https://www.listennotes.com/e/7085a2e510824c67b9395c34601e465c

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? This is one that those of us in your programs have heard many times and that is every horse is different, but also they're all the same. Okay, so every horse is different, but also they're all the same. When you've said that to riders in your programs, what do you mean by that?

Look, I mean, I've done enough face to face coaching over the years to have nearly heard every personal story that every horse comes in with. So oftentimes what we do when we're coaching is we'll, we'll ask the person when they ride in, okay, what would you like to do today? And you know what, why are you here? Why do you feel the need to come and have a lesson with me? And then you'll hear this story explaining the horse, this and that and the whole life story, which is fine. That gives you some background. Most times when you're, you know, you.

Find yourself when you're listening to the.

Story, you are picking up things in the person more so than the horse because the horses tell you exactly what they need to do within 30 seconds of seeing them. Really like their muscle structure, the type of the horse.

You can get a good gauge when you've seen enough of it. You can get a very good gauge.

Very quickly on where the horse is at.

And it's always the rider and the rider's system.

By the time you've asked the rider a few questions, you know, who have they trained with? Where have they been, what have they done? You can get a good idea on.

Where the rider's up to and at.

Has already told you what they need to know. So you hear all these unique stories about the specific horses and. But there's really only a few things.

That solve the problem.

And so whilst every horse has a different story, what fixes the problem or advances the horse or develops the horse further is, is just one of a few things.

And by the time you've worked out.

Where, where the horse fits in the puzzle when it comes to these ones, one of a few things, it's the same fix for all horses like that. So yes, whilst your Horse is very different. I'm sure everyone thinks their horse is very different. They're actually all the same.

We all have a very unique butterfly. It's so funny. I just have to laugh at the psychology of it. We're all so funny as humans. We all do the same things. So when. Well, you know, in that scenario, you're talking about the. The rider is telling you the horse's story, the whole backstory. You're getting a lot of information from watching the horse in this time, and you're getting the snapshot and the muscle development and all that sort of thing. What are you hearing in the person's story? Are you getting any valuable information about the person as a rider at that point?

Yeah, I mean, the way a person rides is generally a reflection of who.

They are in most instances. And, you know, is this person meek and mild?

And like I say, once you've asked a few questions as to who they've trained with in the past, who's been.

Their mentor, you can get a gauge on what the information is that's. That's molded them, you know, and formed their philosophy on how they want to train.

So, you know, is that person meek and mild?

Is the person sort of a bit aggressive and rough and, you know, wants to be really, like, tough and. And you start getting an idea of where the problem, why. I mean, to solve a problem, you've got to kind of piece together why the problem happened in the first place.

And so that helps you.

You know, you.

You look at the horse, you start.

Piecing together the rider, and you. You start to solve the problem.

But, yeah, you do learn more from the rider.

So it's really funny, you know, with all of that said, every horse is.

Different, and they're all the same.

It's the rider that kind of thinks their horse is different, which makes the rider different.

And you end up getting the riders.

To do everything the same. So, you know, you say to the rider, okay, let's try this, and that could be the 10th time for that day. You've tried that. That's why often in my clinics, you know, there's a real.

There's a real culture in dressage to.

Just arrive.

Have your lesson, your dressage lesson, and then leave.

And I tend to try and make the people that come to my clinics stay for the whole day because I really want them to see that there's a systematic process that needs to be adopted, and I want them to see.

It applied to every horse before and.

After them, and notice how the horses get Better with that consistency. So with that systematic attention to detail on the fundamentals and, and no matter.

What level the horse is, you know.

It could be a rider who's, you know, that they're watching, who has achieved.

A lot, a, you know, a famous rider.

And you're improving the horse through the.

Same basics that you may be improving them with in an hour's time. And then they start to see how.

It all fits together. So that's, that's why I try to make people stick around and watch and.

Understand that it's the system that trains.

The horse, not necessarily the magic bullet.

And when you're sort of sizing up the horse in those early stages of a lesson, you're looking at, you were saying how it's muscled and how it's carrying itself. What information is the horse giving you in those few seconds and minutes?

The obvious things are the biomechanics, the.

Way the horse works and moves and.

Uses its body, the, the angles in which the.

The limbs of the horse and the.

Back and the hips and where the neck is and how the horse is balanced. That's a big one. You know, where the, how the horse travels in balance.

Where does the balance naturally go? Then there's the temperament. You know, is it quite a sensitive.

Hot horse or is it quite a dull, dull horse?

They're the two main ones.

And then, of course, once you've seen.

The rider do a few rounds, you.

Can, you can get an idea of how the riders, how the rider rides and how that horse is adapting to carry the rider. And, you know, what little. I mean, with the bit of information that I've got, how can I. Where can I insert my information and get the rider focusing on certain things to make a difference? So the horse tells you, with the mechanics and the temperament and then the balance and then put the rider on top, you get a pretty clear picture of where you need to go.

And knowing you, you would be watching what lines the rider is ride, riding, choosing to ride in those early st stages, you would be clocking in your mind somewhere. Oh, okay. A bit random with these lines. And that's what you do, isn't it?

Yeah, I'm just looking at the focus of the rider, the way in which the rider's focused and, and how, you know, at the end of the day.

Every single one of us can improve.

And I'm just trying to find places or skills in the writer and the.

Way the horse naturally wants to go.

Because there's never been a perfect horse born yet, you know, what does the.

Horse want to do?

And then try to solve the puzzle and then try to think of how can I structure this now, now I've.

Heard the rider's story and I know what type of person the rider is. How can I structure this information in a way where the rider gets.

It can repeat it and it fits into the current system that they are using. So there's a lot, you know, just.

Throwing out information willy nilly will only confuse a writer.

It's really about showing them how this.

Bit of information, how important it is and why it's important and then how.

It fits into their system and how they're going to remember to do it all the time.

Now, you know, you mentioned how a writer will come to you with, you know, often a big backstory about the horse and the situation. Do you see that us riders can actually be getting in our own way by focusing too much on that horse's story and, and their background and maybe getting a little too involved with, with all that?

Yes, definitely.

I mean, I don't blame people for getting involved in that because.

No, the intention is good. Right? Like it's come from a good place.

That's right.

The intention's really good.

And dressage tends to lure the person who is, who does care about the backstory. So, you know, we're not. Dressage riders aren't like, let's say, for example, cutting trainer or a thoroughbred racehorse trainer who's putting a lot of horses through their system.

Dressage people tend to have 1, 2.

3, maybe horses that they are fully focused on.

So they are getting caught up in.

The backstory and the.

And.

You know, it's, it's the nature of the beast too. The dressage rider is quite a intense, you know, intellectual in some ways, person who, who does. And it's just a matter of giving them the confidence to, yeah, okay, we.

All, we all get the story, it's fine.

But let's just approach this in a really systematic way because at the end of the day, all these horses are the same. You know, they, they will learn from pressure and release.

They will learn through repetition.

They will learn the more clear you.

Set the boundaries and the more clear.

You are with your aids and the more.

You know, the longer you are.

Consistent and don't go on a tangent, the more chance you've got to train the horse up the levels and that, like I said, that they're all the same, that's, they all need that.

Now, whether it's a high necked horse or a low necked horse or a.

Horse with a weak back, a horse.

With high hocks or low hocks or.

Hot or cold, that's where you'll make the tweaks. But in the actual approach, pressure release, systematic approach, it's all the same.

Just a quick message from us. If any of the ideas discussed today resonate with you and you'd to love, 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 so the partrism we're discussing today is that every horse is different, but also they're all the same. So Brett, you have worked both with your own riding and competing and in coaching, you've worked across different disciplines, dressage, eventing as well as western disciplines. So going along with this sort of ethos that horses are essentially horses, what are the principles of training? You touched on a few just before. Let's go deeper into it. What are the principles of training that all horses, regardless of the discipline, respond to?

The main difference between equestrian sport and.

Western sport, let's say, is the fact that the equestrian horse has to learn.

To take weight behind and carry behind.

Whilst whilst thinking forwards and responding forwards. Whereas the western horse, while a lot.

Of the good western trainers would probably.

Pull me up here and say we.

Need our horses for thinking forward as.

Well, there's a lot more stopping and reining back and the horses thinking backwards. Even though I know the top reining trainers will still want their horses to be thinking forwards in a spin when they spin. But if I could just draw this line down the middle and go, well.

The dressage horse and the eventing horse.

And that they have to be carrying weight behind and show jumper carrying weight.

On the hind legs with a lighter.

Front end and lighter shoulders whilst traveling forward.

And the other horses, the western horses.

Are thinking very much about over their.

Back end, thinking backwards.

So what trains the horse to do that? Well, system and pressure and release, that's number one. But again, a rider who has the feel of balance, like can feel balance in the horse.

A rider who, who. And this is where it annoys me.

A little bit, probably more so in.

The western sports, to be honest.

You can't judge the way a horse goes by what is in your hands.

There's just so much more to the horse. Often the end result ends up in your hands.

Like if a horse is off balance, leans forward, doesn't take weight behind you or you know, wants to pull longer, you'll feel the end of the chain of events in your hands, but you can't judge the way in which those are going by what's in your hands. You have to develop a feel for what's underneath you, what is behind you, what your feet can control, how you can foresee a loss of balance coming before it happens. This all takes timing, feeling, experience.

Patience.

And the, The.

What I see a little bit in the Western training is as soon as those horses. And look, dressage is.

No, dressage can also improve here. Well, actually, all sports can is. And I, And I put this out.

To all riders, including myself, like, I've got to try and I have to.

Get better at this as well. But not to.

Not to go too hard on horses in their mouths and with their neck, when really the problem started somewhere else.

Could be the ribs, could be not taking the weight behind. Could be one hind leg doesn't want to take as much weight as the other. Could be in this, the horse put its one hind leg slightly to the outside and ended up crossing on the.

Shoulder on the inside.

And I just think that we've lost that. We've. We've. Horsemanship in general has lost the empathy for understanding horses throughout their whole body.

And their whole way of going.

So I know I've gone on a tangent here, but that, that I think we need to revisit that and really understand that as a. As a population of people riding, I.

Think that one of the reasons that.

The empathy has been lost is because of the commercial nature that you get nowadays, where, you know, for those professional trainers who have.

Who are trying to make a living, they end up taking a lot of.

Horses on and they feel like they've got less time. More horses equals less time. More horses equals more challenges.

No time and lots of challenges equals frustration.

And that's where riders.

That's where certain horses will fit the.

System and certain horses won't. And that's where. That's. That's where I think we could definitely improve.

Well, there's. I think there's a. At least one podcast episode to flesh that idea out more, isn't there?

Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, that's. It's really funny, you know, like, as I get older, I can still. I can recall these conversations with my father and his mates when I was young. They have.

Old. Old horse trainers have been saying this.

For years, like, for decades.

Right.

You know, it's not just, I'm making it up. Like the older you get, the more sympathetic and more empathetic you get for horses and their challenges. Because you've just seen enough problems. Yeah.

And.

Yeah, I think that's something that, that we always need to improve because horses are going to make mistakes. They always, they're going to make mistakes. That's just what happens. It's how, that's how they learn.

And riders need to be far more understanding of the mistake and what the correction is.

Let me throw this one at you. If talking about how, you know, every horse is different, but also they're sort of all the same, even across different horse sports. Most people listening to this podcast are dressage riders and eventers. Is there anything we can gain inspiration from or learn from watching maybe some of the western horse sports in their application of that core principle of training that you mentioned, pressure and release. Who do you see in different horse sports? Who's doing a really good job of that, that although the application is different or the end result is different, the. That we could learn from that.

Do you want names or.

Oh, maybe. Well, I mean, sure. Names or just. Is there certain disciplines that you find do that quite well?

Well, I'm naturally interested in cutting.

I really enjoy cutting.

Even though I'm a dressage writer, I do enjoy cutting.

And there's probably only three, maybe four people there that I really respect around the world. Like, not. I don't even know these people, but.

I've just watched and heard and listened.

To top trainers talk about them. And I might not name them just for all that, but look at the.

End of the day, at the time.

At the pointy end of any sport, there's going to be a small group.

I actually personally take a lot of inspiration from eventers.

I do love working with eventers, but what I find with eventers is that.

It'S the true horse person sport.

You've really got to.

To be a successful eventer, you truly have to be a top horse person.

You've got to understand management, you've got to understand fitness training. You've then got to get your horse to do three different disciplines, show jumping with a sort of a, an an.

Amount of carefulness to want to leave the rails up.

That's after you've galloped them the day before. And then enough bravery and sensitivity to go around cross country and not have a problem and be fit enough.

And then of course, with that horse.

That you've got, you know, you're trying.

To get a dressage test, a very.

High level dressage Test in. At the top of the game, you're.

Trying to get a dressage test out.

Of an event, out of a jumping horse that's as fit as a fiddle and not necessarily made to do the job. So I take my hat off and.

Take a lot of inspiration from eventers.

I love the fact that they also just get on and get it done. They get on their horse, they ride them up the road, they gallop them to get them fit, they jump them.

They'Re in the dressage arena.

Train flying changes, half passes for me. And I've seen nearly every. And sort of taken an interest in nearly every equine discipline you can. I really respect eventers, top level inventors.

And I think in terms of, you know, you're always telling us in the programs about how we're aiming to be really silent as writers and have, you know, almost invisible aids. And although, like, in terms of a dressage context, although the eventers might create slightly different shape, slightly different way of going to the pure dressage riders, you can't fault those top eventers in terms of that criteria. Like, they are. Their aids are so light, the horses are so responsive.

That's right. There's some beautiful riders in eventing who.

If they chose to come across the.

Dressage, would do quite well. I mean, everyone knows that when you're.

At the top end of dressage, it's difficult. You're trying to create a lot of compression and energy and compressed energy in a horse that you're trying to not hold onto. You're trying to teach them to do it by themselves.

But these eventers, they ride with an.

Enormous amount of feel and they're not scared to make mistakes like you watch event is schooling their horses and they're.

Making mistakes everywhere and they don't get frustrated and they don't get worried by.

It and they just keep on training. And.

So I, I do believe that.

The event is, that that's a really, really good sport for developing great horse men and women.

I feel like there's a story there, like, did you ever consider becoming an eventer?

I did, yeah.

After the London Olympics, I was the.

Dressage advisor to the Australian team at the London Olympics. And.

And after hanging around with the eventers.

I mean, I'd already had a really quite a good, successful dressage career before London Olympics. And it was one of those things where I thought, well, maybe I could try this.

And I did.

For one moment, one of Australia's number one eventers gave me a horse and I went and did Some events had a great time, but then I got.

Offered this really good stable of dressage horses, so.

And I didn't have the time to go on with it.

I don't know whether I would have.

Gone on with it.

I did enjoy it.

It was great. It's exhausting.

Then you're walking cross country and you're.

Yeah, I don't think you could do that with your hip.

No, no, that's right. Well, yeah, so. But I did. I did really enjoy it and was.

It was actually quite nice to do.

A sport where after the dressage test, you just didn't think about it again. You jumped. You then suddenly had to go and.

Walk across country and jump, show jump and all these things.

So you weren't standing around. That's funny.

Unlike us dressage writers, who are just obsessed about their test for the next 14 days. I love that. That's hilarious. Time to wrap up the conversation, Brett, but really fun. Nice to hear about your experiences in some different sports. I think it's quite inspiring for us to think about how we can learn from other disciplines in horse sports and that essentially, you know, our horses are horses and they pretty much want the same things in life and how we can try to balance those elements of having empathy for our horses and understanding of where they've come from, but not letting that get in the way of what they need from us. So, lots of great food for thought. Thank you very much, Brett.

No trouble. And I just think that, just on a closing note, that if there's someone.

Listening to this and they do have, like, this backstory, then they go, oh, maybe that's me.

What I'd say to that is try to analyze the backstory from the horse's perspective on a pressure and release basis. So. So, you know, I'll just give you an example of a backstory. You know, my horse went to the breaker breaker, did a terrible job, then I sent it to this person and my horse started standing up and then it came home and, you know, something happened. I got sick, horse spent six months in the paddock, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So. So then to look back on that story, there's a few things that come out. One that somehow pressure and release put on and off at the wrong time.

Created this horse to look for options.

Which were just which.

Which happened to be classed as naughty.

But at the end of the day, the horse just tried what it thought it had to do to get rid of a pressure, and then when it did, the pressure went away. So the horse thought they'd do it again.

Right.

Because that's how they learn. So run back through the pressure release story of the horse and just identify, ah. When the horse did that, the pressure was on. And when the horse did it, did the thing, the pressure went away. All right, I can understand how the horse learned this problem. The second thing to come out of that story is inconsistency. You know, like, so there's no consistency in the riding. Went from this person to this person to six months in the paddock.

No consistency of a system. Right. So that doesn't work either. Having consistency is the key.

So when I hear those stories, they're the things that come out at me. So what I'd urge people to do is look at the story, look at your own story with your horse and work out how this happened. Like, what is the story on the basis of pressure, release, consistency, systematic training, you know, for a long period, and then you'll start to see where the holes are.

Yeah, I love that. Looking at their story through that lens of pressure and release, the training system, how they learn, I think that's really clever. Great conversation. Thank you, Brad.

Good Pleasure. Thank you.