Episode 241_ Three reasons it can feel like the training process is going slower than you thought it would…..mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Episode 241_ Three reasons it can feel like the training process is going slower than you thought it would…..mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
The more you can feel, the more you can feel. And that means you're going to feel the good stuff and the cool stuff and the possibilities, and you're going to feel what's not working.
Speaker2:
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.
Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall. And I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy, and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I'm sharing three reasons it can feel like the training process is going slower than you thought it would. This is particularly interesting for me when my opinion is that the horse and rider are making the appropriate progress, but the rider perceives it's too slow. If you are executing a plan, but you feel like the progress is slower than you thought it would be, I want you to check these three areas. Area number one. The idea that big chunks come before refinement. Have you ever heard the idea that if you're trying to fit large rocks, small pebbles and sand all into one bucket, that it matters the order that you put them in? If you put the sand and the pebbles in first, then the large rocks probably won't fit. But if you put the large rocks in first and then the smaller rocks that can fill in around those large ones, and then the sand that can fill in around the pebbles and the large rocks, that bucket's going to fit more well in training. The bucket can seem to fill up quickly when you're in elementary school and you're working with big rocks. I love training young horses because it's so satisfying to go from never saddled to saddled, to go from never ridden to ridden.
Speaker1:
The chunks that happen in elementary school tend to be big. So just like that bucket, you can quickly fill a bucket with big rocks and it makes the progress feel very quickly. The basics are those big rocks. The smaller pebbles are the slightly more advanced things. High school, the next level of training. And then the very fine sand is college level. And even though I have lots of experience, I recognize that when I get to the pebbles and sand stages of training, the progress feels slower relative to the earlier stage. At least that's my experience. And a lot of this is actually perspective. I was recently explaining this to a student that's pretty advanced, but to her she felt like the training was going slow because she's working on a lot of the pebbles. For me, the pebble stage looks like it's still moving fast because I've gotten to the point where I have added one grain of sand at a time to create a masterpiece. The further up the scale you study and understand. The more you'll start to see the difference in the speed of things slows as you're adding more and more levels of refinement. Super cool stuff happens in the last 10% of training, but it feels so much slower and more detailed than the first 10% of training. The second thing I want you to check with if you feel like the training is not going as quickly as you thought it would, is an observation made by a student I was teaching who was learning to go from elementary school to high school.
Speaker1:
One thing she said to me was I thought the horses were always supposed to respond immediately. And that's kind of true. And it's kind of not. So as the system gets more advanced when you get to the pebbles and when you get to the sand, the horses and the humans are often learning how to hold two separate truths at the same time. For example, imagine that you are the horse when the rider begins to close the aids of the reins and the legs. The horse could think she could be asking me to collect and stop. She could be asking me to collect and do a lead departure. If you look at something like a dressage halt. That horse is going to be trained in high school to a enter working jog if your western dressage or a enter working trot. Halt. Salute. Proceed. Working trot. So the horse begins to stop square because they halt with the idea of going. So the horse is holding two concepts. The ability to easily go easily stop and easily go again. The horse is holding the go and the stop. And as that gets balanced, so will the halt. That's high school.
Speaker1:
Those are pebbles inside raining. If we look at the sliding stop, we want the horse to go and go faster and faster. But as they go faster and faster, they should be dialing in more and more on the idea of stopping soon. So they're running with the idea of stopping in mind. They're learning to balance out the idea of going and stopping. So not only are the chunks smaller, they're pebbles now instead of rocks, but what happens when the horse and what happens when the rider begin to balance these things out is that there is a steadiness that develops. There's a steadiness in the rhythm of the movement that you can measure. There's a steadiness in the connection that the horse has when you are applying the Aids, but it's less of a reactive feeling that sometimes when you are in elementary school and you pick up on the left rein and the horse turns left and you let go, that can feel very quick. But as the horse starts to need to be a little more discerning about a multitude of Aids, multiple legs, multiple reins, multiple seat positions, multiple ideas, after they collect me, I could stop or I could go. What this produces is a horse that has a steadiness instead of a reactive ness. So recently, one student rode my horse willow, and when she dismounted she said, It's really interesting because she feels steady.
Speaker1:
She feels easy to move, but it's solid and it feels purposeful when she moves. So what that rider was feeling from Willow was that Willow is not reactive. She's not hard to move. But Willow has a purposeful feeling that I've translated out of my body by riding purposefully. And now this horse exudes purposefulness in each movement. There's a deliberate feeling as she goes, not a reactive feeling. So double check that it's a possible thought error. The advanced horses get quicker and quicker at responding, sort of. They sort of do, but not in a reactive type of a way. The horse that's balancing two or more ideas because you can get multiple going on there. That horse, at least in the methods that I use, learn how to think purposefully and not just react, but that can also make it feel like the training is going slower because the horse has a thoughtful, purposeful feeling in their body. The final reason I want to discuss today is that training can feel slow if you're not consistently measuring your progress. Specifically, this often involves making a video. Now, today, this week, and then making the same video six months from now and a year from now. It involves training your eye to look for details and then allowing yourself to look back at your earlier videos and realize that you didn't even know some of the details.
Speaker1:
A year ago that you know now. Because if you look back a year ago, you didn't know as much and you might have actually thought that ride felt really good because given your knowledge level a year ago, it felt good to you. Often times as you increase your level of feel and awareness, the feel and awareness you have today can actually mean that your ride is measurably better. Let's pretend that you rode a Western dressage test a year ago and you rode that same Western dressage test today. If your feel your ability to feel what the horse is doing, your awareness s of yourself, if your feel has increased over the last year, you could have the same or better ride now and it could feel worse. Because I've said it before and I'll say it again, the more you can feel, the more you can feel. And that means you're going to feel the good stuff and the cool stuff and the possibilities, and you're going to feel what's not working. And sometimes when you look at your video from a year ago, you remember you were happy with it. But also double check that maybe it actually looks less impressive, but it felt better because you knew less. You literally didn't feel fully what was happening. With all of that said. The progress is often slower than anticipated by many riders who first begin down these paths.
Speaker1:
If it is your first time training a horse to do something or taking your horse to a higher and higher level, if it's your first time in this realm, that alone can skew the experience. Have you ever driven somewhere? And it felt like it took a really long time to get there. But the next time you drove to the same exact place, it did not feel like it took as long. Learning to train a horse is kind of like that for me. If I add driving somewhere at night in the rain, pulling a horse trailer that last 20 miles can feel so long. But the fact is that it's 20 miles. It's 20 miles. But my emotions, the stress about the driving conditions, the worry that I might get into a place where my trailer won't fit and I might have to back it up in the dark in the rain. The stress skews my driving experience that first time makes the miles feel slower. If you are consistently taking action and you recognize that you're having some success but you're not progressing at the rate or the speed that you anticipated, double check these three things. You might just find you're making more progress than you're giving yourself credit for. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.
Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy westfall.com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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