Ep 2: The best riders create time in the test

Okay, Brett, we're back again with another one of your parburyisms. Hello, Brett, by the way.

Yeah, I'm curious to see what this one's going to be.

Yes. So just in case anyone missed any previous episodes, a parburyism is my little term for a little quote or idea or concept that I've scribbled down over the years of working with Brett in the performance writers programs, especially our gold program, where Brett's always dropping what we call gold nuggets in there, and I jot them down and scribble around them with a big circle and think to myself, I'm going to come back to this idea at a later date and talk to Brett Moore about this. And this is the platform to do that. So I've got a whole bunch of parisms. And what I do each episode is just give Brett one completely unannounced. He has no prep time, and see what we come up with.

Yeah, you circle back and then make me accountable for it, which is exactly. Yeah, that's why I end up in a cold sweat every single time.

So actually, in our first episode, we had a concept around time, because our palbarism for that one was nothing beats time in this sport. Something around those lines. And we're going with a time theme again. Brett, the theme today, or the parism today, is the best writers create time in the test. Okay. The best writers create time in the test. What are your first thoughts? Do you remember saying this parism, and what you might mean by that?

Yeah, yeah, I do. Look, it's referring to one of the. One of the important factors of the half halt. And those who are in performance riders will know that I'm always on about the half halt. I'm always talking about the importance of the half hold. This sport is all about the half halt. You know, the pace gets better when you get the half halt. Right. The. The. You know how often I emphasize and stress the importance of a half halt. And. And this was just another one of those examples of. Of drawing the parallel between our sport and all the other sports that are out there. And. And. And here we are in Australia in January. And. And in January, we all become tennis experts, tennis aficionados and experts here in Australia when the AO is on the Australian Open. And. And you'll notice the same thing shines through in the quality 10 tennis players. The. The quality tennis players always appear like they have more time than the. Than the. The opposition. And it's. It's to do with how to. How to create time. You Know, whether it's a good cricketer, a good rugby player or a soccer player or a tennis player, basketball doesn't matter. The, the aura that gets built around creating time for yourself and those, those gentle pauses in motion to rebalance are what creates the time. And in our sport, we call it the half halt. Now, this is not the only reason for the half halt, but it is a main thing that the great riders, through being able to regulate tempo and, and regulate balance and get the horse to sit up and back and underneath them in a half halt, will in fact create time for themselves and create better balance so they can make transitions more on point, give the judges the, the comfort to be at ease and to enjoy what they're watching, not feeling like the rider is winging it and flying by the seat of their pants and rushing from one movement to the next. That actually, it actually lets the judge feel confident that the rider's in control. So, yeah, that's basically the context that, that that statement was, was made in.

And I love discussing other points as they relate to this concept as well, because I think that tennis is a great one. I noticed the same thing just on the TV this year watching the Australian Open with this particular parvarism in my mind. And you're quite right. The when, you know, the really top players or when a player is playing really well in a match, they just look like they have more time. It looks the ball is going just as fast, but somehow they've created more time for themselves, whether it's being in the right balance, just like we want our horses, or, you know, in positioned themselves in the right place in the court. Can we go a little bit more into what this looks like? How can we spot a rider that is good at creating time for themselves in the test?

Yeah, look, I mean, it'll look like the appearance will be that the rider doesn't look rushed. Everything looks imbalance. The rider is riding each movement from point to point. And the horse never looks like it's taking a faster, quicker, unbalanced step. The rider is riding with the anticipation of what they have to do about 20 meters ahead of themselves. So even though they're in a movement, they might be anticipating what's going to happen in 20 meters time. And they're starting to get the horse prompted and cued to the half halt so that when they finish the movement, they look like they're already ready for the next movement, if that makes sense. So the, the half halt and the anticipation of the rider of what is coming. And let me Just branch off there. The fact that dressage is done in a 60 by 20 meter rectangle also makes it that we go from straight lines and, and diagonal lines, so in lateral work to quite sharp corners. So if there's anything that's going to cause a horse to lose balance quicker than anything else, it's going from one position into a sharp corner. And if that horse has not been prepared and, and with a half alt maiden and balanced, that horse will lose balance in the corners. So it, it to a trained eye, the rider who's riding, creating time, making the half halts in the right moments, keeping the horse balanced, it sticks out. It's very obvious to see because it'll be, it'll show up in the movements, it'll show up in some of the lines of the tests and it will particularly show up in the corners. So that's where it is. But you know, to do this and to be able to create the time you have to master the half halt. And that's what I'm trying to get at with, with the writers in the program is what are the ingredients of the half halt. Now there's probably another podcast, but the, the half halt is, it is what make makes dressage happen. It is the, it is the, the one common thing that all horses are above the level of intermediate one. So going into that medium tour, into A, into B and into the big tour into two Grand Prix special freestyle. That big tour, all horses at that level need to have some understanding of the half halt. There isn't. Okay, there's an argument at small tour you need to have the half alt too. But I've seen plenty of horses that, that don't really get the half halt do a small tour test. Because the only real test of collection in the small tour test is the pirouettes and the walk pirouettes and counter pirouettes. The trot work is all sort of forward and going, but the half hole is the major tool that's involved in collection. And dressage is all about collection. Collection is the holy grail when it comes to dressage. And that's what we're all trying to achieve. And that's actually quite difficult. And even though I'm speaking like it's some easy thing to do and the half halt and mastery of the half halt is the common, the most, the most difficult part of the sport. And it's the reason why the same old faces end up in the Grand Prix. You're very, it's, it's only occasionally you'll See a new face or a new combination and entering the Grand Prix level because. And the same old faces end up at Grand Prix because those are the people who have mastered the half halt.

Okay, so the part reason we're talking about today is that the best writers create time in the test. So we've gone over what you meant by that statement, Brett, and it is actually a statement that you've, you've made many times, I must say, we've talked about what that actually looks like in the context of the test and how it's achieved through a mastery of the half hold. Now, what about what it feels like to you when you're writing? Do you have a sense at the end of a test that you've done a good job of all those things that you were talking about that goes into that feeling of having time in the test, that you've used the half hold in the appropriate spaces, that you've been thinking ahead 20 meters? What does that feel like?

Yeah, well, the one thing with spending so much time in the sport is you do start to react a little more automatically in a test. So there's definitely certain cues that I've created over the years for myself which now are ingrained and inbuilt in me. Some horses are able to respond properly. So when I'm on a young horse, for example, doing a young horse class, I'll find myself doing the hot, like making the half hop before the corner to look like I'm creating time and blah, blah, blah. And that horse just doesn't have the strength to come back and get off the ground and I can go. And I feel that, oh, okay, that's right. I'm on a young horse. So the cues are in. Are in me. And, and part of my riding repertoire of the writing the test isn't to do this. It's just that some horses can do it. So then it's part of, it's what I have to do at home to build the. This half halt and a half halt. That doesn't shut the horse down. It actually gets the horse up off the ground and gets them like, makes them look lighter and more elegant and, and more active. That's the thing that I have to train at home so I can go to the test and do these things. And, and when I'm. I'm trying to give the impression to the judge that I, I have got all the time in the world. You sit back there, judge, and you enjoy this picture. I'm going to show you everything I'm doing. With regard to setup, doing the movement foot perfectly, hitting all of my tangent points as best I can, making all my quick flexion and bends and all these things. And I'm trying to give the judge this impression. I want you to sit back and enjoy it and what's give you and buy myself time. So if I feel like I haven't quite got this thing set up just yet, I need another split second. It's amazing what a split second will give you in a dressage test, but I need to make. I need to wait here. I need to actually come into this corner a little deeper, wait, wait, and just buy myself a little bit of time to get something set up or calm something down, whatever it might be. So the feeling I'm after is this feeling of. I'd like to say pause, but it's. Everything's still moving like the horse is still moving. So the actual pause that I'm talking about, it's not a stop or it's not where the horse changes rhythm or changes anything. As a matter of fact, I want it to be invisible to it. Everybody else on the outside, but I just get my horse to spend a little bit longer in the air with a couple of steps. So if it's trot, I ask them to wait. And it's. They don't go passage, but they just get a little bit higher off the ground, a little bit more back on the hind leg. And it doesn't look like anything has happened apart from the fact that I look like I've got all time in the world. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's subtle. It's so subtle.

What's the opposite, then? What does it look like when we're not achieving that sense of having all the time in the world?

Well, I've done plenty of tests that didn't have half halts. And it's funny, like, when I, when I was, like, fairly successful, and I can remember one of our really good coaches saying to me, oh, yeah, watched your test. You need to make more half halts. And I. That just. Look, it must have had an impact on me because I remember it, but I remember thinking at the time, oh, what do they mean by that? You know? And now I know exactly what they meant by that.

Right.

And they were absolutely right. Like, I did need to make more half volts. And I wished I'd sort of. I wish they probably elaborated on that at the time. Would have saved me a lot more mistakes. But what it is, it's, it's. It's it comes down to the intention of the writer. So. So my intention at that time where I was riding through tests and not really sort of taking the time, I was just folk. I just thought that writing forward. Forward was creating expression.

Yeah.

I thought that the more power and energy I was putting into this horse, the more expressive and. Yeah. The more exciting and.

Yeah. Well, I think lot. Lots of us riders think that for sure.

Well, I was wrong because what was happening is, is I was riding my horse into positions where the horse couldn't keep balance. And then when the horse couldn't keep balance, what do they do? They put their feet on the ground. Right. They put their feet down faster. And when the horse puts its feet down faster in dressage, they lose rhythm or they don't get off the ground and look like they're elevated. So. So I was thinking I'm creating all this energy and all this is wonderful and they're going to love this. But really I was putting my horse in positions where the horse could only put its feet on the ground and then wondering why I was then couldn't do an extended trot from the marker. You know, how come I was getting like I could feel there were rhythm mistakes and, you know, and. And not getting the scores that I would have liked. And had I have been riding the exact same horses today with the knowledge that I have now and I've had for some time now, but I'm sure I would have gotten another few percent just on being more clever with how I was writing the test just purely on this basis, giving myself time by creating the half hole. And. And I do want to drill down further on this half old thing, by the way. But yeah, I would have just made such a better job of it at the time had I have known.

Yeah. In one of our programs, we actually have a whole lesson devoted on the concept of impulsion versus speed. That's what comes to mind for me hearing you talk about when you know us riders, we all do it get a little bit mixed up in trying to achieve that bit of expression and energy, but it not quite going in the right direction.

Yeah, yeah. Often see it with younger riders because they are wanting to get the horses expressive and they're seeing the videos on YouTube and these days and on Facebook and Instagram. But the horse can only be. They can only let go and move when they're. When their balance is right. And. And what happens is they don't take the same step every stride. Like every candlestrike, it's never identical. They'll get a little quicker because they'll suddenly push off their hind leg and push a bit flat and want to run. So at that point in time, you need to have a half halt or ten half halts repetitively, one or the other, to get the horse to be balanced again and to try and just put all of this impulsion. Now. Now, you know, this is probably a great time to actually go into the depths of this impulsion is the amount of energy the horse puts into pushing itself off the ground. Nothing to do with forward, nothing to do with speed. It's the amount of effort and energy the horse puts into pushing off the ground. Like, boom. Like if I was standing and I. And I and I wanted to really spring off the ground, that's impulsion. So sometimes it needs to be written forward, like that. Pop up, let's go to create a reaction. But the reaction is not actually impulsion. That's just to get a reaction. The idea is to then come back, try and create the same thing, the reaction, but have it within balance so you can create impulsion. And it's important that. That you cannot make a half hole unless you've got the horse in front of you of you with impulsion. Because at the end of the day, you can't collect something that's behind you, and you can't ride something forward that's running away from you. So it's got to be the horse got to be in front of you and in your rhythm or in your half halt. And that is then the sweet spot. So the idea is that when you make the half halt, the horse doesn't get behind you, slow down, get closer to the ground, do less, all of these things. And at the same time, we don't ride them forward past where we would make a half hole and just hang on to the front of them and let them. Let them drag us around. So there's this sweet spot in the middle, which in. I'm sure the people listening to this who are in performance riders who have been there for quite a while, will know as what we call, like the box. There's this kind of a space underneath us which is a sweet spot where the horse is in front of us with energy, with impulsion, and on and in our rhythm. And that's when we take some aids off, because that's the place we want the horse to keep searching for. And as we know good horse people, training horses is all about pressure and release. So it's about the release of pressure when the horse is in this Space this sweet spot. And then getting better at noticing when the horse tries to get out of the sweet spot, because that sweet spot is pretty hard for the horse to stay in noticing, correcting, disappearing. Then the horse tries to get out, reappear, correct, disappear, and trying to disappear, to relax, pressure to reward those. And then ultimately, over time, spend more time doing nothing. And you know, the underlying philosophy of dressage is to try and make it look easy. And you'll only make it look easy if you spend time. Yeah, more time doing nothing or little.

So apart from watching your tests, of course, or the ones that you feel like you've succeeded in, this ability to create time in the test off the top of your head, can you think of other riders that you think do a really good job of this that we can keep an eye out for?

Look, on the international scene, nearly all of those top riders, you know enough from all countries, there would be very, very few that are in those major shows that don't understand the half old. Some of them don't have the horse in front of them, probably to the level where the best riders in the world do, you know, in front of the meaning, actively in front of their actual leg and with impulsion energy. But nearly all of those riders would understand the half fault to some degree. Now, the best example I can think of, and I don't want to just go to the obvious, but when Jessica Werndell rode in the European championships last year in the freestyle on her mayor Dilira, in the freestyle particularly, I saw a sequence of trot work which was passage, extended trot, piaf, passage. So going through all of the gears of trot, all of the different variations in gears of trot, and that horse looked like it was only ever one half halt away from passage, even when it was in extended trot and even when the horse was in pr, it looked like it was only ever one leg aid away from extended trot. It just looks so in the box and so well balanced and beautifully trained so that Jessica could give the signal. And the horse was able to go from one trot to the next without a rhythm mistake, a balance mistake, a resistance against the hand. Now that's the ultimate right there. That's where we've got to try and keep aiming ourselves. And I'm sure Jessica would tell you that that horse wasn't born knowing this. It's been developed over time through a very good system of riding, through years and years of training, and has built up the knowledge and the muscles and the body and the strength to be able to do this. And that's as good of an example as I've seen of exactly what we want. Now, whether, whether people like that horse or not, you cannot. You cannot not enjoy the training. The training has been sensational on that horse. So that's what, that's the vision that I would like people to have when they're trotting. No matter what trot they're in, they're only one half alt away from a passage. Like a passage feeling or like a, or even not even passage. Like, even if the horse is just learning collected trot, they're one half halt away from making a transition within a, within the trot to something that's a little bit more cadence, a little bit more off the ground. And then when the horse is back underneath them, they're only one leg aide away from a forward step. And then as they train, they'll just keep increasing the scope of that, of that trot. And look, it all, it all sounds complicated, but it's got to be very easy. It's got to be very simple. Even though the nitty gritty of these things are complicated. Like, you know what aids in here and. Yeah, the concept of making the half alt, creating the time, getting the half alt to be the, the thing that creates expression, height off the ground, time in the air, that. That is the tool that then becomes the. The way to show the judges that you've got all the time in the world. And like that tennis player, I'm not sure what it is in the tennis world. I'm sure there's an equivalent.

Yeah.

Whether it's getting their feet in position quick, quicker, or anticipating when the other person hits the ball, where it's going to go, I don't know. But there's a reason why some players have more time than others. And it would be something similar. It'd be to do with balance, it'd be to do with timing, it'd be to do with some form of anticipation. And, and, yeah. And you'll notice that all top sports people and even, to be honest, top businessmen just generate this aura of time.

Yeah.

All the time in the world.

Well, thank you, Brett. And I look forward to catching up again soon for our next pabrism.

Look forward to it.