacked up and get ready to go to the show arena, where they will dare greatly. The whole day is anchored in watching people strive to do their best while doing best by their horses. One of the challenges that showing often brings up is what I'm going to call over-showing. And I think that you can imagine that if you are daring greatly, if you are striving, if you are trying your hardest, you can see where you could possibly overdo something. So I want to talk today specifically about the idea of over-showing and the idea of creating calculated plateaus. This is a theory that when you understand it is going to help you in your daily riding whether you show or not. I'm going to explain it through the lens of showing. Now, first over-showing is different than overtraining. They could go together, but they do not. Always overtraining, at least in my definition, would be consistently training the horse at a level that doesn't allow the horse to recover physically or mentally. The human example, when I googled overtraining, it brought up overtraining syndrome occurs when an athlete doesn't adequately recover after repetitive intense training and can include fatigue, declining performance, and potential injury. Now, keep in mind, that's overtraining. What we're actually discussing today is over-showing. But before we go back to there, the opposite of overtraining would be undertraining. And I actually see undertraining as more of an issue with trail riders or people who don't show, who may underestimate the condition level of their horse and/or undertrain or inadequately prepare the horse for weekend trail rides. I only bring that up to balance out the idea, showing can have its problems, but not showing also has its other counter problems. Both can be done in a well-balanced way.

Stacy Westfall:
Now back to over-showing. So over-showing is different than overtraining. Over-showing is when a rider tries to do more in the arena while showing than they are consistently capable of doing in regular training. Notice, I said they. So this could be a rider issue or a horse issue. It could be a rider who is riding a horse that's been shown at a very high level, but the rider can't actually operate at that high a level. And so they're over-showing because of their limited capacity. Or it could be flip-flopped. It could be a rider who is over-showing and showing and asking the horse for more than they are capable of at their current skill training level. Let's give this some numbers so it doesn't get too vague. In dressage, in Western dressage, the scale you're judged on every time you do a different movement is a number between 0 and 10. In reining the scale goes from minus one and a half in half point increments all the way up to plus one and a half. So zero is in the middle. So you could get minus one and a half, minus one, minus half, zero, plus half, plus one, plus one and a half. So if you do like in reining, if you do a spin and you are marked as zero on that maneuver, what that zero represents is a phrase. And that phrase is, "correct with little or no degree of difficulty." In dressage or Western dressage, the similar equivalent would be a six, which means satisfactory. So part of learning about specific disciplines is also learning how the judging system works. And part of that in a lot of events is learning what these numbers represent.

Stacy Westfall:
So an example of over-showing would be trying to score a plus half when you and your horse are not capable of doing that in practice. So the challenge I see for people who are new to showing is that it's common for a rider to unconsciously think more is better. So this especially happens if the sport happens to involve potential speed like reining does. But remember, I'm not even claiming that the rider is making this choice consciously. I think what happens sometimes is that in the excitement or the nervousness, it can sometimes happen when you go in there because of that emotional state that you are in as the rider. At least when I look back, that's what happened to me. There were times that I over-showed because of my emotional state. I really wanted to go for it. So another way to say this is that the rider who shows does have a goal and that goal can be anything from, do the best I can today or maybe mark the highest score that I can, or it might be to win the class, place as high as I can. All of these goals tend to lean the rider towards doing more or daring greatly, which is what increases the chance of overdoing or over-showing. So the problem really is the underlying idea that more is better. Now on the opposite scale, just to remind everybody who hasn't shown that sometimes what people on the opposite scale tend to do is less is better, which tends to be like no specific goals. So just keep in mind everything's like a double-edged sword. We can swing too far one way or the other. In the middle is what I want to call a calculated plateau. So this is where it gets interesting. The cure for over-showing is not under-showing, it is understanding deeply how to create a calculated plateau. My definition–because this is my made-up phrase–so my definition of my made-up phrase, a calculated plateau in showing is exactly what it sounds like. It's calculated, it's planned, it's intentional, and it's not everything you are capable of. It's not the red line. So a calculated plateau is not asking for everything. It's a plateau, but it's also not coasting. So outside of showing, I think this makes even more sense. Outside of showing let's use trail riding as an example. Keep in mind, I love trail riding even more than showing. So this is not a knock on trail riding. I have a whole season of the podcast dedicated to trail riding, but in a trail riding example, I often encourage trail riders to think they are always either adding to or taking away from the training. I take the idea of a plateau off the table oftentimes for trail riders. Because the state that the rider's mind tends to be in trail riding is fascinating. I see it with myself, but it's way more common for trail riders to passively ride. And when you get on and just let the horse cruise down the trail and make all the decisions, it has a different set of problems that it causes. And what's super fascinating to me is how when we change these situations, even if you don't think about it, the mind of the rider will often shift. So this is something really fun that I do. Sometimes I'll take people out trail riding, people that normally show. And it's fascinating because many times those same horse show riders on their show horses, when they go out on a trail ride, the rider assumes a much more passive role. And it's fascinating to me to see how the rider changes a lot from one situation to the other. But anyway, let me get back on track.

Stacy Westfall:
So showing has a built-in goal, and because that goal is real, measurable, and right in front of you, it is good because it tends towards growth and improvement. But the challenge is remembering that while you are striving towards growth and improvement physically or mentally, it's important to build in plateaus because the plateaus will ensure that you are properly pacing things both physically and mentally. And this whole theory will make a lot more sense if you share a core value that I have, which is consistency and longevity. If you highly value consistency and longevity in your horses, then this whole theory is going to make a lot more sense. Once you understand this theory and I hope you can find it here, as I'm giving these horse show examples, you can then use this theory everywhere in horse training. A calculated plateau is showing at a level that is repeatable. Let me put this into an example. This is a skill set that I've built up over the years. And where it really became apparent to me is when I showed in my first online show. Because if you show in an online show, it means you're showing at home and recording it. If you're showing at home and recording it, you could technically record as many times as you wanted to. So you would think that if you recorded yourself 20 times, you could then just pick your best one. But what you will learn if you try this is that you have a built-in limit to the skill set where you and your horse are right now. So whatever those limits are will be what creates the cap on how high you could achieve given a week or two to record your test. So it was a really fun thing to experiment with–Well, maybe I can make it a little bit better. Well, maybe I can make this a little bit better. Well, maybe I can make this a little bit better. And what I learned through playing around with it was, I would allow myself to record maybe three times. But really, I could pretty much tell what my show capability was, not because I'm limited by the amount of times I could record the test, but because even with unlimited amounts of time to record the test, you're going to find your cap, you're going to find the edge of what you're capable of. And what I have done for years is I've practiced showing my horses at this calculated plateau level that is repeatable. What was comical to see was that in the first version of me recording the test, I may have had a wobble in maneuver two and not in maneuver three, but recording it the second time I had a wobble in maneuver three instead of maneuver two. So it basically just reaffirmed something I knew, which was that when you've practiced a lot of understanding how to ride a calculated plateau, you really do intuitively know what you and your horse are capable of.

Stacy Westfall:
So inside the Resourceful Rider program, there are times that I will tell a rider that the video that they sent in for me to review looks like a plateau ride. When I say this ride looks like a plateau ride it's a compliment and it's a warning. It's a compliment because a plateau ride will have an overall consistency to it. So think about it. If someone was falling backwards off a plateau that's going to look like trouble, it's going to look like problems. So in a training setting, you should be able to do plateau rides. And that's what sometimes gets sent into me for video reviews. Plateau rides are good because they show that you can ride without a lot of wobbles. It's a place for you and your horse to gain confidence. If you do plateau rides in between advancing your skills, when you come back to a plateau–you can always come back down to a lower-level plateau–those lower-level plateaus become the solid spots that you can return to. So when I picture training a horse, I picture training and plateau and then advancing and plateau and advancing and plateau. But I also come back down through the plateaus. If you go back and find some of my podcasts on training cycles and going up, up, up and then returning down to a lower level, cycles include the ups and the downs. And part of this is returning to lower-level plateaus so that you can physically and mentally recover. So the warning when I say that a ride looks like a plateau ride, is that if you attempt to only stay on one single plateau, it could look pretty on the surface because you're not really disturbing the water. It's kind of nice and smooth. But make sure if you do that, that you watch for the warning signs. In a horse show example, you can see where backsliding or things kind of coming apart at the edges, that's going to be caught or called out because of the nature of the show environment. Because at a show, you are continually signing up to take a test and get feedback. So by the nature of the results, you're going to know if you're advancing, plateaued, or sliding backwards. When you're training at home, whether you're getting ready to show or not, from time to time, you want to push the edge of that comfort zone a little to find out where the edge is. And to answer this question, are you truly on a plateau or are things beginning to slide backwards but you didn't notice because since you're not going to shows, you're not asking for very specific things?,

Stacy Westfall:
Pushing the edge of the comfort zone can be as simple as being more specific about where you ride transitions or what those transitions are, or being more specific about your steering. It can be any number of things that would be slightly more challenging. Any time that you ask for something a little more challenging, that's going to be an opportunity to advance your riding level, your horse's riding level, and it's also going to naturally include questions from one or both of you which show up as wobbles. That's a normal part of the training process. Learning how to navigate the wobbles that come along with advancing is part of that ladder that you climb to create the next higher-level plateau. So back to the show world. I said, if you are showing, you're going to know whether you are on a plateau, advancing, or sliding backwards. Because of the feedback, there is a chance that you can get to the point where you can create plateau rides that are winning at the level you're showing. And that's a very good thing. Because when that happens, you will become more qualified and in many show–And in many show situations you will then be moved or choose to move to the next higher level. And at that next higher level at the show your plateau will probably not be enough, so you'll be stretched to a new challenge. When you're training at home, you have to find that balance between creating a plateau where you and the horse can get physically and mentally comfortable and the need to stretch yourself. If you plan on continuing to improve yourself and your horse. So when I first take a horse to horse shows, I want those first few horse shows to feel like plateaus. So that means when I ride a horse into an arena to show for the first time, I will not be showing everything the horse is capable of. It will be me showing the horse that the same rules apply in the arena as they do at home. So when I took Presto to his first horse show, I supported him in the show arena. I did not ask him for as much as I do at home, so that ensured that his first horse show experience going down the center line in a Western dressage class felt easier than riding at home because it was I literally was not asking him for as much. I made it easier. This also gives me an opportunity to double-check if I truly created a solid plateau at home that I could actually step down a little bit from where I've been training at home to a nice plateau that's even easier at that show. That requires me to know my horse and myself and it requires me to exercise self-control. As the horse gains show experience at home I'm also increasing the expectations. I'm stretching the comfort zone. I'm asking for more at home. So even if I keep showing the horse at a slightly lower level when I go to a show my show scores could still be going up because I'm increasing the overall ability of the horse at home. So do you see how this works physically and mentally as a training theory?

Stacy Westfall:
Now after the horse understands and is comfortable going to horse shows after going to shows has become a plateau for the horse there will be times when I will ask for more. Sometimes the way that I say this is I will ask for everything we have. What that means is asking the horse and asking myself to perform at our highest physical and mental capacity combined. So many years ago when I did not have as much experience I was much more likely to think that showing, "everything we had," meant going to the point where mistakes might happen. The way I would describe it now is that mistakes are always possible no matter what level of showing I'm doing. Now, when I think about the phrase showing, "everything we have," it feels much more calculated than it did early in my show career. It's almost as if the idea everything we have is not an expression of how much can we do. But now for me, it's more of an expression of, how well do we know each other? And part of the way that I personally test, how well do we know each other? is by being able to create calculated plateaus as we advance during our training and when I show and choosing times where I ask both myself and my horse to perform at our absolute highest and then returned back down to the plateau. I have developed some pretty amazing relationships with horses using this technique because I think I'm not the only one daring greatly in this process.

Stacy Westfall:
Remember over-showing is a state of mind. Over-showing can happen outside the show arena. It happens any time you ask for a lot more than you or your horse are capable of. Wobbles show you that you're on the edge. Over-showing is making a big leap often from miscalculating or being overly ambitious. Learning how to create calculated plateaus will feel like work because you're having to plan and calculate what it feels like to stay at a very specific level, not sliding backwards, not moving forward. Learn how to create calculated plateaus and balance those with advancing. Choose times to return to the basics and practice some more basic, calculated plateau. The better you get at doing this, the more you'll be able to choose when and where the challenges you face will occur. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Announcer:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit stacywestfall.com for articles, videos, and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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