"Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult. And always reward the slightest try." This is by far the best summary of how to train a horse. In every single clinic I teach, I tell them that if they only get one thing from the weekend, this should be it. This is the epitome of everything else we do with our horses, and the foundation of every other training exercise ever invented. Without this principle, you will struggle to get anything done with your horse, even the simplest things! If you were placed in an empty room, just you and a horse, and the only thing you knew about horses was this one saying “Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult, and always reward the slightest try,” you would be able to train that horse. With just that one saying in mind and enough time, you could train that horse to ride, do tricks, even tempi changes. If you make the right thing the easiest option for the horse, chances are they will tend to choose that option. Think about it, if you had two doors to get into your barn side by side, and but one had a semi-broken doorknob on it that made it stick, and the other one was a normal door, which one would you always walk through? You evaluate what option requires the least amount of effort to get what you want. And you always pick that one. Your horse does this too. They look for the easiest way to do their job. A lot of times people get mad at their horses for doing “naughty” things, like refusing to canter or running out on a jump. But isn’t it easier to trot instead of canter? Going around a jump makes so much more sense if we’re only concerned about what takes the least amount of effort. And if the rider doesn’t reprimand the horse for these things, insisting that they actually canter and jump, why on earth would we expect our horses to voluntarily put in more effort than necessary? “Horses don’t know right from wrong. They only know what they’re allowed to do.” In a horse’s mind, it’s not actually “wrong” for them to bite you. They bite each other all the time! So how do you teach a horse not to bite you? Make the right thing (biting) hard and uncomfortable for him to do by disciplining him and making him hustle and work when we does bite you, and making the right thing (not biting/being respectful) easy, by leaving him alone and not pressuring him when he doesn’t bite you. How do you teach a horse to leg yield? Make the wrong thing (walking in a straight line, not moving off your leg cue) difficult by holding the pressure or increasing it to motivate your horse to listen to the cue, and by making the right thing (yielding) easy by taking away the pressure when they move sideways. Ask, applying pressure, and as soon as they move in the right direction, take away the pressure and leave them alone. We see this a lot in lesson horses. When the student squeezes with their legs, they’re giving the cue to trot. But if the horse knows that the rider is learning to sit the trot and is going to flop around in the saddle so much that it’s going to hurt the horse’s back, the horse might decide it’s less work to ignore the leg cues than it is to try and balance with an unbalanced rider on top. I tell all my clinic participants and my lesson students, anytime you encounter a problem with your horse, ask yourself, “How can I make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult?” And always reward the slightest try.
0 Comments
But a horse is not a machine. And you won’t gain anything from riding the horse you remember riding yesterday. This can be so frustrating because you can get on your horse the day after a fantastic ride… and the horse feels like a completely different horse. The magic combination of cues that “clicked” so well with her yesterday doesn’t have any effect today. So what are your options? You could say, “My horse is always spooky during cool morning rides. She’s too distracted to have her head in the game right now. I need to do lots of transitions and collected precision work to get her to pay attention." Or you could say, “My horse is always on the lazy side. She’s being disrespectful today doesn’t want to do what I ask her to do. I need to show her who’s boss and teach her to move off my legs with respect.” Or you could say, “My horse is always hyper at the beginning of a ride. She’s stiff and braced. I need to ride smoothly and rhythmically, and slow down all my cues." Each of these approaches could be successful to solve the problems of that moment. But what about the moment after that? What will you do five minutes from now? Will you still be following the same game plan? The problem with taking a blanket approach to an entire training session is that you end up blinded to the needs of your horse in the moment. This is why blanket approaches to training don't work. This goes both ways too. Just because your horse was amazing yesterday doesn’t mean that she will be that way today. You can't go into the barn expecting them to be just as fabulous today. It just isn't fair (and never seems to end up that way anyways.) And just because you were dissatisfied with how lazy she was before doesn’t mean that this training session you can walk in like a drill sergeant and “teach her respect,” for an entire hour-long session. Your horse might not be lazy today, so there's nothing to discipline. And if you have a string of horses, you can't ride the one you just got off of. Your second horse doesn't know the first one was naughty. Don't keep holding onto the frustration of that ride into your second ride. Again, you'll be blinded to how you need to respond in the moment if you do. Your solution and your training methods need to adapt to the response your horse is giving you in the moment. If you bring your horse out and they are spooky, transitions and precision movements might be the perfect solution. But then what happens if your horse starts to get so sucked back from collected movements that they get behind your leg? Then you might need to drive them forward freely to help them think “go.” And then if your horse starts to get overwhelmed from being driven forward, and starts to get stiff, tense, and anxious? Then you might need to ride smoothly, unhurried, with metronome-like rhythm to help your horse relax. What if you horse does all this in a few minutes or seconds? What if you don’t respond to it, and keep plowing through with your blanket approach? You’ll get some results with a blanket approach like “Today I’m going to work on impulsion and getting off my leg.” But when you want to make the transition from good to great, you’ll need to train yourself to respond in the moment to the horse you’re riding right now, and adapt instantly to respond to their needs and support them exactly how they need it. Great trainers ride the horse they’re on right now. “Just because you’ve taught it doesn’t mean your horse has learned it.” Imagine a classroom full of distracted high school students listening to their professor talk about calculus. “Infinity isn’t a number, it’s a concept,” the teacher says before launching into the most fascinating lecture on intro to calculus that has ever been given. Afterwards, she has them play around with the concepts with some cool word problems, and lets them get hands on in the lab. “Surely,” she thinks to herself afterwards, “these students have a good foundational knowledge of the basics of calculus. They listened to the lecture, they did their problems, and they got to see calculus get used in real life. This is one lecture that is bound to sink in!” But then come test time, every student flunks it! How can this be? Just because a lesson was taught doesn’t mean it was learned. The same is true for our horses. Just because you’ve done a leg yield or sidepass with your horse doesn’t mean that they “know” how to do one. Just because you’ve jumped them up to 3 feet doesn’t mean that they “know” how to do that. And just because you’ve been asking them to extend for three weeks doesn’t mean that they grasp the concept yet. Time does not equal understanding. We’ve all sat through lessons and seminars where we only take about one or two sentences with us out the door as we leave. Maybe the speaker droned on in a monotone, maybe they kept saying the same thing in slightly different ways, basically repeating themselves endlessly trying to drill the concept into our heads, maybe we were so distracted with thinking about lunch or if we’d have enough time to run all our errands after this thing is over that we never heard a word they said. Maybe the speaker had such a thick accent that it was simply too much work to try and listen. Sometimes, our training sessions can feel like that to our horses. Do you constantly squeeze or cluck at your horse to “create impulsion”? Do you keep drilling the same exercises day in and day out with little to no change? Do you let your horse amble around the arena not actually paying attention to you? Are you cues clear enough that it’s not hard for your horse to understand what you’re asking? If you find that you have to “teach” the same concepts or work on the same problem areas over and over again with no sign of real improvement, you’re probably falling into one of these pitfalls. Remember, just because you’ve taught it doesn’t mean your horse has learned it. 1. Don’t underestimate the benefit of riding on a loose rein. (Walk Trot and Canter!) Not only does this stretch your horse out and help them use the correct muscles in their backs, but it also gives your horse a chance to relax, think about the new information you’ve been exposing them to, and serves a test for their correct contact, thoroughness, and balance. The horse should follow the contact down as you release the reins, showing that they are actually seeking the contact, and, if they are balancing themselves in self-carriage, they will not lose their balance and fall forward. If you only put your horse on a loose rein during your warm-up and cool-down, you’re missing out on a lot. 2. Don’t skimp on lateral softness. People worry so much about their horse’s headset. The arch of their neck, the height they hold their head at, are they on the vertical? But true vertical softness comes from lateral suppleness. If your horse is stiff from side to side, you might be able to strong arm them into a false “frame,” but you will struggle to move up the levels and will never have the true harmony of supple collection. Taking shortcuts will always shortchange you of success later. 3. Your foundation is everything. Advanced riding is nothing more than better basics.
What these riders understand is that the foundation is literally everything. They devote so much time to building this because they understand its importance. Think about it in a clinic setting. A rider comes in to the clinic hoping to work on X, which is something super cool that they’ve been wanting to do for forever. Lets say that it’s the flying lead change. (Nobody ever comes into a clinic saying they want to work on their horse’s rhythm and relaxation at the trot.) So the rider tells the clinician their goals, and what does the instructor do? Immediately has them work on something other than that goal (i.e. foundation work!). The first thing they do is try to establish a slightly better foundation with a horse and rider pair before they move on. I can't think of a single clinic where the rider came in and said they wanted to work on their flying lead changes, and the clinician just went right into it. There’s always a period of not working on the “cool” thing that they rider came for, where the clinician is laying the groundwork for the movement. And most clinicians would probably admit that if they had their clinic horses in training, they wouldn’t be concerned at all about doing the flying lead change for several weeks or even months. They’d be strengthening the foundation first. Good riders make great foundations. Ground foundations make the hard things easy. Advanced riding is nothing more than better basics. 4. If something’s falling apart, don’t bulldoze your way through it.
Similarly, if you’re working on your pivots, don’t just cannonball into it. Set yourself up for success first, get your reins short enough, your body in the right place, and think about what you need to do before you go and do it. The more you can set you and your horse up for success, the faster you will grow. 5. Tell your trainer what you’re feeling, and if you understand. Tell us when you think a round went well, and when you have a light bulb moment. It’s so good as an instructor to see my student do an exercise, see them applying the pressure correctly, get the desired response from their horse, and recognize it! A lot of times, it’s the recognition part that is so hard for people. Their horse will be softening again, and again, and again, and the rider wouldn’t have any clue if the instructor didn’t tell them “There! Right there she gave to you!” It doesn’t matter what the instructor can do, what matters is what you can do. If you can feel when your horse is doing the right thing, (i.e. don't have to depend on your instructor to tell you when to release) you’re halfway there! Alternately, if your instructor is telling you “There!” and you have no clue why they're saying it, ask more questions until you can feel it too. You won’t have an instructor by your side every second you ride, so the important part is that you can feel when your horse is doing it right. 6. Make sure you’re able to do the exercise without your instructor coaching every step.
Have more things to add to this list? Let me know! Comment below or message me!
1. It’s okay that you’re frustrated. Even George Morris didn’t start off doing everything right. Just because you’re still learning and relearning things doesn’t mean that you’re a bad rider or your horse is a bad horse. This isn’t an easy sport and it’s shockingly complex and intricate at the highest levels. There’s a huge learning curve, and the more you learn, the more you realize that you don’t know. So don't feel bad that you get frustrated at times. 2. You’re not going to get it perfect right away. Or every time.
When these things happen, getting caught up in the frustration is a waste of time. Instead of dwelling on how bad it was, or how mad it makes you, set those things aside and just focus on what you need to do it fix it. Always choose to focus on productive solutions rather than the frustration of experiencing failure! 3. Your horse is not going to get it perfect right away. Or every time. Similarly, your horse is not going to get it right every time, or right away. This is frustrating for a rider or young trainer because one repetition will be awesome - you and your horse just nail it and it's the best feeling ever - and then halfway around the arena you ask for it again and your horse throws her head up, breaks gait, and maybe even kicks at your leg. "Why? She did it so perfectly last time!" Your horse is not a robot, and even though you got her to do it once, she's not perfectly programmed to do it every time exactly the same - nor should you expect her to. Make sure you give your horse the grace to make mistakes. Often I find that people are either great at giving themselves grace, and blaming their horse, or they go the other way, and beat themselves up terribly while never driving their horse to be better. Neither one of these is a healthy way to look at the learning curve you or your horse has to go through to become a great team. Remember, focusing on failures and frustrations is a waste of time. Be fair to both your horse and yourself. And when things don't go right, never lose your temper and take it out on your horse. 4. It’s okay to give you and your horse “Thinking Time" while riding. Your horse can’t retain information if you’re constantly machine gunning them with new information. Give your horse time to think in between repetitions to give them a chance to focus on their body and balance, and figure out what you want them to do. If your training sessions are nothing but your horse frantically scampering from one cue to the next, they won’t be able to retain information. I recently wrote a blog post about this, exploring the benefits it gives your horse. But it also gives you the rider a chance to plan exactly what route you're going to take to the next jump, and visualize what it should feel like, where your legs should be, how your horse should be moving underneath you, what it's like when it goes right and feels great. 5. If you’re struggling with something in a lesson, speak up.
Make sure you know and understand precisely what the correct movement should be, otherwise vague terms like “lightening” can cause more problems than they were trying to solve. Always keep pushing for concrete answers, and speak up if you’re not familiar with a term. We're here to help you improve. That's our goal. We appreciate students who are honest about what they do and do not understand, or know how to do, because that helps us help you get to where you want to be. To get more out of your lessons, keep asking questions until you understand all parts of a subject, inside and out.
Want to see more content like this article? Comment below or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or let me know in an email! When I’m teaching a riding lesson, I’ve found that there’s a huge benefit to giving the student some “Thinking Time.” If the entire lesson is me talking at them, they can’t retain much quality information. It works best to talk them through the exercise, setting the foundation, and give feedback for the first few repetitions, but then give the rider a few reps without me talking them through it. Afterwards, I ask them what they felt, and have them analyze what exactly they did and what effect it had on their horse. This “Thinking Time” gives the rider a break from taking in new information, and a period to process what they've learned. They can focus on their own body and cues, and especially focus on the feedback that their horse is giving them. I want to help foster this mindset of thoughtfulness through the way I teach my lessons. I stumbled upon this revelation by accident when taking a lesson with an instructor who machine gunned me with tiny, rapid instructions, telling me what I needed to be doing every second of every stride. He was micromanaging the riding so much that I felt like he was practically the one doing the riding! I was bombarded with so many tiny flecks of information that I had no clue what the Big Picture goal was. I was too busy scampering to obey the next instruction. Since then I have made a point with my own students to give them time to “play” with an exercise, think about it, and come up with their own observations. Often, when given the chance to think, the students come up with an answer by themselves that would have taken 15 minutes of overexplaining to get them to reach. And because they came up with the answer themselves, the lesson sticks so much better. Anytime a horse or person feels like they’ve “discovered” the answer themselves, the lesson makes so much more sense to them and has much more lasting results than if you just tell them what to do! The same is true for our horses. So many of us (myself included) are pinched for time and have the tendency to try and maximize our training sessions with our horses – to cram as much useful training time in as possible.
I’ve trained so many horses who didn’t come in with this try-hard attitude, but by the time they sold, people were raving about how they “always try to do the right thing,” and “are looking for the answer.” Some horses are more inclined to this disposition, but for most it is cultivated by how they have been trained. I want to help foster this mindset of thoughtfulness through the way I train my horses by making this promise to them:
Don’t ride your horses like that bad instructor I mentioned earlier, machine gunning them with non-stop cues. If you micromanage every second of every stride, your horse won’t have any idea what the Big Picture concept is, because they will be so busy scampering frantically from one cue to the next. Remember, it’s your horses job to half pass, do the flying lead change, or jump the obstacle. It’s your job to ride it - to set them up for success and leave them alone. Your horse should not feel like you’re the one doing the half pass. When you give your horse time to think, they will come up with their own observations, noticing on their own how it's easier to canter on the correct lead, or how it feels better to go into the movement if they are balanced. Give your horse time to think about what you're teaching, and you'll start to see big results! "Do it right or don't do it at all!" "Perfect practice makes perfect!" When riding or learning any new skill, we often feel like we have to avoid mistakes and try our best to practice perfectly. Even though we know we can’t actually be perfect right away, there is a general mindset that we should try to practice things correctly and avoid practicing incorrectly. However, in my experience teaching hundreds of lessons and clinics, I’ve found that there is actually a benefit to strategically practicing things the wrong way. For instance, many riders have issues propelling themselves too far forward when posting the trot. And no matter how many times their instructor tells them “Don’t lean forward!” or how many times they think it to themselves, their position doesn’t actually improve. You’ll also see hunter/jumper instructors sounding like a broken record telling students not to jump ahead of the horse. And month after month, the same correction is given with no change in position. Part of the reason is that the instructors are telling their riders what NOT to do, which isn’t as constructive as telling them what to do. But the larger problem comes from the fact that even though the rider know they are in the wrong position, they have no clue HOW TO GET OUT OF IT! Both rider and instructor get frustrated because they’re struggling with the same problem, hitting the same wall, and nothing they do seems to fix it. See, I always tell my students that the important thing is NOT that they do the exercise perfectly and make no mistakes. That’s an unachievable goal that will never happen. Instead, the important part is that they know when they’re doing the wrong thing, and know how to correct/fix it. If you know those two things, it won’t be long before you can overcome any problem you’re experiencing. The important thing is not that you do the exercise perfectly and make no mistakes. What's important is that you know when you're doing the wrong thing and you know how to fix it. The issues with our examples above is that the riders only knew that they were doing it wrong when the instructor was telling them, or they didn’t know how to fix it. And that’s the crucial part. So what I have my riders do is strategically practice the wrong thing. I will have them post the trot and lean so far forward they feel like they are going to fall onto their horse’s neck. I’ll make them sit the trot leaning so far backwards so they feel like they are being left behind. I’ll have them purposefully jump behind or ahead the horse’s movement (all on safe, reliable, forgiving horses, of course!) to show the riders what it feels like when they’re in the wrong position, and to train them to get out of that position into a centered, balanced one. I have my riders do is strategically practice the wrong way. I have them go back and forth between the right way and the wrong way until they can do it without thinking. Until they can get out of the wrong position any time they need to by themselves. I have them practice this until they have the muscle memory to do it automatically. Their body feels that they’re in the wrong place, and their muscle memory responds by putting them in the right place. Boom. Problem fixed. No more wrestling with the issue for months and months. Once you embrace the extremes to find the center, you can overcome the thorn in your side that has been there for years and find a whole new level of riding. And don't forget - there is actually a benefit to strategically practicing the wrong things!
(Side Note: One of the reasons this is so difficult for people to wrap their heads around is that people learn from pressure and reward. We learn not to steal and lie as children because of the pressure of consequences from our parents. We learn not to pick our noses because of social pressure. And we learn good actions like being hard working or a loyal friend because of the rewards that those actions bring. This is how predators think. But horses are prey animals. They think about and process the world around them in a different way than we do, and if you strive to be a great horse person, you have to learn to see and think like they do.) Horses learn from the release of pressure, not the pressure itself. This is one of the founding concepts of horse training theory. To use the levels of pressure, we start by asking the horse with the lowest amount of pressure that we can create. A horse will never get any lighter than the first cue you apply, so if you want them to be soft, you apply the lowest level of pressure - sometimes knowing full well that they won’t respond to that level of pressure yet. With consistency, they will. We start at low pressure and build up to medium and high until the horse feels enough pressure to start looking for the right answer – to start looking for the release. The rules are that 1) you have to start with the lowest pressure and 2) you can’t be afraid to use whatever amount of pressure it takes to get the job done – not to “make” the horse do something, but to get them to start looking for the right answer – and 3) you immediately release the pressure whenever the horse does what you’re looking for, or gets closer to the right answer than they were before. Think of it like a hot and cold game. It’s almost impossible to play with somebody who just says “cold” until you’re at exactly the right spot. Instead, you need to hear that you’re getting “warmer” so you know which way to go. The same is true for your horse. When using pressure and release to teach your horse, think of it like a hot and cold game, and always release when they're getting warmer. Do you want to tell your horse that they did the right thing or that they are on the right track? Then release the pressure.
About 98% of equine communication is done non-verbally, through body language. Compare this to humans who communicate with only about 55% non-verbals, and you can see a huge gap in communication styles! However, the mark of a great horse trainer is that they reach out to the horse first, learning to speak their language and interact with them just like another horse would, before trying to accomplish any formal "training." To assume that we can walk into a horse's life and start making changes, insisting that they immediately start thinking and reacting like a human would, and demanding a "respectful" attitude while we force this change on them... is highly arrogant, and results in a hollow relationship between horse and rider. Simply put, it doesn't make sense to assume that horses, a prey animal, should think and behave like a human, a predator. Yet so many people struggle with their horses because they make this very assumption. Your horse does not think like you, and she never will. It's your job to learn to think like a horse. A good horse trainer first walks with their horses, understanding and embracing how they view the world, before asking the horse to go on any lifelong journeys with them. Because non-verbal communication and pressure and release is the way horses naturally talk to each other, this is the easiest way for them to understand new information (i.e. be "trained.") When we set out to form a relationship with them, it’s only fair and logical that we first learn to speak to them in their language, no matter how messy, mean, or unfair we think it is. I sometimes have people tell me that they don't want to do this. Older horses teach younger horses what types of behaviors are allowed by putting pressure on them (active body language, or even biting and kicking) when they are doing the wrong things, and releasing the pressure when they get it right. This can seem crude and even mean to people who don't understand that this is the horse's natural language. But when you communicate and train your horse in their native language, they actually relax and become more comfortable and confident. Horses don't understand English, but they do understand pressure and release. If you make understanding and embracing how your horses view the world your first priority, and being easily understood your second, all your formal training exercises and goals will fall into place, and you'll have a more friction-free relationship with your horse. |
Hannah Mork
Dressage, Jumping, and Reining trainer who has trained hundreds of horses over the years, and taught clinics and lessons around the country. Devoted to the study of equine biomechanics and excellent horsemanship. Archives
Categories
|