Ep 29: Always Make a Perfect Transition (even if the house is on fire)

From performanceriders.com this is the Pabry 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, today we've got a classic pabrism to discuss. I'm going to start it, and you can finish it for me. So even if you look up and the house is on fire, what.

Still make a perfect transition? And that's really funny because I don't know how that actually slipped into my. My descriptions, as, you know, I love describing things, but I don't know how that slipped into my descriptions. But I find myself saying it more and more like, oh, really? Yeah, I do. So the context behind that, I don't even know where that one came from, but the context there is around the. Around the difference between a downward transition on a horse. So a transition from Canada, trot or trot to walk or candid, a walk or candida hold, you know, anything downward. The difference between that and the difference between a fundamental rudimentary half halt, you know, and. And that they cannot be the same aids. That's. That's where it stems from. And then it's then extended onto the amount of preparation and training, of the preparation you have to do as a rider to get seamless downward transitions. So that's where it's extended onto.

Because how it often comes out in the programs is you'll say, you know, if you're riding along and you want to do a downward transition, and you look up and the house is on fire still. Prepare, prepare, prepare. And that's what you mean by the half halt, right? And the difference us in our minds as writers, differentiating between the half halt as a preparation and the downward transition aid. So the focus on the preparation here and in the downward transition is that when this preparation is most important. In the downward transitions.

Yeah, that's right. So the. The whole thing. And I'll go back a little bit here. When I'm coaching, I'll. I will, you know, we'll be working on something, and I'll say to someone, okay, let's have a walk break. And before the word walk break can leave my mouth, that person has flopped into walk. And. And like, if they were just waiting for the signs, the sign, you know, and I'M like, no. And of course, you know, the people that train with me regularly don't do this, but I'm like, no, don't do that. Like, why would you do that? Why would you train that transition on your horse and then go about in five minutes time trying to get him to not do that? You've just trained him to do that. And that's when I said, okay, even if that, even if you looked up and that house was on fire, you wouldn't make that transition, right? That, like, you would do it. You would prepare and practice the preparation 3, 5, 10 times until you felt the preparation was right, then you'd make the transition and then you'd go and put the fire out and, and that's how important it is. Right? It's, it's. I'm trying to stress with that description there that these things are very, very important in training your horse and not to just make a sloppy transition. Like I've coined the phrase that transitions should be competition ready at all times.

Okay.

You know, okay. When you're training a horse through something, of course it's not going to be competition ready if you're trying to get a better reaction in something or if you're, you know, there's going to be some ugly moments, but you're, you're on your way to training something. And if you have got the ingredients right, the, you should have the attention to detail as if you are in a competition. So that's, that's the, that's what it sort of is about. That's the context behind the statement.

And there sort of is that thing, isn't there, that even if we ride a really good transition nine times out of 10, that one time out of 10 like you were describing, that we sort of just flop back into walk because we're tired for some reason, that counts for the horse so much more. And they remember that for the next five years.

Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, look, let's face it there, for the majority of horses, their motivation is to do less, you know, to do the minimum they can do whilst giving the rider what they want. So they are motivated by doing the minimum. And of course they're going to remember that the moment the rider says, okay, oh, by the way, splat. You can walk now, that horse will go, oh, that, that was good. Okay, that rider just disappeared and I just went like this. And now I'm walking. And funnily enough, they just patted me for it. So I'll do that again. So that's the thing, it's the pressure release conversation that we have quite often. But I guess where the context is here and to break it down is. And I'll use a trot walk transition as an example. Right. So in our program, you know, or in our, let's say, in our methodology, the methodology that we adopt in performance riders and the, you know, we, we have a shared philosophy and we have a methodology that we adopt. And in that methodology we say that there is a concept that we are going to try and train seven different types of trot. And the reason we have that is because we know a Grand Prix dressage horse needs, needs to have at minimum seven different types of trot. Right? So we know that because, you know, I've been to Grand Prix and I know that that's required to make the transitions between P, passage, extended trot, passage, collected trot to make, to have all these different trots, we need to train the horse in the different types of trot and that the, that in training that the, the trots have varying collection. You know, they go from extension to collection and piarf being the most collected version and passage and extended being the most extended version. And you need collection for that. But that's another story. But you know, the collection. Now, what is the main aid or ingredient of collection? Well, it is a half old or multiple, multiple half halts. That's how we manage this energy. And through the half halt, the horse takes weight behind and they, they come off the ground and they put their energy into stepping off the ground rather than across the ground and on and on we go and we develop collection. So if that half halt is so vitally important, like we just said, then we can't just make something even remotely similar and let the horse just crash into walk like it can't even be remotely similar. Otherwise what will happen is if we make that half halt and the horse goes to go slower or go towards walk and then we start going, no, no, don't do that. And then we start riding like helping, helping, helping, helping, and the horse gets lazier and lazier and lazier and they're behind our leg. So that's the important part, is to know that we need the half halt, that the half hole is a major ingredient in collection, that in developing our horses paces towards Grand Prix, that collection is the main, one of the main or the main thing through the half hole and that we need then to have an aid for downward transitions that is different to the half hole and that we need to have preparation of the Pace. Let's say it, let's say, you know, we're making this trot to walk transition. We need to prepare that trot to the speed of walking before we make the decision to walk, before we give the instruction to walk. And that helps us form adjustability in trot, and it helps us that the horse is trotting at the speed of walk in front of our leg and in our. And in our rhythm and with energy and that we then give the signal to make the downward transition. And, you know, as simple as that sounds. And you know, it took me a long time to describe that, but that's a trot walk transition, something as simple as that. If you want to train or if you would like to go up the levels of dressage towards Grand Prix, something as simple as a trot walk transition has to be thought about in that detail to not set yourself up for failure later.

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 performance riders. 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 so the part reason we're talking about today is even if you look up and you see that the house is on fire, you still ride the perfect transition. You still prepare, prepare, prepare. It's something that your students hear a lot, this particular pavrism. So you've spoken about separating the aids and the importance of having really different aids for the half halt and the downward transitions. That's something we can think about now. Can you talk a little bit more about the why for this, the importance and the implications that this work has down the road for us as we go up the levels?

Yeah, so just rewinding back to that. Different versions of trot. You know, we said, we've said seven types of trot, you know, in canters, the same. There has to be a number of different canters that we have control of. Over. And the half halt being the main. The main. Well, it's not, not the only thing. It's not the only ingredient in collection. We need impulsion. Right. We need a horse that's bringing energy to the equation. We need a half halt to ask the horse to wait momentarily and balance towards their hind legs. And then we need them to be straight and balanced. That means, you know, front feet in front of hind feet. And then we need them to be letting go over their Top line, so they're not throwing so much effort in and tightening their back. Which then as we know, a horse running around with a tight back and a tight neck will just be flicking their legs everywhere and not moving in a natural way where they're bending all their joints in a supple, elastic way. So they're the ingredients that we, you know, we need arguably straight balanced, working over their back, that is in, that is a way of going and then impulsion and then the half halt to, to teach the horse as to which one, which trot or whatever you'd like and take weight behind and start to develop muscles to carry themselves in the hynex. That is all through the half halt. So if, you know, if I was making a trot walk transition on a four year old, I would definitely have my attention on the trot steps that I'm doing prior to making the walk transition. And if I'm not happy with those trot steps, then I'll just go out again, like back to normal trot and then try it again. And teach the horse that every time I ask you to come back into these smaller active trot steps, don't think about walking, don't think about like, don't run through my con, like my half halt, just like teach my horse to trot in smaller active steps back to where I could walk if I wanted to, or go back to trot again, normal trot. And the more you train that adjustability the horse, the better the horses get at it and the more you're training something like a vital part of what could become valuable later in your journey towards Grand Prix. And the only thing is in dressage, the, the real test of the trot pace, the canter pace is slightly different. It gets tested earlier with pirouettes, canter pirouettes. So that's the ultimate collection in Canada is the pirouettes. But the trot pace does not really get tested as such until you get into that intermediate A, Intermediate B Intermediate 2 and Grand Prix level. So medium to big tour. And so we can just very naively go all the way through the levels pressing George intermediate one with no real thought about adjusting the trot. You know, having the trot big and scopey and horses looking spectacular and then all of a sudden when we have to go and do small, quick, active piaffe steps, the horse doesn't have a clue what we're after. So for someone out there who is thinking, oh, I've got a level one horse or a novice horse or whatever level, whatever country you're in, you can still train your horse to be ready for the big tour stuff later just by having attention to detail on your downward transitions and your transitions within the pace.

And this is exactly what you're referring to, I imagine, when you talk about getting knowledge from the top down. Because it takes somebody who's ridden to a very high level at a high standard to know what you've just told us. And so that's that getting knowledge from the top down, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. Tell you a funny story. So we were at the World equestrian games in 2018 in Troyon and the last day of the, of the dressage, the freestyle day, was canceled because of a hurricane, a big hurricane that blew into the States. I can't think of the name of the hurricane, but it canceled the whole final thing. And everybody was still working their horses because the horses were there and they can't just be left in the stable. So everyone was out when the weather was fine, working their horses. And I was working my horse with Hans Peter Mindehud from Holland, who's a friend of mine. And we're trotting around, you know, talking. And then he made a transition from trot to walk. And it possibly was the worst transition hunts Peter had done in at least probably five years. And he laughed and he looked at me and he said, I guess the transitions don't matter anymore because the competition was over. Right. And like, you know, but what he was, what was really interesting there was he would never have accepted a transition like that in his normal training. And that's what a high performing athlete does, right? So he would never have allowed himself to make that transition when he's training for something. But then it's all over and we're sitting in America in the middle of a hurricane. He's like, oh, well, I'll let him have that one. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm trying to give everybody this message because it doesn't, it's, it's a mindset that makes you into a high performing rider. Not necessarily a natural born skill or a, you know, fact that you've got the world's best horse. You know, it's a mindset and the mindset of just doing everything with purpose, you know, something as simple as a trot walk transition. You know, I'm sure people listening to this have done thousands of these things, really just sets a tone and sets up a theme and just brings in a discipline, a discipline and a focus from, to a rider that will just give them Hopefully a tool, a tool going forward towards Grand Prix that's going to benefit them.

Yeah, love that. So, key messages for today that I've written down. I'm going to run by you, see if I've got the right thing. Written down is one, to separate our downward transition and half halt aids. And I think it's really important not just to hear the words, but to actually think about what that means and think about what your aids are.

Yeah, so the half, the half volts or multiple thereof, half holds are used to prepare the pace, and prepare the pace, balance it, get it to wait, and then the transition as such, or the signal that you give the horse to make the transition. And let's call it a signal because, I mean, there is a bit of confusion out there that people go, I'll say, how do you make a downward transition? They'll go, I'll make a half halt. Well, I, I challenge that. I want people to think about what their half fault aids are because those aids have to be repeated thousands and thousands and thousands of times in, in competition environments and where horses are, you know, riders are making half faults and that's where the half fault aids, you know, I use my body, try and use my body. I sit taller, lighter, try and draw a little bit up and back. If the horse doesn't respond to that, then I'll use my body and my reins if I have to, to try and get some form of communication from my body through to my horse's feet, because that's where it goes. You know, it's, it, it's where you tell the feet of the horse or the stride or step, don't step big and long, actually start to come back up under me and step up off the ground more. So, you know, my half or aids, you know, you could say they're predominantly my body and sitting lighter and such. And then my downward transition aids are going to be a completely different signal. Maybe a voice aid, which I'd like, I like using that. Maybe a little, little signal down the rain, whatever it might be, is, becomes the downward transition aid. And so, yeah, that's where I think we've got to separate the two and know that the half halt is for preparation and the, the signal or the transition aid is for the transition.

I think another really great actionable idea to come out of this is the idea to work in that preparation phase, so work on the half halts. And even if you're not, well, you might be wanting to work on transitions, but as part of that, you can actually work on the preparation phase without doing the transition. And I think, finally, the big lesson in this episode is if you're having a lesson with Brett Parbury, do not do a dodgy trot walk transition, even if you're exhausted.

I'll be watching. I'll be watching. And, yeah, I said, why did you do that? You just. Why would you. Why would you train your horse to do that for? Like, you're trying to train them out of doing that, let alone let them do it. So, yeah, that's. That's the thing. Like, for us to be smarter, a bit more disciplined, and. And give and not. And not get in the habit of giving the horses mixed messages.

Perfect. Thanks so much, Brett.

Thank you.