If you’ve shown a horse more than a handful of times, you probably know your horse will start getting a bit anxious going in the pen, anticipating maneuvers and/or knows what the sound of cattle banging around at the far end of the arena means. Suddenly, when you walk into the arena, your horse turns into a creature that is unrecognizable.
When that happens, you need a schooling show or two and now’s a perfect time of year to do just that! When I had a training barn, I was always on the lookout for a local show or an AQHA show, because you can enter multiple classes, and they’re much less expensive than national association shows.
It’s important when you go to one to make it as close to the real thing as possible, meaning an announcer is on a PA, use your horse’s show bridle, wear your chaps up and be nervous (even if you’re not!). It’s surprising that they know when you’re there to school. I used to frequent these and if I was using it for schooling, I’d be all kicked back and wondered why my horses didn’t misbehave? Ha! That’s when I realized, I was part of the problem! So, don’t be too relaxed about it.
Next, have a plan. If your horse anticipates lead changes, plan to counter canter at least halfway around the new circle before you let them change. If they kick out, park them and back them up. Then go try it again. If they get chargey on the rundown, stop them and back them up to the end and start again. If they get scotchy on the rundown, plan to go all the way to the fence. I used to buy 2 slots back-to-back so I could take my time and really work on things.
Another time to use schooling shows is before an important first show of the year. That used to be the Stallion Stakes in March for the NRCHA and a lot of trainers used to wish they’d gone to a schooling show or two before that one!
So, if you want your horse to be his best when it counts, be sure to utilize these opportunities. In their absence, get a group together and go to each other’s arenas and whoop and holler for each other! You might just fool your horse the first time or two doing that!
In my last article, I shared the story of the girl who did a month’s worth of practice in 6 minutes! In it, Daniel Coyle explained (from his book The Talent Code) how that happened. In the Talent Code he explains how deep practice, ignition and master coaching cause accelerated learning, all of which we can apply to improve our technical riding skills as well as increase our feel and timing.
Deep practice means slowing down, making errors, correcting them and moving through the sequence again. To me it means we have to be willing to embrace mistakes and learn from them rather than beat ourselves up when we fail. Then have the patience to start again from the beginning.
Deep practice also utilizes the “chunking” method that Barb and I teach at our high-performance clinics. It’s a version of what the girl did who was learning to play the clarinet that helped her do a month’s practice in 6 minutes.
Chunking is dividing what you’re trying to learn into chunks or segments. Let’s say for instance a reined work pattern could be divided up into maneuvers, each one being a “chunk”. You develop the skills necessary to perform the circles first. Then as you execute a circle you work on making it round, hitting the middle etc. If you miss the middle, you’d stop working on the circle and work a bit more on steering your horse, being more accurate with your arena placement (ie correcting the mistake). Then start at the beginning with the circle and aim more carefully for the middle. If you were successful, you could start on your big fast, but if not, you’d work on your steering some more, then start at the beginning again. Then maybe you start to increase your speed for your big fast, your steering is good, you hit the middle, and all goes well until you try to slow down. You’d stop the pattern and work on slowing down from different speeds, collection etc. Then, you guessed it start back at the beginning again.
Each time you do this, you reinforce on a deeper level the skills that you’ve been building on. After you get the circles/figure 8 done, that’s one big chunk and it should be able to perform it very well.
Now you’re ready to work on the next chunk, say rundowns and stops. After you have all the chunks very solid and easily done, you put them together. Once again, if the wheels start to come off anywhere, you work on that skill and start at the beginning again.
This creates deep learning from deep practice and you and your horse will own these skills forever in a much shorter time than you think. In fact, he proved that it is the fastest way to gain mastery of any skill. In my next article, I’ll give you his take on ignition and then master coaching. If this intrigues you, you can read the Talent Code (available on Amazon).
I was rereading the Talent Code for the 4th time last week and in the introduction, I remembered one of the most fascinating parts of the whole book. He was talking about “talent hotbeds”. These are places where for no apparent reason, fantastic athletes magically bloom in large numbers. This happened in the Dominican Republic with baseball players in the 1950’s, in South Korea with women golfers in the late 1990’s, and even in the Renaissance when Florence, Italy produced an explosion of genius! Daniel decided to study where this extraordinary talent came from and how did it grow?
He began by studying a 13 year old girl who was studying the clarinet and didn’t appear particularly talented. In her 6 minute video, she was classified at “musical mediocrity.” (How depressing!) She lacked a “good ear”, sense of rhythm, and her motivation was subpar. Her strongest reason for practicing was because “I’m supposed to”. What was crazy was that in 5 minutes and 54 seconds, she accelerated her learning speed by 10x, and she didn’t even know it.
She was trying to play “Golden Wedding”. She played 7 notes and stopped, stared at the music sheet, and sung that phrase. She then started over from the beginning, making it a few notes further before missing a note, patching in the fix, backtracking and starting again. That time the notes had some verve and feeling. When she finished that phrase, she stopped for 6 long seconds, replayed it in her mind as she fingered the clarinet, leaned forward, then started again from the beginning.
She played that phrase again and again, each time adding spirit and rhythm to it. She was creating a blueprint in her mind, fixing the errors and fitting parts into the whole (chunking). This was a highly targeted, error focused process. The scaffolding was being built and a new quality was growing in the girl. It was not talent created by genes. It was six minutes of an average person entering a magically productive zone where more skill was created with each passing second. This targeted practice was causing accelerated learning.
What they later learned was when we fire our circuits in the right way, our neural insulator called myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around the neural circuit, with each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker it gets, the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become (think riding a bicycle). Everyone can grow it though it grows more swiftly in childhood. It’s indiscriminate, and its growth enables all manner of skills. The more time and energy you put into the right kind of practice, the longer you stay in the zone and the more skill and speed you gain.
So, back to the hotbeds of talent where world class soccer players, violinists, artists, tennis and golf players, even skateboarders developed and flourished. They all got better by gradually by improving timing, speed and accuracy, by honing neural circuitry and growing more myelin. There are 3 parts to this- deep practice, ignition and master coaching. Each element is essential to creating skill. Combine them, even for 6 minutes and things start to rapidly change.
I’m going to delve deeper into this in my next few articles because it’s so relevant to how we can all become skilled with our horses and grow our timing and feel which before was believed that you either had it or you didn’t. You can absolutely grow both! Great news isn’t it??
Most of you have heard by now that we have lost a great cowboy, trainer, dear friend and one of the finest horsemen ever. Doug Williamson passed after a long battle with cancer. He will be missed by many but forgotten by none. My 2 favorite quotes from Doug are, “When a horse’s head is high (well above its withers) all its brain dribble out and he can’t think properly!” and “You should never apply more pressure to the bit than it takes to back your horse up.”
I think of Doug every time I quote him and whenever I do the exercise I’m going to share with you below. I smile now thinking all the awesome horses he’s riding out in that great pasture in the sky!!
Circle-Stop-Sweep I’d like to share one of Doug’s favorite exercises to do on a horse with you. Doug used to say, “The circle-stop-sweep, warms up my horse’s body for any situation. It doesn’t matter if I’m reining, cutting or doing fence work. The drill allows my horse to get his physical and mental game tuned in.” Doug used to begin the drill by loping in easy, relaxed circles, coming to an easy stop, then backing a couple of steps, loading up the horse’s hindquarters for action. With the horse’s feet squarely up under his center of gravity, the horse is ready to sweep, or turn move out in any direction with propulsion. The main cue that Doug would give was just enough direct rein to barely see the eye in the direction the horse was traveling, and using the indirect (outside) rein towards the opposite hip to prevent too much bend. The neck rein laid against the middle of the horse’s neck in line with the opposite hip helps keep the rear end engaged and keeping the front end from getting too much bend. The “sweep” is an approximately 180* turn before loping off on the other lead.
It’s a great exercise for all purposes, but here’s how it works for the cow work. Loping an easy circle, then stop, loading up on the hindquarters and a 180* turn towards the outside (where the cow would be), teaches him to think stop and back up before making any turn. A 180* turn is all we ever need on a cow. It’s important for the rider to balance without squeezing his knees or clamping his legs, as that will cause the horse to go forward towards the cow. That causes the horse to roll up into the cow and get behind it, losing control and chasing it across the arena. Doug also said, “It’s important to keep some weight in the outside stirrup so as not to lose your balance.” He might use the direct rein to hint at directionality, but once the turn is initiated he likes to let the horse have the cow. Because the repetition of this exercise, the horse thinks stop and rock straight back before turning on a cow too and will automatically load up his outside hind leg in preparation for the turn. This puts a slight arc in its body with nose and butt being slightly closer to the cow and rib and shoulder slightly moved away. Without that slight arc, the horse is likely to turn on its inside hind leg, which tends to push the horse towards the cow instead of exiting parallel to it. “When the cow takes him, my bridle reins are loose and the cow draws him through the turn.”
This is how the circle- stop- sweep helps Doug with the cow work. It reminds him to always back up before turning and he’s got to back up straight with the butt towards the direction he’s going to turn. If all goes as planned, the horse will be pushing off on the outside hind leg. He is physically prepared to go with and stay with the cow.
We love you Doug and you’ll be sorely missed by all!
Here’s a question that you may have heard before: If you had to pick between receiving $1,000,000 today or the value of $0.01 doubled every day for 30 days, which would you pick?
I’ve heard this question before, but recently a mentor of mine who worked in finance challenged me to prove the benefits of compounding interest to myself.
Doing it took a few minutes, but it provided some valuable insights.
Here are the calculations (my insights below): As of Day 10, the doubling penny is worth only $5.12.
As of Day 20, the penny is worth approximately $5,000. At this point choosing that doubling penny still seems like a poor choice.
On Day 27, which is 3 days before the 30 days ends, the penny is worth approximately $670,000. Now, that’s a lot of money for that penny to have turned into but still a lot less than $1,000,000.
But on Day 28 is the first time the doubling penny’s value exceeds $1,000,000. At that point, the penny is worth approximately $1,300,000. Until 2 days before the deadline, that penny seemed like a bad investment.
As of Day 30, that doubling penny is worth an incredible $5,368,709.12.
Approximately $4,700,000 of that growth occurred between days 28 through 30.
So, what’s my point?
My point is all of us strive every day towards pursuits that we have and we love (our horses and our riding), and sometimes it feels like we’re not making progress, especially during the tough times when progress is slow and success is elusive.
The reality is that the doubled efforts will eventually add up to huge gains. Sometimes, it just takes those few extra days for those gains to exponentially increase! So, rise to the challenge and persevere through the times when it seems like you’re not gaining with your horse and you’ll be rewarded when you least expect! Remember slow and steady wins the race and as Greg Ward used to say, “If you improve your horse 1% a day, in 100 days, your horse will be 100% better!” Now that’s doable and well worth striving for!
I hope that you find some inspiration in that like I did. Be well. Be safe.
