Episode 257: Liberty Festival, reining, and bridleless riding

Episode 257_ Liberty Festival, reining, and bridleless riding.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 257_ Liberty Festival, reining, and bridleless riding.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
I’m always preferring mentally steady. So I’m showing my horses with an emphasis of making sure that they’re mentally steady. And at the same time, I’m working to where I can have both. Can I get the highest level of physical performance without sacrificing their mental stability, their willingness to be there?

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 help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. This podcast is a bit of a peek behind the curtain. I’m going to share some things that I learned from attending two horse shows over this last weekend, and I’m going to answer a listener question. So I decided this last weekend to go to two shows that were both in Kentucky. One I had a horse at and the other one I was auditing. So I went to a reining show in Frankfort, Kentucky, an NRA National Reining Horse Association show with Gabby, and then Lexington is about 30 minutes away from there. And over at the Kentucky Horse Park, there was the the Liberty Festival was going on, which is put on by the Illa or the International Liberty Horse Association. So I had Gabby with me at the reining show, and then in the downtime, I would drive 30 minutes over to the horse park to watch the Liberty Festival, and bouncing back and forth between the two shows, one that I had a horse at and one where I was auditing. It was a lot, but it also gave me a chance to see the similarities between the two disciplines, and I decided that there was no real pretty way to walk you through this, so I’m just going to walk you through it in the order that it happened. So this is the peek behind the curtain side of the podcast, where you can see my thinking happening as I walk you through my Thursday through Sunday plan.

Speaker1:
So Thursday, I drove from Ohio down to Kentucky about a 4.5 hour drive and arrived with the Gabby, settled her in, and then went and checked into my hotel. Then I came back and did my first ride. Now I go to horse shows because I want to evaluate the work that I’ve been doing at home, and I have a goal of being able to compete at a high level. It’s one of the ways that I can test our communication and our relationship, because things change when you go to different venues, when you go to different events, when you’re in different situations. That’s true whether you’re going into a different situation because it’s a show like this, or if you decide you want to load up and haul somewhere and trail ride at a different location. When you change locations, it often brings up different things. And so when I go to shows, I am looking to learn from every single ride that I do, including this first ride when I arrive and what I learned from this first ride as I was evaluating it during the ride, what I noticed was that I was focusing too much on the polishing side of getting ready to show. So I was thinking about what pattern I was going to be running and how I was going to put everything together.

Speaker1:
What I would consider polish, and I wasn’t focusing quite enough on what I would call making deposits, and that would be helping Gabby understand the maneuvers a little bit better, because she was riding a little bit different in this situation. Now, if you want a deep dive into the reasons that I show, you can go back to season 18 of this podcast, which starts around episode 220. I go through a lot of the reasons why I enjoy showing in lessons that I’ve learned from showing. But the one takeaway that I had from Thursday was that yes, I’m in a show environment, but I need to not just focus on the polishing part of it. I need to continue making deposits, because that’s the stage of training that Gabby is at. And that was all I did on Thursday. Now Friday morning was my second ride on Gabby. So I got up early, went over, fed, rode, and reevaluated what was happening for me and for her and in this environment. And what I found was that the deposits I had switched into making Thursday night had grown. Sometimes instead of calling them deposits, I’ll say I plant seeds. Well, they had grown. And so I was happy with this reevaluation. And I kept this second ride with Gabby a little light, because I had a limited amount of time that I wanted to spend there before I left to go to the Liberty Show, and I also wanted to conserve energy because I’ve ridden her Thursday late in the afternoon, and I was planning on riding again Friday night after visiting the Liberty Show.

Speaker1:
That gave me more food for thought, so that I could plan what I was going to do when I returned to do my paid warm ups that night. Then I left to head over to visit the ill. And if you want to learn more about the Liberty Horse Association, they have a great website that you can look up Liberty Horse Association. Com and they also have a podcast called Life at Liberty, and the very first episode explains the decision to create this new association and really to invent an entire new discipline in the horse world. So I wanted to go visit the show because I’ve never been to one of the live Liberty shows. I’ve watched their YouTube videos and I’ve talked to people that have been at the shows, but I’ve never attended until now. So I wanted to see it live, and I wanted to learn about the judging system because there was a class being offered on that. I wanted to watch some of the actual classes going on talk to people, and that’s exactly what I did. One thing that stood out to me, aside from the talk about the judging system that was really helpful, was also watching the classes and seeing how they have actually created.

Speaker1:
When I think about Liberty, the challenge with creating a Liberty association would be how do you have entry level classes for somebody in something that would be such a high level of technical skill? So Liberty, whether you’re talking about liberty, groundwork or liberty ridden, is going to involve turning your horse free to some degree. So Liberty groundwork in its more finished fashion, is going to be the horse with nothing on it, no halter, no rope, and it is taking commands from you. And then the written version of it would be riding bridleless. What I enjoyed about attending was seeing that they have classes where you can have a halter and rope on your horse. There isn’t a class where you can begin with that and you’re judged. Ideally, if you can keep that lead line loose while you’re doing it, which would be prepping you for then being able to take that halter and rope off. And then I really enjoyed that. They had the classes, some of them were taking place in round pens, and that made a lot of sense to me because although it’s the Alltech arena at the Kentucky Horse Park, which is huge and big and could be very intimidating to both humans and horses, by having this round pen situation, you were able to have the horses and the people in this environment, but still in a more controlled setting.

Speaker1:
So I really appreciated that. Now, I didn’t get to stick around and watch the beginning level bridleless classes, but they essentially have the same thing I’ve seen that done online. And what that is, is you can still have the saddle on the bridle and let’s say a neck rope, and the reins are tied up to the saddle horn. And you’re doing what I call bridleless with a safety net because the bridle is still on there. I really enjoyed learning about the judging system, how they’ve decided to create all these classes, and seeing how they’ve made it accessible for people to begin with, something that’s high level, but in a way that they can come to events like this and compete and work their way up through. So I very much enjoyed that. Then I turned around and drove 30 minutes back over to the reining show where Gabby was and did my paid warmups. For those of you who are not familiar with what a paid warm up is, it sounds a little bit funny, but basically we pay to pretend that we’re showing. And the reason for this being, instead of paying the full blown entry fee and getting everything ready to go in and actually show, which was what I was going to do the next day, what you can do in a paid warm up situation is you’re basically buying like a five minute time slot.

Speaker1:
So that’s super convenient because you know exactly what time you’re going to do your pretend show. But because everybody is going back to back to back and there’s an announcer and they’re dragging the arena, it’s very much a show environment, but you don’t have to get all dressed up in the clothes, and you can go in there and basically do your pretend class and evaluate yourself, your horse and all of that without spending as much money as you would to enter the class. And without quite as much prep. So if you show, hopefully you followed along with that. And if you don’t show, it probably sounds like we’re a little bit crazy. But here’s where it really paid off for me. I did two paid warm ups, and the first one I pretended I was showing, and that meant that I ran full speed in this big arena. And this arena is much larger than what I have at home. So that gave me more information to evaluate. And then because I signed up for two, I was able to give her about a 25 minute break in between. And then I went back in and instead of running hard like I was showing, I then went in and went easy. Which is basically like asking Gabby, hey, even though I just ran really hard, what’s your opinion of coming back into here? And Gabby was like, I’m completely fine and I’m completely relaxed.

Speaker1:
And for me, that means everything’s working exactly as I want it to. It means that the fact that I can ask her to do everything at high speeds in this paid warm up, and she dials in and she gives me all of that, and then I can turn around, let her catch her breath, cool her down, and then go back in and cruise through. And she’s not at all nervous, completely mentally level, no physical symptoms of anything being, you know, anxiety or anything like that. That to me was an excellent evaluation. So what I hope you’re catching on to, as you follow this blow by blow of this weekend, is that it’s very much a lot of this information gathering, evaluating and then figuring out the balance between polishing, because that’s essentially what showing is, is polishing and making things look pretty and finished and very subtle. And then also still making deposits. When you have this horse that’s Not a seasoned show veteran. Okay. Then I went to bed because that was a lot. Saturday morning I got up early again. Fed took Gabby out, stretched her, and then put her away so she could finish eating her breakfast. And I drove back over to the Isle for the Liberty Festival. What was interesting about this day over there was I was able to get there early enough to watch a lot of the competitions in the big Alltech arena, and I’m sure you can find some videos from the event over on either the social media and the Liberty Association website itself.

Speaker1:
But what I was able to see was the Liberty horse classes, and they have different levels. As I was alluding to when I said some were held in the round pen. This day they were all out in the giant Coliseum arena. And so that’s a test for horses and riders. So I was able to see some of the challenges that people face when their horses leave. And some of the amazing routines, especially by all the little horses, minis, ponies, big horses, so many breeds represented. It was very fun and different levels of competition. So not only did they have one horse and one handler on the ground doing liberty groundwork, then it moved into Liberty teams. So one person with two horses naked at Liberty going around, and then they also had liberty from a ridden horse. So the handler rider was riding one horse with a horse beside them at Liberty, and then combined Liberty, which is really fascinating to watch because somebody comes in doing groundwork. Liberty lays the horse down and then gets on the horse. Laying down. The horse stands up and then they ride and do a bareback and bridleless portion. Very cool class to watch and then straight up bareback and bridleless.

Speaker1:
So people were just coming into the arena riding bareback and bridleless and all of these different classes have different divisions. So novice, intermediate, distinguished, there are different levels and different patterns that were being written. That was very fun to watch. And again, it’s educational in the sense of being able to see what’s going on for each of the horses and the riders and at the different levels. Again, I highly recommend they actually have videos of this on their YouTube channel for sure. Then I got back in my truck, drove back to the show and showed Gabby that afternoon, and for me, what’s really interesting about showing notice I’ve now prepped Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday night. Now I’m coming to showing. And at this point, there’s no more prepping. This is all polish and put it together. And it’s basically answering the question, can I bring everything we’ve been working on, which is both mental and physical? Can we bring that all into one ride? And for me, if I have to pick one of those two, I actually want them mentally there, even if that means that I’m going to ask for less in the performance realm. So let me say it this way if I have the choice of going in there and running as hard as I can, but they might get a little bit anxious, or if I go in there and I ride not to the highest level, but they’re going to stay more mentally steady.

Speaker1:
I’m always preferring mentally steady, so I’m showing my horses with an emphasis of making sure that they’re mentally steady. And at the same time, I’m working to where I can have both. Can I get the highest level of physical performance without sacrificing their mental stability, their willingness to be there, their ability to step up, perform at a high level and then drop right back into relaxation? Now, the way that’s displayed is going to be different depending on what your discipline is. So one of the fun things about going back and forth between these two shows was I’m over here showing Gabby, and the way that I’m measuring it is I’m going to do four spins and then stop and stand, and the quality of that horse’s stand there and wait is going to display what’s happening in their mind. So for me, spin stand and Gabby’s relaxed, but she’s ready for the next movement. But she’s not antsy. She’s not moving around. She’s not looking around. She’s not winning. There’s a lot of things that are just 100%. She’s focused on me and she’s ready to move, but she’s not anxious. So to me, that’s what I’m looking for. When I say that, can I bring it all together into one area? And what’s interesting about that is because the higher I can move that performance needle to where she’s giving me her faster spins or her fastest spins and her faster circles, or her fastest circles and her fastest slides or her fast slides.

Speaker1:
The higher up, I can move that physical and still maintain that that mental stability is there. That’s telling me how she is absorbing all of it. And what I discovered by showing was that it’s working. So I was super happy with that. Now, here’s my most interesting thing about this day is that my major breakthrough or discovery did not happen in the show pen. My major discovery for that entire day that when I look back in my journal and I want to celebrate just one thing from the show, it would be that in the warm up arena, as I was prepping her to go in to show. So I’ve got her out maybe about 30 minutes ahead, and I did like ten minutes of walking and then 20 minutes of like, warming up her muscles to be able to do these faster, harder maneuvers without spending too much energy because we’re conserving it also. The one thing that I discovered is that there’s an area where I have two cues, and those cues are for the same thing. They’re both for the stop. But I discovered that I’m not bridging those two cues. I’m not bringing those two cues together as well as I could.

Speaker1:
So without going into great detail, let me try to summarize this for you. The sliding stop When you see a reining horse do a sliding stop. It’s actually composed of two opposite things. So in essence, I’m telling the horse to build speed and then the transition into the sliding stop. It does not mean stop all four of your feet. It actually means lock your back two feet and slide, but trot in the front end. So can you hear how it’s a contradiction? You’re saying, I want you to build speed, and then I want your front end to transition from a fast canter to a trot. And I want your hind end to transition from a fast canter to sliding. So I’m actually asking the horse to do these two opposite things, but at the same time, and that’s what creates that long sliding stop, is that the hind end is sliding to a stop, but the front end is ideally trotting. And so in the warm up, I realized that there were times when the slides were more smooth and there were times when the slides were more, I’m going to call it jammy because her front end was also trying to stop. And I had this light bulb moment where I was like, oh, I need to help her by bridging these two cues a little bit better and boom, right there in the warm up pen, it improved and it immediately improved in the show arena.

Speaker1:
And I maintained that improvement for the rest of the weekend. That one discovery alone that I had not put together at home, I discovered in the warm up arena, and that was worth the entire weekend. After I did this showing and had this great breakthrough, I then cooled Gabby out, put her away, and then headed back to the horse park for the LA Invitational Freestyle. And that was a nighttime show. That was a ticketed event, and I don’t know how much of it they’re going to put online for clips. But they did such an amazing job. They did an opening ceremonies for it that was as good as any major horse event that I’ve been to. I’m not going to be able to do it justice here. But in the opening they were using the soundtrack from The Greatest Showman, and they were acting it out with horses, and then they invited other people to come in and do demonstrations, and then it rolled right into the competition. It was an amazing event, and I highly recommend that. If you’ve considered going somewhere in 2024 to watch some kind of a horse event, I would seriously check out the Iha and this Knight show that they’re putting on, which is their Invitational freestyle. I highly recommend the event. So when that was over, I was tired and I went to bed, which also changed what I decided to end up doing on Sunday.

Speaker1:
Sunday. By then I was tired. I decided not to go to the Liberty Festival at all that day. Very sad. Hard choice. But I decided to focus on showing Gabby that last day. And for me, the discovery that I made that day was that when I’m running at full speed and that means, especially in my circles, when I’m up out of my seat a little bit more, because that’s the way I prefer to run my circles, I think because when I run at full speed and I kind of stand up out of the saddle a little bit more, what I discovered that day was that my seat changes when I ride like that, and I’m going as fast as I can in these bigger circles, because it’s a bigger arena than what I have at home. And that caused me a little bit of problem, because standing up more, going faster, changed my signals. And so I ended up having a one point lead change penalty that day. So my note to self was I need to practice at full speed somewhere for this reason, because it’s unfair to Gabby that if I’m sitting different, it’s obviously going to make the queue feel different. And so I need to practice that more so that we are familiar with it. Or the other option would be explore riding my circles without standing up quite as much.

Speaker1:
So these are some of the things that I will keep playing within my mind. And then I’ll purposefully find ways to practice this so I can decide exactly how I want to ride these circles in the future. It could be as simple as the fact that we just don’t get to practice at full speed, and that with more repetitions, she’ll be completely fine with me standing up the way I like to. Or maybe what will be revealed is that I need to ride them differently for a while, because it’s going to be more clear to her If I have more contact in my seat while I’m doing the change. I think for me the biggest takeaway was, oh, okay, I can see why this happened and it actually is more in me than it is in her. Although it looks like she missed the lead change because I’m aware that I’m running faster and standing up more. That tells me that it’s actually in my control to prep better and to ride better. And so even though the mistake reflects in her, it’s actually back on me. So three similarities that I noticed going back and forth between these two shows were that there was a high degree of accuracy that was being aimed for by competitors. That’s true at the reigning shows, but that was also true at the Liberty Show.

Speaker1:
Whether that was Liberty on the ground or Liberty ridden, one thing about showing is that it gives you very specific criteria, because that’s what shows do. They tell you exactly what they want to see and how it will be graded, which is basically a lot of words to say. It gives you a very specific goal. And that stood out to me to be true in both areas. Another thing that was very similar was what I’m going to summarize as like exposure, which could also be considered environment. And so for the horse there’s an environment change when you go to something big like the Kentucky Horse Park or to a raining show, and in that environment, it is ripe for the horse to potentially change the way that they’re behaving, or for the person to potentially change the way that they’re behaving, or for both to try to stay the same. But other environmental things are different. Like literally the footing that I’m running my circles in is different. The size of the arena is different. The energy of all the other horses being there is different. And so everybody at both shows was dealing with that. Some horses are more seasoned, some riders are more seasoned. I think the key to going into this environment and being exposed like this is to look for the learning moments, which is what I’ve been sharing with you that I was doing in each one of my rides, because I find that with that goal, that accuracy, that very specific, what I’m going to do when I show that combined with the environment change, exposes more of either my thinking or my riding habits or my horses thinking or riding habits.

Speaker1:
So, for example, if anxiety had come up, that would have exposed something in that environment that’s actually happening a little bit at home. That’s the way I like to look at it. Then I go home and try to figure out how I can make it better, even though it’s not as exposed at home. If it shows up over there, it’s most likely happening a little bit at home. And then the other thing that really stood out to me is, again, horse shows and events like this are great places to meet like minded people. I met people at the reining show that were very into the reining, very appreciative of their horses and the whole show environment. And then I could drive 30 minutes away and go to the Liberty Festival and find people, both spectators, like what I was doing when I was watching or walking down into the barns and talking with competitors. You could find like minded people, people who enjoyed the horses for the horses and the competition for bringing all the people and horses together and for the learning that happens. Those similarities were just so obvious to me, because I was going back and forth between those two shows.

Speaker1:
And now to the question that I received through email, it says, I’m unsure if you’ll ever get this. A long time ago when I first started raining, I commented on a post of yours. You replied and said when I was ready to try the freestyle raining, I could ask you some questions. Next year I plan on trying my first freestyle class. My ultimate goal is to one day show at the congress. However, I want to start small. Any advice on how or what to focus on for your first freestyle? Any advice on showing Bridleless as well? I’ve ridden my mare Bridleless in many places and I’ve had her at shows, but I’ve not tried showing her bridleless. Thank you for your time. I wish you all the best. And I’m leaving this person unnamed because I didn’t ask for permission to read their name. But the answer that I have for you is look at the IL Iha. The Liberty Horse Association is going to be an amazing place for people to build that bridge to riding bridleless at bigger venues like the Quarter Horse Congress. When you enter something like the Quarter Horse Congress Freestyle reining, what you have going on there is you have reining, which is a high level discipline. And the reason I say that is because if you’re not super familiar with it, which, by the way, you’re asking this question, you are.

Speaker1:
But for everybody else who’s listening, reining involves, you might walk into the arena or you might run into the arena. But once you begin your pattern, the entire thing is done at the canter. There’s never a moment of walk unless you’re walking into the arena or walking out of the arena. The entire pattern is written at the canter. It involves spins, lead changes, large fast circles, and small slow circles. So it’s a high level of performance. So even with my own horses, if you’ve been listening for quite a while, you’ll know that I’ve taken them and exposed them by entering things like the Western dressage or ranch riding classes, things that have walk and trot and they don’t have as much difficulty, so the horses have a little more time to think. So for anyone who’s considering aiming at something really big like freestyle reining at the Congress, keep in mind that even I still love to take my horses to these other classes to help them make sure that they stay relaxed in those environments. I think the Liberty Horse Association they offer showing at home through virtual shows, and they offer showing at clubs and bigger things like this Liberty Festival. That’s how I would recommend getting started, because one of the challenges that you’ll have with wanting to do bridleless in a show environment is that it’s typically illegal.

Speaker1:
So even in the reining, you can enter a freestyle reining and get away with going bridleless. But you cannot go to a NHRA regular reining show and take the bridle off and go in. It’s against the rules. So there’s a loophole for the freestyle class, but that loophole is not there in your traditional reining classes. So if you want to show in that show environment and you want to be bridleless, a great way to do it would be to find a liberty show. Now, if you don’t have access to a Liberty show because this is a newer club, I’ve got a couple ideas for you. Number one, it sounds like you’ve been showing with a bridle. So here is a tip for how to practice bridle less and stay legal and be in a show environment. If you don’t have shows where you can go without a bridle, then enter a show. Let’s pretend it’s a reining show and go in that reining class. Hold your reins very, very loose and set your knuckle down on the pad in front of your saddle or down on that horse’s mane. And do not move that knuckle. Off the mane. And in that way you’ll be practicing bridleless, although the bridle is on, because you will not use the reins. And what I have found is when I do that, I can typically find any of the questions that my horse is going to ask.

Speaker1:
And technically, I’m not breaking any rules because I’ve got the bridle on. They say the bridle has to be on. They don’t say how much you have to use it, and if you are in a class where they tell you how much you have to use it. For example, let’s say I enter a ranch class and they actually want you to have contact. You can still put the reins really loose and go do it. You’re just not going to place well. But remember, you weren’t entering because you wanted to place well. You were entering because you wanted to practice for your bridleless without breaking the rule of going without a bridle. Now, my second tip for you would be if you can’t find an ill show or club to join. Go to their website and look at starting a local club. Because if you’re really into Bridleless and it sounds like you’ve been practicing this for several years, you could actually start your own Liberty Club and hold your own Liberty events, and you could create that environment so you could train your horse, and so other people could train their horses too. I hope you enjoyed this little peek behind the curtain. And yes, I am very tired and Gabby is getting time off. I learned a lot and I loved every minute of it. That’s what I have for you this week 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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