Ep 21: Forward is one of the most unhelpful words

From performanceriders.com this is the Pabri Podcast. I'm Nat Foxen and each episode I challenge World equestrian Games top 10 dressage writer Brett Parbury to explain and discuss what I call a Parburyism. That's a pearl of wisdom I've written down over the years of working together in our performance writers programs. Brett doesn't know what today's Pabraism is. Let's get into it. Okay, Brett, I cannot believe we haven't done this Parburyism before, but I actually even double checked because I thought surely. Are you ready for today's Pabrism?

Ready to go.

It is. Forward is one of the most unhelpful words in dressage.

Yeah, okay, well, that's. And the most commonly used, including, I.

Mean, okay, let's put it out there this week. How many times do you think you said that word forward when teaching a rider?

Look, more than I would have liked to have. Sometimes it's the easiest word to pluck out then and there when you're coaching. But yeah, more than I would have liked to have. But it being saying that the people that I'm coaching also know the. The what I mean, trying to imply.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So that's the Parburyism. Forward is one of the most unhelpful words in dressage. So why is it so unhelpful, Brett?

Well, it comes down to how it's perceived by the rider. So we all use it. We all know that what it means. It's the horse is either behind the rider, not trying hard enough. Needs to be, you know, go with more gusto and more purpose. Unfortunately, it doesn't always be perceived like that by the rider. And what I've noticed is in an attempt from a rider to ride forward, and I often see this just riders riding around, riding what they call forward. They're actually riding the horse flat and riding the horse so far off the hind leg that the horses then can only land on its front legs and then get strung out. And I only watched a video the other day, actually. It came across my feed somewhere and it's a beautiful. This horse was beautifully trotting around, but overdone, like, overdone riding too forward. And the horse was battling to keep up. Still had some cadence and some expression, but if that horse was allowed some time to balance and keep its feet under it, it would have looked way nicer. So, yeah, it's. It's definitely how the rider perceives that information. And of course, is there a way of giving the rider the same information but in a better way. That's, that's really what I'm all about, is trying to. How can I say something nice and quickly and have that rider put the correct aid on with what they're wanting to feel come out of the horse in the right way, rather than just horse just flattening and running and losing balance.

So I guess we've got sort of two different sides to explore here. One is more for sort of coaches in terms of how can we better explain what we're aiming for here? And the other one is for riders on their horses thinking about what it is they want to be achieving. And you just mentioned there, of course, they, they don't want to be achieving that flat off the hind legs or the, you know, weight going down into the shoulders, running along out of balance. You know, nobody wants that. But maybe that's what's happening out of the use of this word forward. So I guess firstly, how. What, what are some other ways or other words that you would use that you think are a good replacement for forward and might help coaches and writers think of what they should be achieving.

I guess, to think of better words. It's good to probably start thinking about why the word forward came around and, and I guess, you know, like all, all dressage terms generally come from some sort of a European origin, so. Or, you know, that and generally German. So at some point in the past, some European instructor has said to someone, you know, more forward being the English interpretation of what they wanted to say. And possibly, you know, the word that they use there is. Is. That is the direct translation. But the end of the day, it's getting the horse to try harder. Like you're wanting the horse at this, at that moment, whatever moment it is, you're saying, hey, when I put my leg on and when I give you a touch with my heel, I want you to try harder. Like just put in more effort, you know, more purpose, some. Something just give me a reaction. And at that moment, it's. It's about how the rider then first of all feels the reaction and rewards it. And then secondly, how they channel that so the horse doesn't feel. Form a resistance somewhere else. So, you know, you're riding along, horse is a little off balance. You decide, the rider decides, I need more forward. Rider goes boom with the leg and the horse is unbalanced and suddenly pushes into a more unbalanced position and resists, perhaps in the rider's hand. And next thing, the riders doing stuff with their hands. When really, if they just taken a moment to think about what balance is my horse in and fix the balance, and then touch the horse with their heel and get a response where the horse suddenly picks itself up and tries a bit harder. But within the balance and all of that energy comes more up through the horse's back and from the back through to the front without pushing the horse away from its hind legs and pushing it onto the front legs, that becomes a better response. So. The word try harder, more purpose, more effort, reaction, quicker. I'll never forget, I was in Europe once, having a lesson with a very good trainer, and he kept saying to me, quicker, not faster. Quicker, quicker, not faster. And I'm like, what is he saying? Like, what are you trying to tell me here? But what he was saying was, more active, not forward and faster as in wind speed through your hair. You know, like faster as in across the ground. Yeah, you know, active. Get your horse more active off the ground. So more impulsion now. Now let's come back to that. What is the definition of impulsion? Well, the definition of impulsion is the amount of effort your horse puts in to pushing itself off the ground. Not across the ground, off the ground. So it's that quickness of push where the horse's foot pushes off the ground and then picks the leg up and then repeats that, right? And boom, boom, boom in trot or bump in Canterbury that your horse puts in. The effort the horse puts into pushing itself off the ground forward can then be where the rider rides the horse, where the horse pushes across the ground. But. But you lose. You can lose the quickness of that. That push, and you don't have activity. Now, activity as you train a dressage horse through to Grand Prix is way more important to a Grand Prix horse than forward. So that's where the. That's where you start to see the differences in the two. And of course, you know, we still say, come on, more forward, but to a rider hearing that, it's about, how do I create more impulsion, more activity, get my horse to try harder underneath me so then I can eventually disappear again and have the horse working by itself in front of my leg.

Just a quick message from us. If any of the ideas discussed today resonate with you and you'd love to dive deeper, head over to performanceriders.com there's a bunch of free content for you, and there's loads of opportunities as well to work with us by enrolling in one of our training or mentoring programs. Performanceriders.com okay, so the papyrism we're talking about today is forward is one of the most unhelpful words in dressage. I mean, Brett has a short list of words that he would like to ban from the sport. Forward is one of them. But he still uses the word. Let's be clear.

It's just habit, right? It's habit. That's what we said for the years. And like, yeah, okay, ban them. It's a bit harsh, but like, yeah, I think we need to. We need to think as coaches and even as riders, you know, having words in our head when we're writing. What is my? What is my? Or what is. How do I perceive this? Like, how do you know, what is it actually doing? Because, you know, I've done this as a rider. Oh, riding around. Oh, I need more forward. And then I ride the horse on the front legs and. And ride the horse strung out, you know. Oh, no, but I'm. But I'm getting the horse more forward. Well, no, you're not. You're actually making the horse. Horse's job harder. The horse is stretched out and, you know, you need to balance this horse and think about activity underneath you, like directly underneath you. And yeah, so let's talk about how.

That looks and feels different. Like if a rider's thinking, gosh, I'm not sure if I do. If I am interpreting that word in a slightly counterproductive way and riding the horse flat. What are some ways that riders can figure out if they're doing that?

If the rider feels like they're just racing around the arena, flat out, no balance. Just remember, we ride dressage horses in a 60 by 20 meter rectangle, and that involves some straight lines and it involves some corners. And it's the same when we're riding, when we're driving a car or riding a bike, you know, we can go quicker on the straight lines and then we have to slow down for the corners. So with a horse, you can make the horse active on the straight line, but you need to balance them and get them to wait a little bit. Not much, just a little bit, and be balanced when you get to the corners. Otherwise they just start motorbiking and spreading themselves out even longer to try and keep balance. So if a rider's riding along and they go, okay, I need more something, I need more forward, and they go touch with their leg, it's important that the horse doesn't get longer and flatter underneath them. Sometimes it's better to feel that you need something extra. You'd like to ask the Horse to try harder, even think that way, just go, I want to ask my horse, can he try harder right now? Or she touch them with your heels, with your leg. And if, if the horse then gives a response, feel that the response comes more up under you in a more active way, where the horse gives you a bit more of a. A positive tension up through them rather than all of a sudden you just suddenly going quicker. And like that coach was saying to me, you know, quicker, not faster, that the horse gets more active rather than faster and across the ground, covering more ground. Yeah.

And what are some examples or an example you can think of of when this sort of commonly happens? That riders end up sort of getting too forward, long and flat, and that's unhelpful in the scenario. And they should rather be thinking about quicker off the ground impulsion. Is there a sort of a stage or a movement of, of training that. That often pops up as an issue.

When you're teaching, usually in the young horse levels. So in the young horse, especially in those early years, you'll see a rider that's wanting to get the horse going and getting the horse with a forward way of thinking. And that's probably where it shows up the most, is in the young horse riding. It come. But then I was just going to go on to something there as you're saying that. I was thinking like, so at the end of the day, what a young horse needs to learn is the meaning of in front of the leg. And in front of the leg means when you stop riding, your horse keeps going. And that's different to forward because I've seen a lot of, a lot of horses that are technically forward with a rider that's continually going kick, kick, kick and almost chasing them that are actually behind the leg. So they, they look forward. But if that rider stops riding, that horse will skid to a stop.

Yeah.

And that's because that's the way the riders trained it. Right. They've trained it that as soon as they stop, the horse will make a transition downwards. And that's been, that's been the aid. And when they want to go, they keep chasing, chasing, chasing.

And so, so it can look like horses powering around the arena, covering a lot of ground, but can actually still be behind the rider.

That's right. I mean, you can have a horse doing extended trot that's behind you and a horse doing piaf that's in front of you. It comes down to the attitude of the horse. So if I stop riding right now, is my horse still going to go or is he going to stop? And the horse can be in power with the rider doing nothing. And a horse can be extended trot with the rider chasing, pulling, holding, holding it together and chasing, chasing, chasing. So forward is not a direct relationship to a horse that has a positive in front of the leg way of going. Well, I mean, I think as people listen to this, I think it's important to, you know, of course we use the word forward. I'm not trying to say it's a, it's, it's not to be used, but it's how it's perceived and it's how it's understood. And then if you think about those things I just said about horse being forward can still be behind the leg, is it better to have the responses, you know, the, the starting point of, of, of the horse's pace is in front of my leg and in my rhythm. And then can I touch the horse with my heels and create a reaction to get the horse to try harder? That is a way better mindset to start training your horse's paces with. Then I've got to be forward and I've got to be forward, forward, forward, forward, forward. And then I'll just make transitions willy nilly by stopping, riding and letting the horse stop. And then I'm going to develop this, you know, I've got, this will get my horse more, more forward. That horse could be more forward, but it could also be still as negative as the diet, you know, in its mindset. And then at some point you've got to then be able to create the next set of paces. So in an, in a young horse, you're trying to establish working paces and then as the horse goes on, you're starting to develop the collected paces and then there's some variations in those collected paces. There's, you know, for trot, for example, there's collected trot, there's piaffe, there's passage, there's working passage, there's half steps, there's all these variations in the collection. And you need those horses to understand the basic concept of the working pace in front of my leg and in my rhythm. And when I ask you for a response, try harder. And when that happens and the horse learns that system, you can ask that question in any pace, piaffe, passage, extended trot, whatever. And that's the underlying concept of that you want to start with, of pace control as opposed to, I just need to get my horse more forward.

I love the idea that there could be a bunch of riders in Their lessons, you know, their next lesson, saying to their instructors, okay, you said more forward, but let's drill down on what you really meant by that.

Yeah, and then I'll get in trouble. Everyone be like Brett said, don't use the word. You know, it's not like you said.

It's about the interpretation of that. It's. It's forward. Sort of a shorthand that we use in the sport. But it would be interesting to dig down deeper into what. What the coaches really want in that moment.

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, I wanted to touch on there quickly, too, like the use of a whip. You know, I see so many riders trying to use a whip to go forward, and I've not seen once a horse responding positively to a whip going forward, like you need to. Or we, we riders, we need to develop that. The horse responds active, tries harder, goes forward, whatever you want to say. From our heels, from our legs. So when our leg touches their belly from a position where it's resting, so the horse is in front of my leg, he's going along by himself. My leg is resting by his sides. You know, not sticking off, but just hanging and resting and connected. Then when I touch him with my heels, I want to create a response. Now, if my horse doesn't give me a response, then. Then I'll use that aid in a different way, which makes a bit more of an agitation or something that's, you know, going to spark. Spark them to try harder. And as soon as they do, reward them again. And then the pressure comes off. And as we know with horse training, it's all about pressure off. Any animal training, it's about pressure off, not pressure on. Any monkey can put pressure on. It's the moments pressure comes off is the key. And that's. That's what we're all trying to get better at. So then the pressure comes off. Where I see a lot of riders will go to the whip way too early for a start. As soon as they don't respond to their leg, they're straight to the whip. That, for me, is I. I just take the whip off. I've got an amazing collection of whips here because I generally take the whips off.

Well, whips that you've stolen from your riders.

Yeah. And the next thing, they drive out the gate and they leave with me.

I love it.

But what I'm trying to say here is get better skills. Like, develop yourself as a rider. Get better skills. If you feel like you haven't got good enough legs, well, I'M sorry. Go and get better legs. Do exercises, do things that work. Because the whip for a dressage horse is to help them develop a technique in collection, not as a go forward aid. Let's leave the whips and going forward to the jockeys at the races and let's try to get the horses to respond from our leg aid. This is the reason why you drop the whip in fei, by the way, because you want the horse to be responding to a leg aid. But you can also use a whip to help develop technique in the horse's hind legs in collection. So help shape the horse and. But not as a go forward aid. And I often hear and see people use them as go forward aids. And I think like anything, I mean, you think if you were bitten on the backside right now by a bee, if something just stung you on the backside, are you thinking forward or are you thinking backwards? You're instantly, your thoughts go to your backside and you're looking over your shoulder and you're thinking backwards. You're not thinking positive thoughts, going active, trying harder. And that's the end of the day. That's the reason why I don't like people using a whip to go forward. It only makes horses think backwards and, you know, get better legs, try harder. Try harder yourself. Go to the gym, do whatever you got to do to develop better skills and, and, yeah, and. And be the. Be the better athlete yourself.

Speaking of whips, you are well and truly cracking the whip today.

Oh, I mean, that's part of 2025 mantra. Let's get everyone. Let's get everyone better. I mean, I just want. Including myself. I'm not trying to say I'm one of the best, but let's just get better. Let's understand this sport, understand our horses, understand how we are and who we are and get better at doing.

Absolutely love it. Thanks so much, Brett, for today's episode.

Pleasure. Thank. You.