Ep 8: The voice inside your head should be your own

I often think sometimes it's not what you do, it's what you don't do that actually makes you progress. We do need to be safe from ourselves sometimes, right?

Riders in dressage from performanceriders.com this is the Parbury 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 pabrism. 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'm going to give you one of three mystery choices for today's pabrism. Would you like to go for option A, B or C?

I'll go C. Okay.

Option C. Today's pabrism is the voice inside your head should be your own. The voice inside your head should be your own. Which kind of sounds a little bit like we're losing our minds. So what do you mean by this? This is another pabrism that you say all the time.

Yeah. So having. Having ridden around for many, many years with, with other people's voices in my head, you know, and what that means is you generally, as you're riding and you're, you're, you're schooling your horse, you're thinking of bits of information that have been given to you over the years, whether it's from a Coach, you know, YouTube clip, masterclass, DVD, whatever. Well, back in the day, a DVD. But what you would have is this like, oh, just information coming in. And it come in, it comes in the voice of the person who told you. And what that, to me means is you end up. You're writing other people's systems. So, yes, you're writing information that was given to you at a certain point in time and certainly would have been relevant at the time. But it's really important that that is applied at the right times when you're working on your own. So having someone else's voice in your head, generally riding around with bits and pieces of information coming and going out of your head, it's just so important that it is happening in a systematic way. And what I'm getting to in, in all of that is when you start writing your own system, so when you've created your own system of training, you know exactly what you're doing, why you're doing it, and where you're going with it, the voice inside your head becomes your own. And especially when you get into the habit of asking yourself questions. So this is, again, sounds a bit weird when you first mention it, but the dressage test, it is just a series of questions. And if you can get into the habit of writing, asking yourself the questions that the test is going to ask you. And not only that, the questions of the setups and bits and pieces that you have to do in between the test movements, and even the questions that you've got to, you know, you've got to ask yourself in just training a horse in general, if you can get into asking yourself the questions, the voice becomes your own. And then you're riding your horse in a way which you're answering your own questions, and therefore you're coming up with your own problems and you're forcing yourself to find solutions to your own problems. And the voice then starts to become your own. And it's important, I think, when you're writing for consistency sake and for the ability to be able to measure and work out if you're progressing or whether you need to change it, change tact, it's important that the primary voice in your head is yours. And the bits of information that come in, they come in, you work them out. Off the horse, you work out, I'll do this. I saw Carl Hester say this, or I saw Isabel Worth mention this. I'm going to bring that into my writing, but it's going to come in, in my system. So that's what that means.

That reminds me a little bit of our other podcast episode when we were talking about exercises and the importance of being able to break down an exercise and understand it in a way that fits in with your own system. So those topics are linked, I can see.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it is very much linked. And the exercises, as we said, are all for the writer. And then it's applying them at the right time. Well, then again, when the voice is yours in your head, when you're riding around with your voice going, what happens if I do this? Can I do this? Could I set up for something now? Can I change this? You know, and asking yourself questions that relate to the sport, you know, there's no point asking a question to yourself that doesn't relate to dressage. You know, get in the habit of asking yourself things. Can I go extended trot and collected trot within five steps? You know, can I halt and trot straight away and ask. And then the question. The question then makes you think, okay, well, what aids do I need? Then you put the aids on and then the Horse will tell you if it can do it or not. So then you go, oh, okay. Well, the halt to trot, I just didn't have enough. The horse didn't respond. I need to get a better response here. So you start solving your own problems and the power that that gives a rider, asking the question, seeing what happens, taking the time, seeing what happens, noticing, and then working out the solution. It's a really powerful thing for a rider and, and not riding around, trying to recall, oh, my coach said this two weeks ago. What did they mean? You know, it. And it's. It makes you become very, very matter of fact and not matter of fact. Horses love clarity. They want clarity. They don't really want gray. You know, they like black and white. They like to know where their boundaries are. They like to have relief and reward in these things. And then they also like to just have clear and be left alone. You know, ultimately, when they're doing it well, they want to be left alone. And if you can be clear in everything, you do everything, even in the sense of asking yourself questions and finding out the problems and working out the solutions, everybody benefits. And you'll just notice that your scores will get better. Like you, you'll have way better control of your horse in the test.

So let's, let's delve a little bit deeper into how we get into this problem when we don't really own that voice inside our head. Is this something that can come up, for example, when we're going to too many different clinics and having too many. Too much input?

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, name one successful athlete in the world, top athlete, that has gone to multiple coaches and said to themselves, I'm going to take a little bit of this one and a little bit of that one, a little bit of this one. I'm going to take all the best things. I'm going to do my, you know, try and make my own thing. Like, it's better to stay with one person and have consistency while you form your system. So once you form your system, then you can go, all right, now I want to improve my canda pirouettes, for example. I think that person, whoever it might be, rides really good pirouettes. I want to find out from them all the things they do regarding riding great can of pirouettes and start to get very targeted with what you're looking for. So, you know, I think that person rides a really good trot. I'm going to train with them for a period of time. I'm going to be very Specific with what I want to learn from them, and I'm going to improve the way I ride trot. But if you jump around too early with no real. What do you call, strategy, I suppose with no real strategy, you end up with this jumbled system and communication in your head and the voices are going and you're thinking, oh, but Brett said that and Rachel said this, and I heard Carl has to once say that it just. The horse just gets no clarity. And you as an athlete tend to just go round and round and round and round and round, you know, at the end of the day. And I'm a big believer in this. We, we ride in a certain way. Like each person has a bit, has a signature, the way they ride. We all ride in a certain way. And, you know, our job as an athlete and a person engaging in dressage is to try and say, well, this is how I ride, this is who I am, and this is how I ride. I now need to look at my weaknesses and my strengths. I need to strengthen my weaknesses, you know, what are my weaknesses? And then go, okay, now how can I find information that makes my weaknesses stronger? And then how can I bring this into a clear, clear way, clear system, clear method that I can repeat every single day, good or bad? And then can I get into the habit of riding and asking myself questions like the test is going to ask me or, or elements of the test? Can I get in the habit? Can I then look for the answers the horse gives me? Can I work out where the problems are? And now can I solve my own problems? And if I can't, can I source that from someone who is very good at that part of it? Because no one's great at everything. You know, like, everyone's got weaknesses and strengths, but if you can be very targeted and very strategic like that, you'll find that you really develop yourself. And, and, and that's what being an athlete is all about. It's, it's growing and trying to have that mindset of just developing yourself into being that great writer.

I think that was such a great comparison you made with athletes, top athletes in other sport. You know, we don't see them chopping and changing coaches all the time and, and going to different people, you know, every couple of weeks because there's a, there's an event on. And in fact, I was just thinking to myself, if, you know, for example, a famous tennis player changes coaches, that's actually news.

I was going to say, that's in the newspaper 100. That is news. And and, and what does it mean?

It means a complete pivot and a complete change of direction. Like a reset.

That's right. And in those, in those, let's say, bigger sports that are like the, the people in the inside, they know that the philosophy of that coach is this, and the philosophy of that coach is, is different, is that that athlete changing completely to another coach is almost like changing a complete philosophy in a training system and a way of training. And. Yeah, and then you'll see some athletes really, really thrive in a new system and some don't thrive. And, and they bounce around. You know, they bounce around. Well, that's exactly the same as with us. And it is about trying to find a coach or a method or a system that really matches with who you are. Like, what, who you are, what you are, the way you ride, the way you want to ride, what you, what you dream and to be like as a writer and then forming up your method and your system, and I think always doing that with one person to, to get the consistency and then start strategically improving your system by then targeting your info. And if you get that too early, if you run around getting bits and pieces from everybody too early, you'll only end up confused.

Yeah. You know, people often ask me why you and I don't produce little tips for YouTube, little video tips. And although that might be really good for our business, in some ways, the reason we don't do that is it because it's not a good, it's not a good strategy. You shouldn't be going to learn a system of training from bits and pieces off YouTube. That's another thing you tell us all the time, like, that does not work and we don't really want to be a part of that.

Yeah, that's right. Like, of course, you know, if someone. Information will come in so many different ways. Right. It'll come. It could be just someone over a glass of wine saying something, and all of a sudden the lights go on and you're like, wow, all right, that just completely made ten things make sense. And it can come in all different ways. So, you know, I'm not sort of saying that the YouTube clips aren't valuable. The, the bit that I'm concerned about by all that is, what tangent am I going to throw someone onto? So, so if I come on there and go, oh, by the way, you know, you've got to have your horse in front of your leg, and when your horse in front of your leg, you've got to be able to adjust the pace. Now if someone hears that bit of information and hasn't, doesn't really know what the underlying feeling of in front of the leg is or the underlying definition, let's say of in front of the leg. Now in front of the leg means when you stop riding, your horse keeps going. Right. That's, that's just a clear definition for something like in front of the league, when you stop riding, your horse will keep going by itself. So if someone listens to that information at lunchtime, just had a bad ride. I mean people don't usually look on YouTube when they've had good rides. They only look on there when they're bad rides. Yeah. So they've gone up there, looked at lunchtime. Oh, I'll just see what this Brett's on about. Right. Oh, in front of the leg. So then they get into then this whole thing of like, well, I'm going to make my horse hot and in front of me and they make the horse respond, but then they keep riding all the time. The, the horse will actually go backward, it'll go backwards in its understanding and its desire to work for the rider and its willingness. So without having some real context behind that, that little bit of info. Yeah, you can throw someone onto a tangent very quickly. And my concern always is the horse has to suffer that. So, so I'd prefer have more context around the definitions of, of very important pieces of info so that the horse and rider can understand it and spend more time like spend more time getting to know it. And then the clarity is there. It's the clarity that the horse benefits from. The clarity and the consistency and you.

Know, the big difference between the YouTube clip and the, the tip you might pick up over a glass of wine is the opportunity to have a two way conversation about that and like you said, to discover a bit of context. Okay, when might you use that strategy? And what was the horse doing then? And then what do you do after that? You know, that's the big difference. And I think, you know, it's so easy for us just to go down a rabbit hole of a total waste of time. And the worst thing, wasted miles on the horse's legs for something that's not helpful.

A tangent will, will put you back a minimum three to six months. Like a big tangent. I've been on plenty, trust me, they will put you back in your progression. And I often think sometimes it's not what you do, it's what you don't do that actually makes you progress. We do need to be safe from ourselves sometimes, right? Right. As Indra search and sometimes not choosing to find a piece of information and go on a massive tangent will benefit you more than finding the piece of info and going on the tangent and then realizing six months time this is not working, like I've gone completely, I've just, you know, put myself back. Yeah, sticking to a clear system. Now the idea is, and this is why I'm always on about think more off the horse, do more off the horse. Don't rely on doing this on the horse to get yourself better, get everything sorted off the horse. So if you feel like, okay, I've got a suspicion that my horse is not properly in front of my leg. Okay, now rather than find a piece of info, go off on a tangent and you know, end up three months later with the horse that's completely negative, go, okay, well, maybe I should get a little bit more context and understanding around this. So I'm going to find someone who preaches this, you know, in front of the leg thing. I'm going to really drill down and learn exactly about what it is, you know, because the horse can only be in front of the leg if the rider stops riding to check if the horse keeps going. Right? So that's that. Your horse will never be in front of the leg unless the rider asks the question, can I stop riding? And then waits for the answer, will my horse keep going or not? So that you can only have. And something so simple as that I've seen just go so wrong by the rider not doing the most important part of this, which is stopping riding. Because at the end of the day, the more we train our horses, the more they should do by themselves, right? The more they should do this for themselves. And that little piece of info of, okay, get my horse in front of my leg right now. I've made that my horse. I've got, I've gotten my horse to be responsive now. Now can I stop riding? There's a question and you, you, you, you ask that and then you see what happens. And if the rider doesn't do that, then be tangent coming and the horse at the end of the day will get sick of being, you know, kicked in front of them and they're not left alone.

Right? 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. Performancewriters. Com. So this papyrism we've been discussing today is the voice inside your head should be your own and not anybody else's. Now Brett, how does this fit in with actually doing some learning? So you teach writers all the time in performance writers, that's all about education programs in dressage breakthrough, you teach your whole system. So how does that fit in with, with empowering riders to have their own voice inside their head?

Well, basically what I go on about is like I'm, I'm not here to say that my system is like the end all and be all. Like, I'm not trying to pretend that that's happening. Like, I'm always trying to improve my system as well. So. But what I'm trying to say is it's important that the riders have a clear system and note and, and get into the habit of thinking about this off the horse, improving themselves off the horse, thinking about the elements of their system. You know, and this comes down to a, just a couple of very simple fundamental aids and responses that you need from your horse. And, and then noticing when they're right, like getting better at being aware and noticing when they're riding, if they're clashing these aids together, you know, clashing them and, and riding the horse with no feeling and, and also have that underlying thing of am I actually making my horse's life a bit better? Now, of course we'll, we'll all ask the horse to do something that requires a lot of effort, energy, that's part of training an athlete either way. But, and, and, and that's the easy part. The asking is the easy part. That's just something as just easy as putting a bit more pressure on. But it's when the pressure comes off, it's what I'm compromising on the way through. It's, am I holding on to something else to produce something else. And yes, I might be getting a short term response, but is this sustainable? And how does this link into, into my other training? There's so many elements that I feel that riders miss and it only catches up with them when it's too late. And so if you can get riders thinking about one, their system that suits them, like I say, it doesn't have to be mine. This, I'm happy to share mine and I'm happy to improve mine and I'm happy to work on it. But one thing I know for sure, you need to have a system. So that's one thing I preach a lot that you've Got to have clarity, you've got to have a system. This has got to fit together. Secondly, these are the aids I use and the aids that I use are aids that have been made for dressage so they layer together so that I can present them in a dressage arena or horse after horse, test after test, time after time. That's important, that they're dressage for our sport, dressage aids. Now if someone's doing another sport, they're going to have sport specific requirements that may require them to use other aids than ours. But for dressage, these are the aids I use and this is how they layer together so I can do dressage and get riders thinking about that. And then the biggest thing is to just remember you are an athlete. Like, you mightn't think you are, like you might think you're a horse rider, dressage rider, having fun, hobby rider, whatever, but the horse doesn't know that. Like, they want you to be an athlete, they want you to improve, they want you to work on your skills. They would want you to make their life better and you owe it to them to do that. Like you owe it to them to get better off the horse. Don't just rely on the half an hour, 45 minutes that you're on them to improve your skills. Actually just put in, could be three minutes a day. Doesn't have to be big and, but, but do something that's going to make their life better in this, in this arrangement. So it could be taking a lead rope up into the house, putting it around your feet, sitting there when you're watching Australian Idol and, and, and practicing, you know, having contact, working on, having connection, having good elbows, soft elbows, having fingers that move. There are so many things that you can do off the horse to improve your skill set when you're on the horse. And yeah, and I think it's just, it just doesn't get done enough. And I, it frustrates me a little bit because I see some lovely horses, like, I see lots of lovely horses, horses that are beautifully cared for and lovely, but the rider's just missing the one piece. And it's, it doesn't require enormous effort, it just requires some effort, you know, a few extras off the horse will just improve, you know, everything. And you know, we all know it's expensive, it's, it's a difficult sport to do, it's expensive, it takes up a lot of time. You sacrifice a lot to do dressage. You may as well sacrifice a little bit more time, effort, energy to get big rewards. At the end. Hmm.

What a great conversation again and some fantastic food for thought there. I love that. Our discussions, I think, always end up coming back to the fact that, you know, it's not really about the horse. You know, in this sport we tend to always be talking about, well, the horse does this and the horse does that. But I love that these conversations always end up with, it's our responsibility as riders. We need to take ownership of ourselves and work on ourselves, the benefit of our horses.

That's it. I mean the brief that we all sign up to, and I don't know if I've said this on the podcast before, but the brief we all sign up to when we come into. Into dressage is how do I make this horse the best version of itself? Now, of course, every horse has got an issue. Every horse has got strengths and weaknesses and some are good at some things and some good others. But the, the whole point is how do I firstly get my horse to be the best version of itself in a way in which it's. It. I'm actually making the horse's life better. You know, the horse is willing, it wants to work for me, enjoys my, my company, it enjoys the riding and that. That's as simple as rewarding and, and repeating and clarity and blah, blah, all the stuff I go on about. And until we are extracting the most from our horses, we don't have the right to blame the horse. You know, we don't like, you know, that's the cop out. That's the easy part. I'll just blame the horse. Yeah, it's no good or he doesn't do this or he always does that. Like that. That's the cop out. We've all done it like, don't. Yeah, you know, we all, because it's easy to do that but it's hard to look inwards and.

Yeah.

But I really want to just stimulate the thought of, you know what, I'm just going to change my mindset. This is all about me and I'm going to improve myself and just see if it does. If my horse does improve from it. And I think you'll find they always do. They always do.

Yeah, 100%. They're a byproduct of our, our own self improvement. Really awesome, great conversation. Thank you much, very Brett. See you next time.

Okay, bye bye.