Ep 71. Bringing out the best in you and your horse!

Hello, here we are in the summer of 2025, and here are my merry one lists welcoming you to podcast number 71, the first of a series of 10 podcasts for this summer. I was talking with a friend a while ago and we were really trying to get to the bottom of what it is that I really do. And we came to the conc conclusion that the bottom line is that I give it my best shot to bring out the best in every rider and horse who appear in front of me, whatever their age, whatever their stage, whatever their history and their issues. Bringing out the best is the name in the game. And a lot of people might think of the best as a destination you get to one day when you and your horse are then brilliant. But I really don't think of it like that. I think of change being made in a way that we get righter than we were and then righter than right and righter than righter than right and righter than righter than righter than right. As we go on a journey that builds skill. And every journey needs a map, preferably a really reliable map. Maps that confuse up with down are not very helpful. Maps that leave out landmarks and stages are also not helpful. If you have a map that's a proven map that other people have followed, that's a real plus. And you want this map to be accurate, reliable and robust. I think it's interesting that when I'm driving my car and I'm going somewhere new, I'm very happy to have a sat nav. And where I live in rural England, in parts of England that you don't know, there are tiny lanes going around bends. God only knows where they go. Without a map, you can be really stuck, especially when there isn't a signpost at the next junction, which can happen. But I'm not so mad about the way that satnav just gives you your next step all the time. It doesn't give you the overview. I find myself switching it off and then starting it again so I can see where I am on my journey and where the overview is. And I really don't like going anywhere without an actual paper map in my car. So that if push comes to shove, I can really move over, stop on the side of the road somewhere and see where am I in relation to where I'm going. And if sat nav is proposing a detour. I really like to know that getting to any destination anywhere is so much more possible when you know where you're starting from. I mean, this is simple. It's profound, but it gets so overlooked if you want to go to Paris, Are you in Edinburgh? Are you in New York? Are you in Istanbul? It makes a huge difference and you need to know now some of you will know my story, which begins really when I gave up riding in despair. In my mid-20s, I was desperately trying to be a good rider. I was working my way through my British Horse Society exams. I was eventing my horse and really wanting to do well. And I was trying so hard to be there that I didn't pay half enough attention to here. And I think all the instructors and trainers I had at that time were again trying to help me be there whilst paying no attention to hear. And I got to the point where I was trying harder, sweating more and actually getting worse. And it reached such a pitch that I quit riding, I sold my horse and I actually moved to London for a while. And whilst I was in London, actually, I began coaching again about six months later. And with no desire to really be there any longer, I'd just given up on there as ever happening. I started to pay attention to here. And that was the moment that changed my life. I had a beginner's mind. I started noticing in a new way. I started applying my understanding of physics. My degree subject is physics. And it gave me a brain that kind of went, there must be a science underlying this art. There must be a thing that makes things work. There must be something my teachers are doing that they're not telling me. And I set about looking at the rider horse interaction through those lenses and really trying to work out how it works. And I had some early successes that set me on the trail of the last 40 plus years. Seven books, 12 DVDs, an Internet membership site, and a way of looking at riding based on functional anatomy and physics. And there really are laws of cause and effect. And along the way there's been so much learning about coaching, about talking with people in ways that work for them. And I've learned so much about functional anatomy largely from the wonderful Tom Myers, who I would say is the most significant mentor I have had within my whole career. As an introduction to this map. Imagine, let's say, a window with four equal panes of glass. Or you could just think of a horizontal and vertical axis on a graph crossing in the middle and the horizontal axis is the horse. And charging off at one end of that axis we have the speedy horse. And at the other end of that axis we have the lazy horse. If the speedy horse had a thought bubble over his head, it would be something like, I'm out of here. If the lazy horse had a thought bubble over his head, it would be something like, oh, God, here we go again. And somewhere in the middle of that, right on the crossing point of our axes, in the middle of the window pane, as it were, is the horse who has a more equal balance in woe and go. And horses definitely can be trained to have that more equal balance, but they do have their own baselines. So the horse in the middle might have a thought bubble over his head that goes, I'm listening, I'm ready, what's next? On our vertical axis, we have the rider. And the upper part of that axis could be the rider who's really growing too tall. She hollows her back too much, lifts her chest. If you do that with me, as you're listening to this, you might even find you're not breathing. Your butt, the back of your butt tends to come off the saddle. You're sitting too much with your pubic bone down and probably stretching down into the stirrups with your stirrups too long. In other words, you've taken grow up and grow down to an extreme. Down below, at the bottom end of the graph, we'd have the opposite kind of rider who's round backed, her back is longer than her front, her front has given way. Her seat bones, if they have flashlights on them, would tend to point forwards. Her weight is very on the back of her bum and she's very down heavy on her horse. And just like the horse, the rider has a neutral, and that neutral coincides with the horse's neutral at the crossing point of our two axes. Now, for me, this concept of neutral rider, neutral horse, is an absolute North Star. And from the perspective at which I look at the horse world, I find it almost incomprehensible that within our historic lineage, we really don't have much attention paid to this. And so I'm going to call it the first secret. When the rider is in balance with the horse in each successive moment, she's not behind that balance point or in front of it, she's on it. That's where magic happens and that is my North Star. In this place, you're going to feel safer, you're going to be way more effective, your riding is going to be ethical, you're going to have more fun with your horse and your horse isn't going to have to compensate for your disorganisation and the fact that you're either ahead of him or behind him or holding your breath or whatever, the organisation in your body naturally starts to organise him. It's kind of like you found the pot of gold. And at the centre of a maze going back to our four quadrants, each rider has a bit of a different journey to that place. Even all the hollow backed riders on speedy horses will have some individual differences while there are overviews that stay the same. And then we could have the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse and the round backed rider on the lazy horse or the speedy horse. And all of them are finding their way, we hope, towards that pot of gold. Now very few riders ever begin their riding life being taught from this premise. One that has is young British rider Millie Dove. She posts a lot on Instagram as Millie Dressage. That's Millie with a Y. She rides really nicely and has a lot of followers there. And I taught her her up downs with when she was five and have been the main coach in her life since. So she's grown up trying to find the balance point when she's lost it, working on the idiosyncrasities of her body to get her to neutral because believe me, in the early days she didn't look like she was ever going to become what appears now as a talented rider. But she's a rider who's learned how to look like a talented rider step by step with bite sized chunks of information developing feel along the way that has her go, oh, lost it a little bit. And to realise how the horse tells her as well when she's lost it and when she's got it. And taking the noise as it were, out of how she communicates with her horse makes a massive difference to the result. This balance point of neutral rider on a neutral horse really is the ideal gateway to what we might think of as the third dimension of an axis that would come in and out of the paper or the window back in the past. On that axis would be all your attempts to ride the school movements, maybe from a rather disorganised place, maybe with a fair amount of pull, prey finagle things, hope, prayer I think is often a part especially of the lateral movements, people's attempts to do those. But going forward, having found that neutral place, there's quite a bit of learning to expand that neutral place into the lateral movements. But you have a different basis to do that from and an understanding that the balance point is what makes all the difference in the world. And believe me, the balance point for the lateral movements can take some finding. Most people really go hell for leather on the side they're trying to move the horse away from, they dig that seat bone in, they lean over, they kick hard, or they with their leg and the opposite side is floating in the breeze. And actually the real key to doing well lies in your organisation in the side on the direction of motion, the one that normally gets forgotten about and ignored. When the horse is no longer having to deal with your mispositioning, when you're not on the balance point, your new way of sitting begins to make sense to him. Your aids are clearer. He becomes a happier, more secure horse. And if you don't have the clarity of quiet, organized sitting, how's he supposed to know what is a meaningful signal? Signal? And what's a loss of balance or a grabbing on? Now, all of these three dimensions are really embedded in a fourth dimension, which is your mindset. What kind of rider are you? Are you desperate like I was in the days before I gave up? Do you try hard? Do you kind of float along in a bit of a la, la, la, la la, Whatever kind of a way, whatever it is, it kind of means you're not quite present and not quite in the moment and learning to really notice what's going on right here, right now. Back to our map again. Almost like it. Zooming in on the moment of where are you? What is actually happening here? It's always the discovery of what's happening now that catalyzes the upcoming breakthrough. It's the, oh, I hold my breath when that happens. Oh, I curl my toes. Oh, I just toppled backwards and I pulled on the rein and he shot off with me. It's those noticings, those aha moments that make what was once below your level of awareness not noticed and therefore impossible to fix. Suddenly, that change becomes possible. The impossible becomes possible. Over time, the possible becomes easy. Over more time, the easy becomes elegant. I would say that would be Milly's story over the last, probably, gosh, nearly 20 years, actually. I first taught her at five. She'll be 25, I believe, on her next birthday, maybe 24. I love that phrase. It's from Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Feldenkrais Method, which is a wonderfully helpful bodywork method for riders. And you can find helpful information there on the Internet, where there are some freebie lessons you can do that can make a huge difference to your body. Organisation, control, your coordination. Those aha breakthroughs are the name of the game, and I am sometimes known as the breakthrough wizard. I know an awful lot about what has to change before what and how to get in there and what words are likely to say it to people in a way that works. That's really what I've been studying for over 40 years now. So catalyzing breakthroughs for people is where I'm at. And each little breakthrough makes us right at the right and starts to bring out the best and the rider and horse in front of us. And for many riders, it is mindset that stops that from happening. And that ability to notice unlocks the door and unlocks the door as well to what I think of as the second secret. Because in that way of being more present, you become able to, as it were, tune into the channel of getting feedback from your horse that enables him to coach you. He's there going, you've got it, you've lost it, you've got it, you've lost it, you've got it, you've lost it, you've got it, you lost it. That's it. Do more of that. I'm getting there, I'm getting there. It's not quite. It's not quite, it's not quite. You got it. And so he becomes a guide from moment to moment. If you're blinking and missing that feedback, you're guessing. This changes guessing to progressing in the most fabulous way and begins to show you what much more skilled riders are doing. Their internal process of communicating with the horse that really they never communicate to the riders in front of them who they train. And this kind of knowledge becomes knowledge that's embodied instead of being a rider who's heard the same words, and maybe you've heard them over and over again, and maybe you think you understand them, maybe you think you're doing what they mean. And maybe nothing much changes with your horse, or maybe you suspect that you don't really know what they mean and you muddle on as best you can. Maybe you're convinced you're doing what your trainer wants. When you just come at this from your brain and from hearing words and doing your best with those words, this is very often what happens. And getting to communicate with people so they get this on a body level is a whole other ball game. And as far as I'm concerned, it's the name of the game. There's another secret that follows on from this, what I'm going to call the third secret, which is what happens when you gain the connection that we call being plugged in. Now, some of you would have done this exercise before, but do this with me. Now, put your hand on your thigh and move your hand up and down your thigh, towards your pelvis and towards your knee. And as you do that, you're creating friction. Can you find a way to move your hand that moves the tissue of your thigh with you? It'll take a little more pressure, there's no friction. Then try the same as you move your hand to the inside of your thigh and the outside of your thigh. And try the same as you move your hand in circles both ways. Now, this gives you a great metaphor for what we call being plugged in. That means that you don't have any extraneous movement in the saddle over and above what moulds you onto the horse and ultimately moulds the horse onto you. When you find out how to live these three secrets that honestly should be the backbones of what everybody is learning. I live in hope that maybe one day it will be, but it may be after my lifetime, who knows? I'm giving it my best shot here to change a culture which is very stuck in its ways and lots of riders very stuck along with that. My aim here is to give hope and really good quality information through a really good quality map to riders at all levels. It can be everything from club level riders, more novice riders, to successful competitive riders, and even team level riders. The ways of looking through this lens and the ways of seeing it and saying it are a little bit out of our conventional box. And that's where their value lies. I'm going to invite you to go to dressagetraining tv and in the banner on the page you'll land of there's an invitation to take our quiz to find out what kind of rider you are. This is more about your mindset than anything else, but it's a great, fun little thing to do. There's only a few questions, it won't take you very long and it might give you some insight into where the most benefit would come from. You do go there, do do the quiz. Have fun riding your horses, see if you can get yourself more plugged in and I will be back again.