SELF FOCUS FOR IMPROVEMENT
SELF FOCUS FOR IMPROVEMENT
I have found myself in an unlucky but lucky situation. The unlucky part is that my main horses are both out of action with injuries and as frustrating as this is it has finally given me the opportunity to learn how to ride our reining horse Jasper. As you can see from Jasper’s waist line he has been enjoying a bit of a relaxing life so finally having time to ride him regularly is good on many levels! This blog is about how I have been approaching this with my understanding of what I need to teach my brain and my body to be able to get half decent at this discipline.
It might surprise you to learn that inside our brains lives two “selves”, a conscious self and an subconscious self. We only ever know and relate to our conscious self but our subconscious self is powerful and controls many things from monitoring our environment for any dangers, clouding our perceptions, to deciding who we fall in love with! But it is also in charge of putting certain repetitive behaviours on automatic pilot! Any task we repeat regularly our brain will create superfast circuits that allow that behaviour or movement to become subconscious and this can be everything from riding a bike, brushing your teeth, catching a ball or many aspects of riding a horse! I could write a book on how significant the subconscious self is on everything from confidence with horses to learning how to train then but this blog is a quick look at how I am using my knowledge of this part of my brain to learn how to adapt my riding skills to reining.
I am a dressage rider and I am use to riding in a dressage saddle with a rein in each hand. So all my automatic riding behaviours that my brain has learnt have been programmed for this context! So my programing has been seriously put out of whack riding in a western saddle that puts me in a slightly different position, plus it is much wider and completely unlike my close contact dressage saddles. The change in position initially put me out of balance and for the first few rides I kept losing my left stirrup as my left knee kept pulling upwards! Then I have gone from riding with two reins with a snaffle bit to riding with split reins in a shank. I am riding with my right hand but my hand keeps creeping to the right wanting to go back into its usual positon it would be in when I ride with two reins…poor Jasper has therefore had to put up with me continually asking him to neck rein right!
Next issue I have is that the emphasis of the legs, seat and bridle in regards to control is slightly different. I ride my dressage horses with a greater emphasis on my seat and I create flexion with my reins and my legs I use more for lateral responses. With Jasper, there is way more emphasis on my legs to create flexion and bend, a lot less emphasis on my reins and I am only discovering now that I am getting my balance in the new position and my legs and hands in control that my seat does actually have an impact it was just not that obvious for a few weeks!
Now the trick with your subconscious self is that it will learn what you present it with. So to speed up my acquisition of this new way of riding and communicating with a horse I have been riding around being very conscious of what my body is doing. I am making sure my brain is programmed with a good presentation of what I hope to achieve so that it doesn’t program in bad habits! To do this I have shifted my focus away from wanting Jasper to do something, to wanting my body to do something that I hoped would communicate correctly to Jasper and then observing what Jasper did and how he responded. Then I repeat and repeat the action so my brain is presented with the action or sequence of actions so it can learn it. To start with it was quite funny as Jasper only sort of went where I wanted him to, the circles were too small, too big, turns to sharp, too wide, he would go to slow, to fast, to crooked, he would fall in, fall out etc. Slowly but surely every day I have been able to get his feet travelling more on the line that I want him to go on without me having to correct my error. Slowly but surely I have been able to go faster and faster and stay accurate to my line. This is all happening as I have been able to program my brain with the correct way I need my seat, legs and hand to operate and coordinate together in a way that is clear for Jasper without confusing him with my drifting hand, or my legs being too on or not on evenly or the many other little things I was doing as I would slip into dressage riding mode. So now I am at the point that the simple basic stuff has gone more and more onto autopilot which has freed up my conscious brain to start looking at more complex stuff, so I have been able to add or go faster because my brain and body are now helping me out!
So many people when they ride focus on the horse and get frustrated with the horse for not doing something without any conscious thought or awareness of what their own body is doing and how that could be impacting the situation. In the extreme you have people that are too quick and rough with their hands or continually nag the horse with their legs or even more subtle things such as sit more on one seat bone than the other which can cause the horse to be more braced on one side of their bodies as they struggle with an uneven distribution of weight on their backs. People detected the brace in the horse or its poor steering or dullness to their legs but they have zero clue that all these things are a symptom of what their body is doing to the horse and impacting the situation and the horses behaviour or performance.
Now I am being lucky in my situation as Jasper really is a true school master. I don’t have to worry about training him or managing any behavioural issues or trying to teach him something. I can just ride around and focus on myself and train my body! This is the beauty of a school master when you are learning to ride! But even if you don’t have a school master like Jasper you can still become aware of what you are doing and become conscious of exactly how you are picking up the reins or applying your leg etc. and this can have a massive positive impact on improving your riding and your horses performance not to mention help solve problem behaviour!
Here is a video of me from last week focusing on my ability to guide Jasper in trot, get correct flexion on circles, change bend and control him laterally and to keep his rhythm.
