Episode 328: The Moment is Gone (But That’s Not a Problem)

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Episode 328.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
Because remember, even with the best coach, by the time I see it and I say it and you hear it, the moment is gone. And I don't want to soften that for you. The moment is gone, but that's not a problem.

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. In this episode, I want to explain one single moment in time at the end of a recent ride that felt completely normal to me. But I know for many riders, it's where frustration or self-judgment creeps in. I'm going to explain this one moment, and then how it ties together with many other moments that naturally occur during a ride. To do this, I'm going to go backwards through my ride and break down how I got to this point. So I'm going to start at the end of the ride, then go back to mid ride, then back to warming up, then back to planning. Don't worry, I'll do it in the correct order. A little further in the podcast. So let's begin with the end of the ride. At the end of a recent ride on Ember. I dismounted and immediately thought, I know what I want to do different next time. This moment is where I believe many riders kick into self judgment thoughts. So just to be clear, when I thought I know what I want to do different, there was no frustration, just evaluation. Before I go on. Where in your life do you do that? Well, where in your life do you get negative feedback or have something not go well and then decide you want to do it differently, but not from a sense of frustration? Okay, let's go back to Amber.

Speaker1:
Just before I dismounted, I chose to end my ride on something that felt okay, but it did not feel as good as it had two days before. I chose to end there anyway. I didn't run out of time and end for that reason. I didn't run out of patience, and for that reason I didn't run out of horse. That's what we call it when the horses are either physically exhausted or they're clearly mentally headed downhill. I didn't run out of horse. I chose to end on something that was just okay. Because I believe that's a normal part of the process. Horses don't always get better each ride rides aren't a linear progression. Good on Monday, better on Tuesday, even better on Wednesday. That's not how it works. So I chose to end the ride that day on something that just felt okay, and I knew what I wanted to do differently next time. Let's go back to mid ride. Or we could also look at it as my chosen main focus for that day. And on that day I chose to focus on teaching the sliding stop. Just so you can visualize this a little more clearly when I begin working on the sliding stop, it's not just teaching the halt. She already knew how to halt. She already recognizes the word woe. She already knows how to back up with the reins. So when I begin working on the sliding stop, this is where I'm actually teaching her to slide with her hind feet and walk or trot with her front feet, depending on how fast we were moving.

Speaker1:
So by the way, if this sounds like a contradiction, the hind feet stop completely and the front end walks or trots. If that sounds like a contradiction to you, it is. And now try explaining that to a horse. So to do this requires a combination of techniques. The two I'm going to mention today are stop and back or stop and roll back. So now think about this. I don't just want all four legs to lock up. If all four legs lock up, it's going to be one jammy hard stop for a desirable sliding stop and raining again. I want the hind feet to stop and hold the ground and slide, and I want the front feet to stay fluid in that downward transition. So if I'm on a horse that knows how to slide and I'm running fast, the transition in the hind end stays the same. It goes from the canter or the fast speed to slide, and the front end goes from the canter to the trot. In Ember's case, I'm not going really fast, so she can even go from a canter to a few trot steps, or a walk steps in the front end. Either way, I'm not trying to get the front end to halt the same way the hind end is. So because I don't just want all four legs to lock up, I have to make adjustments to try to communicate all of this detail to my horse.

Speaker1:
And on top of this, I also want you to keep in mind that let's just say if I stop and back. At some point I have to lope again so I can stop again. Whether I stop and back and then walk forward and lope off, or whether I stop and roll back and lope again right away. Either way, if I'm going to get in, let's say ten repetitions of this, I'm going to be doing some kind of a combination of stop and go teaching. This maneuver involves a couple of different contrasts. One, it involves teaching the hind end to halt and hold that stop while the front end is moving. That's a contrast. And it also involves stopping and going. And like I said, Amber already knows how to halt, and she even knows how to halt with a little slip of the hind legs. What I mean by that is I can be cantering and I can have her stop and she will stop and have one leg slide more than the other, or they both slide a little bit, but a lot of times one is a little bit more than the other. I thought it was funny when I was showing Willow in dressage, because if I trotted down centerline and accidentally cued her for a quick stop, she would assume it was a sliding stop unless I wrote it really clearly.

Speaker1:
And every time she did that in a dressage test, all the judges would write abrupt with slight loss of balance. So in Willow's case, what was happening? When I came down centerline at the trot and I accidentally dropped my hips into what would cue a sliding stop, she would stop quickly with a slight slipping in the hind end, because I kept her sliders on while I was still showing in dressage, and the judges would put it as abrupt with a slight loss of balance. My translation with Willow was that she was just deeply engaging in something that she knew because I miscued her. Willow wasn't actually losing her balance, however. Ember actually is losing her balance while she's trying to figure out these stops. And spoiler alert you already know I didn't love where I ended. And you also know that I liked my ride from two days ago better. So let's look at what was happening for Ember in that mid-ride situation. While I talk you through this, I'm going to bring the Foursquare model into this two, because I want you to see how this works in real time. In the beginning of this podcast, years ago, I recorded the first four seasons with the Foursquare model in mind. It is the riders mind, the riders body, the horse's mind, and the horse's body, and these are all intertwined during a ride. So during this ride with Ember, when I got to my main focus for the day, which was working on baby sliding stops 3 to 5ft long, I noticed when I got to this point she wasn't really trying to stop notice.

Speaker1:
That's my mind. My rider's mind. Noticing this behavior I'm observing. Mm. This is not going as well as it did two days ago. I noticed this because I'd done 2 or 3 stops. So the next thing that I thought was, what is she thinking? What gave her this impression? Why is she choosing this? With that thought in mind, I did a couple of more stops and backs, stops and rollback combinations like that. And that's where I found my answer. Notice I observed her body. I observed with my mind. I went to thinking what is she thinking? But I actually went to her body and execution to find the answer, and in doing so, in going out there and actually doing a few more stops and back stops and rollbacks, I found my answer. Amber felt very forward, very mentally forward. Now, how do I separate that? What is mentally forward mean? So let's look at her body for a minute. When she goes to willingly forward, it reflects in her body. And this is interesting because if you think about a horse loping, let's say ten miles an hour, but they're thinking about sprinting, they might be physically moving at ten miles an hour. Maybe you could get one of those little detector things, and you could say, this horse is verifiably going ten miles an hour, but if they're thinking about sprinting, the way they're carrying themselves is going to be different than if they're still verifiably moving at ten miles an hour.

Speaker1:
But they're thinking about slowing down. So what I noticed was that her body was reflecting a strong willingness to go forward. Now, she wasn't running off or anything, but it was a little bit like if it's a teeter totter, she was just tipped a little bit too much to the two forward, and that was reflecting in her body. She wasn't going 20 miles an hour instead of ten, but she was going ten with too much forward thinking. Now another way to look at this is that her body had that too willing to go forward. She was a little tipped forward. Her thinking was showing up in her body as this focus on getting ready to go, instead of a focus on getting ready to stop. I could also feel this in my body, because a rider can only sit on a horse's back within a certain range of how that horse is performing. So these don't have to match exactly, but they do have to somewhat match. Let's do some crazy contrast so you can see it. If you've ever seen somebody running barrel racing, notice they're not sitting way back. As the horse is gaining speed running to the first barrel. They might sit back to go around the barrel, but they're not sitting back the whole time.

Speaker1:
But you watch somebody running down to a sliding stop, and a lot more often you're going to see the rider sitting back or think about this when you watch somebody starting a Colt, you can go on and watch videos on YouTube, or you can watch road to the horse. If you watch Colt starters, they're not sitting in the same position that an Olympic rider coming down center line would be. But if it worked better, if they sat like that, they would figure out how to sit like that on day one of riding a Colt. But it doesn't work better because they can't sit on the horse whose body isn't moving like that. We reflect or influence each other. So I can be, let's say, 10% ahead or behind. We can even go crazy and say that I can be 20% ahead or behind, but I can't be drastically unmatching. So sometimes this observation comes from how I feel my body being positioned as Amber is going through these different movements, because her body is going to be reflected into my body. Now I can fight against that or I can subtly shift it. But there's a level where again, I can only shift it 10 or 20%. So when I feel Amber tip herself into that more forward, I'm calling it in this podcast to willingly forward. I actually feel that in my body also because of how she changes her body so I can observe her body through how it reflects into my body.

Speaker1:
Now, this is a fascinating side note. A well-trained horse can more easily override a rider's mistakes or imbalances. Here's how I want you to picture it. Once upon a time, we had a client who was looking to buy a reining horse that she could learn more on, and she was trying out this horse and I was videotaping from the stands. We were at a very big show, and she was out in the arena, and I was sitting in the stands videotaping while she was trying this horse out. She ran at three quarters speed down the arena, and she said, whoa, on this horse that she didn't know the horse did what it had been trained to do and went into a beautiful, strong sliding stop. And this rider wasn't prepared for it and fell forward, pretty much hugging the horse's neck. But the coolest thing was the horse held that Frame and never lost a moment even though this rider was literally laying over the neck. And the first thing I said was, this is going to be a really good one for you to learn on because that horse, there's so much physically bigger. When they know how to hold themselves, they can do a good job. Now that's not going to work. If that rider continues to do that 20 times in a row, at some point it's going to cause some different side effects.

Speaker1:
But it's a pretty cool illustration that that well-trained horse can figure out how to really carry that. Now, if I take that back to Ember, I'm being mindful of the fact that I'm impacting her balance, and she's not really skilled with her balance. So I don't want to use my body to try to throw her around, or that's going to have negative side effects on her mind because of the way that it would scare her. The horse that was being tried out by this customer was a very confident horse, because that's what you can train them to be. Along the way. So let's go all the way back to Ember. What I realized at this point in the ride was that over the last few sessions, she had been clearly seeing the habit pattern of stop and back or stop and roll back. But today she was reflecting back that she had latched onto the and go side of it. But keep in mind, two days before this, it didn't feel like that, and I really hadn't changed my technique or my plan for, let's say, the last ten rides. So essentially what had been working was no longer working with this in mind. I made a few adjustments that did not result in an amazingly better slide. Remember, I ended on just okay. I ended on less than I had been two days before. Now let's go back to the warm up in the beginning of the ride.

Speaker1:
This was not my main focus, but it is there and sometimes it will contain clues or red flags when I look back. I don't see any red flags, but see if you can find another clue. So before I rode her, I did groundwork before I mounted up and all of that felt normal. No changes for me, no changes from her. Then I rode around a little bit. Walk and trot. Then I went into spins and they were in what I would call the normal range for where she is. I did go into this ride with a plan on keeping her more forward and working on her, what I'm going to call carrying herself, which is a phrase that means she keeps spinning on her own. I don't have to help her keep going. She kind of gets in and goes until I tell her to stop. Those are actually two different subjects. When I think about keeping her more forward, that's more about her frame. That's more about her front feet versus her back feet and how closely they are getting together. It's more directly tied to the horse's body. If we're looking at the Foursquare model, and the carrying herself is more about her mind. The horse's mind, it's more that she continues going and carries that initiative to continue the spin until I tell her to stop. So those were a couple of the things that I was working on in the spin portion before I went to the sliding stop portion.

Speaker1:
So let's go back to planning before the ride. Before I rode Amber that day, I had reflected on my previous rides. I had decided ahead of time what I was going to work on based on what I had been observing in the last 5 to 10 rides. I say 5 to 10 because I'm looking over a longer period than just the last ride, although it is kind of weighted towards the more recent rides. But with the last couple weeks in mind so that I can see any bigger picture patterns that might be happening. So I knew coming into this ride that I wanted to warm up as usual. I knew I wanted to work on steering and spinning, and in the spins, I knew I wanted to work on opening up her frame and getting her to carry herself. And I knew the main focus or the main point. The biggest change I wanted to make was in continuing her training on the baby sliding stops. I decided to tell you this story backwards because the process of reflecting is something that happens backwards, but I want to go through it in actual order right now. So in order, I evaluated my last 5 to 10 rides. Then I planned this ride. Then I executed this ride. And in the middle of executing, I was also gathering more information and making some adjustments.

Speaker1:
Then I dismounted and reflected on this ride. The reflection or the evaluation of the ride is so second nature to me that it happens really fast. Typically, when someone is learning this process, they often need one clear focus for the ride, and then they need clear steps like reflect on your last ride, plan your next ride, execute your next ride. Dismount and evaluate. Because I do this cycle so continuously, I can do it really quickly and it just feels like my normal process for thinking, if you're newer to this process, you're going to benefit from slowing down. Because while this cycle sounds clear cut. The key is that I did all of this without judgment. I simply gathered information and kept moving forward. Let's go back to that moment where I dismounted and immediately thought, I know what I want to do different next time. Imagine saying that at the end of your ride. Have you ever done that before? Known immediately that you wanted to do something different? I happen to know immediately what I want to do different on the next ride. Meaning I know the different actions I want to take, but this is coming from a neutral or a positive place. It feels more to me like this is what I'm going to do on the next ride, because I believe it's going to work. I believe it's going to help. I know I'll get more information. I know I'll figure it out.

Speaker1:
I know that all training doesn't just get better, better, better. This is just a normal process. Often times if riders have a ride like mine where it's a less than ride. It's less than or not as good as two days before. They might dismount and think they want to do something different. But it sounds more like this. Oh, that was terrible. That was waste. I'm never going to get this. Can you hear how this rider wants to do something different next time? But can you also hear how they're judging what just happened? If someone sounds very judgmental at the end of the ride, there's a very good chance that that's coming up mid ride. Some of the thoughts that might creep in mid ride might be I'll bet my horse is frustrated with me right now. That transition fell off. This just is not working. I should be getting this by now. What is wrong with me now listen I'm not saying that you'll never have self judging thoughts, but what I am saying is you'll learn faster and enjoy the process more when you learn how to redirect these thoughts into actual factual information. Let's say your transition did feel off. What's your plan? Don't just leave it at. It fell off. It's just not working. What's your plan? Because it fell off. If you think your horse is frustrated, what signs do you actually have? It might just be that you're frustrated and then you're just saying it's your horse.

Speaker1:
Do you have actual physical signs that we could see on a video showing your horse is frustrated? And when you think you should be getting it by now, how do you know what the right time frame is? Have you done this before? Have you done this 20 times before? How much experience do you have in this? And keep in mind, having the thought isn't the problem. Learning to question your thoughts is the way that you will find a way forward. A great illustration of this happened last summer during a live event that I hosted here at my house. I had students that had brought horses and were riding, and then I also had students who came to watch and ask questions and learn. During one part of the demonstrations, I had a more advanced student who was working on lead changes, and she's been riding with me for several years, so I was able to coach her fast because she could follow fast. And what she was working on happens fast, because when you're working on flying lead changes, it requires this process to turn like the gears on a bike, smooth and fast. During one portion of the demonstration, I had her riding 20 meter circles and she would ride maybe 2 to 5 of these, making adjustments and putting in lead changes, I would have her stop. They would both catch their breath. I would evaluate what happened, talk about the adjustments that she was going to make, and then they would go again.

Speaker1:
A couple more circles, few more lead changes, few more adjustments in real time. Stop, catch your breath, evaluate, talk about adjustments and go again. And we talked about a lot of things that were happening during her ride, her horse's balance or the horse anticipating something, her body position or her timing. But one of the things that was very apparent to all who were watching was how quickly she could recall what had happened and make observations from a neutral place. And it was very clear how quickly this cycle was happening in her mind. And I'm telling you, this is all possible because she held no judgment, no judgment of herself, no judgment of her horse, no judgment of my coaching. It was like playing a really fast tennis game with facts and theories, and we're bouncing them back and forth, back and forth, and it's happening so fast that to the unpracticed mind, it's hard to even follow the thinking process. So for some of the students who were watching, who weren't even trying to ride, some of those students were struggling to keep up with this really fast tennis game that this rider and I were playing, and that when the rider went out there to do another 3 or 4 circles with lead changes, that's essentially what she's doing with her horse. Is this really fast tennis game. I could tell her what to do differently next time and she could adjust.

Speaker1:
I could ask her what worked and she could tell me. I could ask her what she'd like to improve and she could tell me. And this level of practice has brought her to a point where she's able to Feel her ride in the moment. Get new information during a 2 or 3 minute break. Talking with me. Process it and then almost instantly apply it. She was embodying this process of evaluating her horse and herself in every stride. The good news is that there are many earlier techniques and patterns that can be slowed down to where you can see this cycle happening much more clearly, but lead changes is not one of them. When you're working on some of the more advanced things like lead changes. These require the rider to be able to get the information that I give, and then apply it the next time, because in real time, by the time I see it happen and I say it out loud and she hears it, the moment is gone. Now think about how freeing that thought is. The reality of learning something advanced, like flying lead changes, is that by the time your instructor sees it and says it and you hear it, you're already past the moment, but you get to do it again. Think back to my story of writing Amber. I was doing the same thing, but the cycle was naturally slower because the maneuvers were more spread out.

Speaker1:
As you desire to advance, you're going to need to learn to do this cycle better and better for yourself. Many writers recognize that they want to improve their timing, and this is how you're going to do it. Because remember, even with the best coach, by the time I see it and I say it and you hear it, the moment is gone. And I don't want to soften that for you. The moment is gone, but that's not a problem. When I dismount from Ember and the ride is less than what it was two days ago, I get another opportunity the next day, and at the end of every ride, or at the end of every micro cycle, every time this rider stopped, got new information and went again, she was doing another cycle. At the end of each one of those, you have a choice. You can judge yourself and get stuck right there, or you can evaluate with new information and move forward. The best riders aren't the ones that always have perfect timing. They're the ones that get better at recognizing what to shift in the next attempt, what to change in the next ride. When I dismounted from Ember, I already knew what I wanted to do next time because I gathered information instead of getting stuck in frustration. If you want to advance, you don't need to be harder on yourself. You need to be more clear. So the next time that you notice self-judgment or frustration creeping in, pause and notice what you're thinking and then decide if you want to just accept that as fact, or if you want to redirect it by asking, what did I learn from that transition that didn't go as well? What's my next step? Because real progress starts with how you think.

Speaker1:
Hold on. Before we go, I did leave one thing hanging. Remember I said that in my warm up there were no red flags, but there was a possible clue. This is one of the things that occurred to me after I dismounted in my spins. I was working on keeping her forward and carrying herself, so the forward part was stretching her frame out and the carrying herself was about her mind. It was about saying, you keep going even when I'm not asking you to so much that you get in there, you get committed to going and you keep going. And I'm going to bet that this forward thinking, even though literally in a spin, we're going in a circle. But it's a forward thinking, it's a carrying yourself thinking. I think combining that with the stop and go nature, notice the go of the sliding stops. I think this played a part in her very forward thinking day. That's my working theory. Now I'm going to adjust and ride again. Nothing's gone wrong. This is all part of the process. 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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