Ep. 30 On the challenges of teaching authority, boundaries, and self belief.

Hello, I'm Mary Wandlis WELcoming you to podcast 30. I hope you've had the chance with your horse, if he's on the lazy side, to try that strategy of going kick, don't, don't, kick, don't, don't, kick, don't, don't. It's so effective because it builds in that reward which if you just go, kick, kick, kick, kick, isn't there. And there's the chance for you and your horse to both be having that conversation of you've got to get out of bed, I don't want to, you've got to, I don't want to. And that's very tedious, very not fun. And once he's out of bed and you're out of bed, life is so much better. It also makes life very much easier for your teacher, coach, trainer, instructor, whatever you call her. Because the truth is that teaching authority and boundaries and self belief and having intention and a positive expectation is one of the most demanding aspects of our job. So with expectation you probably are aware how much riding is full of self fulfilling prophecies. And of course the ultimate one is the rider who walks across country course thinking, I hope we don't stop at the ditch, I hope we don't stop at the ditch, I hope we don't stop at the ditch. And brains can't code a negative. So she's probably running this multi, high intensity, panoramic, multicolored video of stopping at the ditch. And that expectation becomes a reality. You might have the expectation perhaps that your horse comes on the bit sometimes, but not that often. I would rather start by using the term he comes into the seeking reflexes where he lifts through his back, fills out through his ribcage, reaches his head and neck into the rein in that beautiful posture, carriage and movement that even makes backyard horses who don't have wonderful conformation look fabulous. And most riders go through a stage in their learning where they start to get it and then they lose it and they start to get it and then they lose it and they're losing it a whole more than they're getting it. And their expectation virtually is that they fleetingly get the horse in that state and then lose it. They fleetingly get him in that state and then lose it. And because it's an expectation, it, it often is the reality. So I sometimes have taught whole lessons actually where people have paid me a fair amount of money to stand in the arena and basically say, make it again, make it again what you just did, make it again. Imagine what it's like to have that feeling. Can you find your way back into that feeling? How can you make it again? Sometimes I know what the rider has to do to make it, so I'm giving them a direction, sometimes I don't. And I might even be saying, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. Whatever it is that you're doing, keep doing it. It's working, keep doing it. Now. Riders are often put off the scent by instructors saying, oh, he was just so good, reward him and maybe they pat him on the neck and the reins go loopy and they tip forward when they do it and suddenly they're not making and they've given the horse so many choices about what he can do and perhaps from the horse's perspective, they just went away. In fact, when you get something good to happen, you can't even afford to take the time out to congratulate yourself. You have a little conversation in your head where you go, oh, that was really good and you stopped making it again. You stepped out of the game and you've lost it. A colleague was telling me of a conversation she had with one of her clients who at the end of the lesson hadn't ridden one of our school horses as well as she does normally, where she can get him into carriage looking really great. And she realised that she came to the lesson hoping it would happen, aspiring to it happening, but not expecting it to happen. Having self belief is huge. Here's another example. People will do things with their hands. Like someone might go in a transition from walk to trot. They expect the horse's head to go up in the transition, their hand goes down in the transition, they lean forward, closing the angle between their torso and their thighs. They drop their hands, the horse's head goes up, they're trying to use their hand in a down direction to keep the head down, but it doesn't work. It's almost like the rein was the diameter of a big wheel. Joining their hand to the bit and the horse's head, they put the hands down, the other end of the wheel goes up. But they only get to believe that once they know what their body can do to keep the horse reaching into the rein. And once they believe their body can do it, they no longer feel the need for their hand to do it. This could be true as well, for the pulling and the fiddling and the playing with their fingers and the this and the that that people do to keep horses heads down, where the reality is that once they believe their body can do it and their body is doing a good job. None of that is necessary. Recently, in our British magazine, Horse and Hound, there was a look back to the London Olympics in 2012, when the British team won the dressage gold medal. And there were some wonderful quotes. One from Carl. I told Charlotte on the way down there that some people wish it would happen, some people think it would happen, and you're going to make it happen. And this was on the way, just before her Grand Prix special, a quote from Charlotte. I just wanted that gold medal so badly and didn't want to let anyone down. My legs were like jelly. We all know what it's like to have legs like jelly, but not many people know what it's like to have legs like jelly when you're going into the Olympics. And actually, I remember watching on TV after Charlotte had won that medal and she shook, her whole body shook in a way. I think that happens to anyone only a few times in their lifetime. Adelinda Corneilson from Holland after the freestyle said, let's be clear, I very much wanted to win gold, but my world hasn't collapsed now that it's silver. Nathalie Susann Wittgenstein from Denmark, she just missed out on the bronze individually. It started with a swear word, which I won't repeat. Boom. I don't care. He was a really good boy and I can't be more pleased. They're rather lovely comments, aren't they, from people who hoped and couldn't quite make it happen and Charlotte who could make it happen. So there's expectation, there's hope, there's creating something in each moment of make it again, make it again, make it again, make it again. Charlotte must have ridden her test like that. Adjusting, organising, adjusting, organising, adjusting, organising. And obviously the jelly didn't get the better of her. So let's talk about people in terms of not getting impulsion and not expecting that to happen, not expecting to generate. Go. I have a lot of strategies here as a coach, which I've come up with over a number of years, and in one of them, we set up a numbering scale and let's say it's a 05 scale in which 5 is an acceptable level of impulsion. And we'll work on getting it and losing it and getting it and losing it with me going, that's a five. Oh, no, it's down to four. It's down to three. What are you going to do about it? Can you find your way to four? Good for you. That's five again. You're losing it. Well, Done, you're back there. But meanwhile, this is taking a lot of input from me. And once I'm pretty sure the rider can recognise five, I might say, I'll shut my eyes. Let me know when you're consistently on a five and then I'll start to teach you. So I say to I'll come and do my bit once I know that you're doing your bit. And I'll probably cover my eyes with my hands and I might peek out through my fingers, but I'll say every now and again, can I start teaching you yet? Are you ready? Yet another strategy I've used is to, okay, I'm going to teach you in the way I think you're riding your horse with a similar commitment level. And then I'll sit there and I'll say things, do a circle. Well done. Keep your heels down, change the rein. And normally, pretty soon people realise that that's not fun to have me teaching that way. And that actually is the level of commitment that they're going for it with. And normally that will inspire them to do more. Sometimes I directly ask somebody, or what's your go for it level? What's your commitment go for it level out of 10? Now, sometimes somebody says seven or eight, and I think they're on two or three, in which case we get to wonder about their commitment in their life as a whole. And there have been times, I think, when these have been some very privileged people who maybe haven't had to dig deep in life. So they think A3 is digging deep, or maybe they recognise they're doing a three. I might ask them what's stopping them going higher. There are people who want it too much. You might remember the story of the man who came home at night and put his head round the door and asked his wife, how did the horse go today, dear? Before he took his cue about how she should enter. So his wife wanted it too much. But some people don't want it enough. So supposing their commitments levels are 3, I might also ask them, what's your horse's commitment level? That's probably a three as well. And then I'll ask them, what's my commitment level? Me as coach. And normally they'll go, oh, you're doing an eight. And I'll, well, you know, there's something not quite right here, isn't there? If my commitment's more than twice yours, perhaps you should be paying me double. Or perhaps every time I say you have to go more, you get to pay me another pound. Or dollar, depending on where we are. I've shaken hands with people on agreements like this and actually not many people have followed through and ended up paying me the money. But the ritual of going through this wakes people up a bit. It's true that not many teachers are as creative as I am. And if you think your teacher's listening to this podcast, perhaps you need to be ready. And I'm not making the rider more scared of me than she is of her horse. I'm just highlighting what is and calling on various ways to motivate people. And I have even been known to say, I'm sorry, I really don't want to teach like this. It's not fun for me and I don't need the money enough to go through this. Maybe you need to find yourself another teacher. And while some people really don't teach with commitment and my well done ride a circle, keep your heels down is all too common and is appalling. Actually, many of the teachers I know would tend to step in and feed their energy to the client, trying to motivate them. And by the time you've done that and you're going, come on, you can do it, go for it more. Come on. If you had eight lessons a day, eight 45 minute private lessons, and they all had that, come on, I'm going to wind you up, I'm going to get you going, I'm going to get you to get your horse going. At the end of those eight lessons, you would be exhausted. And perhaps you as the pupil might not think of yourself as what popular psychology sometimes called an energy vampire, but you just might be trying to feed yourself and stoke yourself up. The coach's energy. So there is the question that goes, what stops you going for it more? And it may be about risk and reward and the fear of speed, losing control, being jostled, being unseated, being whizzed off with. Maybe you're plagued by what ifs? What if he sees this? What if he butts? What if he spooks? That makes you hyper vigilant. Tending to join the horse if he's hypervigilant in a state of arrest, with that narrow focus of attention which steals working memory. But actually, your horse probably isn't hypervigilant or you wouldn't be having this kind of trouble to make him go. Perhaps what holds you back is more existential, the fear of being the leader, of sticking your neck out, of not fading into the wallpaper, or of making a statement. Either way, a sports psychologist can really help you. And really, this is more a job for a sports psychologist than your teacher, because your lessons will keep hitting the same brick wall and that's not fun for anybody. Jo Cooper@EquestrianConfidence.com does some wonderful work in a rather unusual way, but there are lots of good sports psychologists who earn their living working with these kind of issues. Remember my friend who's an International Grand Prix team level rider, saying stallions are harder to impress? They are indeed harder to impress. But this implies that any horse needs to be impressed by his rider. That doesn't mean bullied by his rider, but it just means taking his rider seriously. So you might wonder, how seriously does your horse take you? How impressed with you is he? Can you quietly me Tarzan, you horse, me the brain, you the brawn, go leg, slap, whip, tap if you need to. That's very different to come along horsey, come along, horsey, come along, horsey. Or the flailing around that can happen to all of us if we get really badly disorganised. And when you start flailing around, the horse just goes, yes, dear, sorry, awfully sad for you. Got you, haven't I? Whilst we're talking about issues that make clients difficult to teach, I'm going to tell you a few more. So one might be the person who wants a magic pill, who doesn't expect to dig deep, who doesn't expect to sweat or really focus, who wants it to drop down from the sky or wants you to do it for them. Perhaps the opposite end of the spectrum would be the student who yes, but they've done something really well for then it's really good and it's probably a new attainment and a new threshold. And the person goes, yes, but my heels weren't down. Yes, but my contact was intermittent. Yes, but this, that or the other. And you as coach are there thinking, please, please give yourself a break, give yourself some validation for what you did do. Don't just focus in all the time on the missing bit, because it's what you focus on that you get to grow. And being able to just set aside what didn't work so much, but really notice and build on what did work, even if it's a small percentage of your session, will make so much difference to you in the long term. And just going well, that bit was no good. That wasn't good. That wasn't good enough either is dooming yourself to stay stuck. Another subset of riders give up every time they just get to the edge of the breakthrough. They're riding along and you as coach can see that really good things are about to happen, and they're just on that cusp of a change, and they go, I can't do this any longer. I have to stop. And then you'll set it up again with them. And every time you get to that point, they go, oh, I just can't keep going. And there's some internal barrier that some part of themselves is stopping themselves from overcoming. And that, again, is just so sad. And another illustration of the way in which pretty much all of us tend to be our own worst enemies. Something else that happens with students is that they'll say, but my other teacher says, and come up with a conflicting idea to the one you're saying. And I as coach normally say, well, look, we're here in my lesson now, and your other teacher may have her reasons, but my take on this is so and so, and this is how we're going to do it. There are other students that blame themselves or blame their horse. And actually, quite often on my teacher training courses, we have people who are interested amateurs who really want to develop their eye and understand more about our philosophies of coaching and how learning happens. And when we start talking about the difficulties that people have with learning and the issues that face us as coaches or on getting people into a learning mode, it's very often those folks at the end of the course will say, okay, one of the things I've really learned from this is as a pupil, I really need to not go in that direction, but focus on the things that really help me. They perceive themselves from the outside in a totally different light. And actually, it's really worth becoming the pupil that your coach, trainer, instructor really wants to work with. You will get the best from her if you can do that. And the idea of teachability is really significant. And we hope within the Ride with youh Mind system that the more pupils work with one of my accredited coaches, the more they learn how to learn and how to be teachable. And that makes it so much more fun and productive for everybody. I hope I've begun to encourage you to step more outside your comfort zone, into your stretch zone, to have what was your stretch zone become your comfort zone, to expand that stretch zone into what might once have been your panic zone, to be brave, to go for it, to quietly learn to stand your ground and be the kind of leader your horse needs. You might want to take the personality test on vearcharacter.org it's free. It doesn't take so long. And it ends up telling you your top five strengths. If you feel that these webinars have really put you face to face with your weaknesses, it's really worth knowing what your strengths are. And often we don't realize because the things that are our strengths are are so easy for us. We imagine they're easy for everybody. But drawing on your strengths can really help you. When you're working on your weaknesses, what will also really help you is the subject of our next few webinars, which is mental rehearsal. Through this, you really focus on growing your new learnings and growing the facets of your riding that really are ripe for improvement. Meanwhile, have fun, enjoy your horses. I'll be with you again soon.