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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.
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses in last week's episode. I discussed the idea that horses can learn how to learn. And this week I want to take that thought a little bit further by explaining how I use training cycles to influence the horse both physically and mentally in episode 25. I talked about anticipation in both a positive and a negative way, and I used the phrasing the horse anticipating the end of the ride quite a bit. I realized later during the editing process that some people might take this as the horse doesn't enjoy being written. I want to clarify that the reason that the horses anticipate the end of the ride quite a bit is because it's such a clear reward. It's not because it is the actual end. It's the clarity of the reward that gives the end of the ride set to draw. When I use the word draw, it means that the horse is going to pull towards or gravitate towards that area. What if I told you that you could create that draw at multiple points inside of your ride? If you were to ask anyone who has come to one of my clinics here at my house, how many times did you dismount and mount? They won't be able to answer. They won't even be able to get close with the number because it's gonna be way too high. What I have them do is I have them on and off a lot because I understand that the horse will latch on to the clarity of those kind of endings.
The horse is looking for clarity in the reward in last week's episode. I also talked about how important seeing a pattern was. And the cool thing is that when the horses learn how to learn, they're hunting for their rewards and that pull or that draw that the end has can actually be instilled throughout the ride. And that's when you can really accomplish a lot of things in your training cycle. There are two different ways that I want you to think about training cycles. The first is that I want you to think about the idea that it is physical work, followed by an emotional cycle with a younger horse. I'm gonna go ahead and picture presto. That would mean it would be a physical cycle, something like lunging him that would raise his heart rate and raise his respiration. And that would be his physical cycle. It would then be followed by an emotional cycle with a younger, greener horse like presto. That would probably look like sacking out. Maybe that's whipping around him with a stick and string. Maybe that's bouncing the ball. Maybe that's, you know, using a flag or a bag on the end of a stick. But it's gonna be something that could possibly trigger him emotionally. But I'm gonna be also letting him physically rest and recover his breathing and heart rate.
If I wanted to put him through another cycle, I would do another cycle of work. Maybe I would put the saddle on him and lunge him around with a saddle on. And that would be followed again by another emotional cycle where again, I'd probably go back to sacking him out. Maybe I would be bending his head and neck around, which is barely physical, but it's not going to raise his heart rate is not going to raise his breathing rate. So it's more emotional than I could be done. Or maybe I'd put him through another cycle, which would be maybe ground driving, which again, is going to raise his heart rate and raise his respiration re. This is how it works. And the really cool thing is that you can get a lot more done when you use these cycles because of two different things. First, you're putting the horse through many more cycles than what people naturally do. And second, you're taking advantage of both the physical and the emotional, physical and emotional. Super cool thing is that typically, especially with fresh horses, greener horses, horses that don't have as much experience, a lot of times that first cycle that you put them through for work is gonna be the one where they kind of blast around and blow off a lot of steam if that's the kind of horse they are. So that first cycle, very likely they might expend 70 percent of their energy for the whole lesson in that first cycle.
And those additional cycles are going to be as physically demanded, even though they are still physically demanding, they're not going to demand as much as that first cycle did. So there's an efficiency to getting past that first one and into several other cycles. It looks a little bit different with a more advanced horse. So if I picture Willow, then what happens is I picture saddling up and doing a warm up. Maybe that's going to be walk and trot transitions. And then I'll take a little break now with an older horse that already understands this cycle. A lot of times that break, that emotional cycle looks more like a true rest period. Standing there and a break and the reason this is possible is because this horse, Willow, in this example has learned how to take advantage of this. So she. Respects the downtime. Looks forward to it and stays in a good mental state. The way that, you know, if your horse is willing to do this is that when you give them that break. If they start physically moving around, if they're really distracted, if they're trying to leave and go somewhere and get to a friend or go eat grass, or if they're trying to drag you around, they're not focused. That means that they are at a lower level of training. Maybe that means they're back in elementary school. Whether that's a brief return to elementary school or whether that is that they've never raised themselves up above to a higher level of training.
What they're telling you on that day is that they're not in a balanced, emotional state where they'll take advantage in a good way of that break time with Willow. I would then go ahead and put her through, maybe trot canter transitions and then another break. And I would repeat this over and over again until I'd achieved whatever my goals were for that session. When the horse doesn't take the break, the way that I look at it is that the horse must be stressed and is asking for guidance when the horse doesn't want to take advantage of that downtime. Then what I do is I don't necessarily put it into a full-blown physical, but it's almost like when I'm doing those training cycles with Presto and it's physical and emotional during the emotional cycle with a younger or greener or stressed horse. I'm doing a lot of movement so presto might lunge around. And then when I stop him to sack him out, I'm moving around a lot. I'm kind of being a little bit entertaining, but what I'm really doing is I'm actually teaching them how to control their emotions so they physically stop and stand still. But rather than just leaving them alone and seeing what happens, I'm doing some kind of rhythmic sacking out, which is actually teaching them how to keep their mind on the certain track and on this plane, rather than looking around for a friend and doing all these other things that it could be doing when given that rest period.
I know that they're looking for guidance. If they look really distracted and then I say, oh, OK, you need either another physical cycle or you need a more engaged emotional cycle, not just the more advanced horse wrests cycle, but the actual engaged emotional cycle that a horse in elementary school would need. The neat thing about using the training cycles is that you actually get to gather some more information about your horse too, because either during the rest phase they're going to be kind of resistant to that rest. They're going to be distracted. They're going to be looking all around. They're going to ignore you and ask a bunch of different questions. And in that case, you're gonna say, OK, you must one another work cycle or you might have a horse that's really resistant to going into the work cycle. And if that happens, it could be saying, hey, I'm unfit or hey, I'm tired or I'm confused. Or they could be asking the question, what if I say no? What I most often see is riders who get on and ride and get done without clear cycles in between. And this can be true of people who are doing arena work or it can be true of people who are going on a trail ride. What I want you to visualize for this second section is a heartbeat monitor. Your work cycles need to have ups and downs in intensity.
This goes daily. This goes for weekly. This goes for monthly. And this goes for yearly. Up and down like a heartbeat monitor. Your daily cycle might have four or six or eight. It can have a lot of little cycles. Your weekly cycle you should have Monday maybe being that's the easiest one. And then maybe Tuesday is a little harder. Wednesdays a little harder. Thursday is a little harder. Friday is a little bit easier. But then on your monthly cycle, maybe week one is the easiest and then week 2 is a little harder. Week three is a little harder. Week four is a little harder. And then week five is actually the first week of the next month. So you drop back down to a little easier again. For me, I live where we have lots of seasons and so winter is my down season. Spring I start ramping up. Summer still ramping up. Fall tends to be when I'm doing the most and it's the most intense. And then it goes back down to a down cycle in the winter. The question would be, has your training cycle flatlined? Or we could phrase it like this is your training cycle dead? If you go out and ride your horse and it's very similar in intensity day after day, maybe that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, if you work three days a week. If you're training cycles pretty flat. There's a good chance. It's not really a cycle.
If you go out and you saddle up and you go on the same walking trail ride for the same length of time, again, there's a pretty good chance that maybe that's not really a training cycle. It's kind of flatlined. It is an amazing thing when you can get a hold of the concept of this training cycle because your whole work session and your season and your relationship with your horse can come to life. The best thing about training cycles is that it will encourage you to become a lot more intentional about influencing your horse both physically and mentally. And it works. I have several examples of training cycles on my YouTube channel. The most recent is a video where I'm using these training cycles at a horse show to help Willow relax. The really cool thing about having used the training cycles at home is that when I got to the show, you can clearly see that I start putting her through the cycles and she recognizes the cycles. So it gives her the advantage of being able to see what's coming and being able to settle in more quickly. Also on my YouTube channel, you can find training cycles being discussed in my code starting series of videos under Stacie's video diary. Jack and I'll put links to both of those in the show notes. I hope you found this very interesting and that it gave you some ideas of things to try the next time you head out to the barn.
I love your feedback and I do listen to all of the voicemails you leave and read all of the emails that you send. Even if I don't respond immediately to all of them. Thanks again for listening and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
If you enjoy listening to Stacie's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall dot com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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