Back from Holiday

Well it was time off work, but more frustrating than relaxing. I have been flying in two UK National gliding championships. Both nine days long, the first at Lasham and that second at Husbands Bosworth. In the first competition we flew one day out of the nine, and in the second we flew 3 days. With the UK June now on course to be the wettest in 100 years I guess I should be grateful we flew that much.
Back to the horses now, with some fun flying sprinkled in. 
Just to add to my frustration Ritchie spent two of those weeks at James Roberts with Bonitao. She had a great time with really good fun evenings as well. Now she had come home promising that me that I need to get really fit to cope with emulating what she has been learning. I will of course report on progress, including aches and pains.
At Shana I have had the opportunity to play with several horse new to me in the last month or so. It has been a real education to play with an ex riding school horse. He had learnt that he could push folks around as I guess lots of the students were less than effective, even frightened of him and had allowed themselves to be moved by him. The snag is that to overcome this propensity I have had to be quite firm. Remember that the "Attitude of Justice is Effective" so if the horse applies phase three pressure to me I can apply phase 3 1/2 straight back. This can be more pressure than an owner may wish to apply, after all they love the horse, but it is the amount they need at the time and gets the message across. If you can't go there then it may take many more applications of gentle pressure to achieve the same result during which time the horse continues to display unwanted or even dangerous behaviour.
Note I do NOT use the words "bad" behaviour or "naughty". I truly believe that if we let those words even enter our minds our natural behaviour as human beings rises to the surface and we start to act with the intention of punishment. In addition horses are just displaying behaviour that they feel will get them through the day a) alive and b) with as little discomfort as possible. As Mark Rashid puts it horses are just trying to find a way "to feel better" and will trial all sorts of behaviour to achieve those goals.
This is why I prefer to use the term "unwanted" behaviour, my aim then being to modify it into "desirable" behaviour.


Punishment is never effective when dealing with horses. Setting things up so the horse finds the correct behaviour and is rewarded for it by a release of pressure is far more effective. To an extent this is what separates Natural horsemanship from poor Traditional horsemanship.
I have had it reported that not only is this horse now easier to handle, but is also much more relaxed in himself. I suspect that he was looking for a leader to keep him safe and in the absence of one had felt he had no alternative but to reluctantly step up to the plate himself. Now human leadership has been re-established he feels more secure and has the weight of leadership taken off his shoulders.

Motor Engrams

I mentioned this topic in a recent post and return to it here to describe it in more detail and how the ideas have helped my riding.
My interest in motor engrams was first piqued when it was referred to in a book on movement relating to rock climbing called "Performance Rock". I then came across them again in a book that had influenced many of my training routines for all sorts of sport "The Inner Game of Golf". I have repeatedly found that understanding the concept has helped me pick up new physical activities efficiently.
A motor engram is a program stored in our brains that once activated can control physical motion with little or no conscious thought required. Walking is a good example, as is driving a car. For both these activities we have very few built in instructions when we are born but by repeating the activity many times a set of neural connections are built in the brain that can run the activity with no conscious input at all.
Once such a program is set in motion it can actually be difficult to interrupt it. One aviation psychologist once related a story to me off accidentally tipping an entire bucket of coal down his toilet. He had gone out to collect coal, had decided to stop at the toilet on his way past for a quick pee but the engram was still running. The engram instructed his body to pour the coal into a larger bucket next to his fire place, but it turned out any large container would do !!
We use engrams when riding as well of course. The act of moving with the horse as they walk, trot, canter is one class of such programs. But they have to be learned, how to ride a horse is not built in to our brains. It is tempting when learning a new engram to analyse the required motion to death and try to consciously control all the required muscles to achieve the required motion. This is a very inefficient, if not impossible, way to learn. By way of illustration I invite you to walk, but whilst doing so try to consciously control all the required muscles in the correct sequence. I expect that you will struggle to perform this complicated task.
How then is it best to learn a new engram ? In the "Inner Game of Golf" it is suggested that we need to give the conscious brain a task to perform which, whilst giving useful feedback to the subconscious, is sufficiently taxing that the conscious brain has little spare capacity to interfere with the subconscious brains' vastly superior capacity to learn new physical activities. In the example of golf the book suggests saying the word "back" at the back of the back swing, and "hit" as the ball is struck. To get the timing of this right is actually quite hard, thus stopping the conscious brain from interfering with the subconscious learning process, but still giving useful feedback.
I have found over the years that it is important to regularly change the feedback thought. As the conscious brain gets better at producing the feedback thought it regains spare capacity to start interfering with the subconscious again. In effect the conscious brain is a bit of a control freak that needs to be kept in check with increasingly difficult homework.
I was having real problems on my return to riding with maintaining a seat contact whilst cantering, I kept bouncing. No matter how I consciously tried to control this bouncing I could not seem to quieten it down enough. I then remembered the engram idea and decided to apply it to the problem. Whilst on a 22 foot line Ritchie circled me on Bonitao at canter. I closed my eyes and thought about nothing but the pressure of the saddle through my bum. I did not try to prevent the bounce I just relied on the subconscious to build an engram that would solve the problem for me. Within a few laps 90% of the bounce disappeared and I was finally starting to sit the canter. With the renewed confidence this inspired I was now able to concentrate on other aspects of cantering and rely on the engram to be reinforced and improved by the subconscious.
Now I am not suggesting for a moment that we can learn to ride by turning our conscious brain off. We still need a vision of what the end result should look and feel like. We then need to carefully select the area of the new activity that the conscious brain should concentrate on and allow that concentration to inform the subconscious as to how to build the required motor engram. But maybe, just maybe, by looking at a difficult task using this idea you can make progress where before there was just frustration, it has repeatedly worked for me in horse riding, rock climbing, ice climbing, gliding ......

Lots of news

I am supposed to be flying in the National Gliding Championship at Lasham this week but am actually sitting at home watching it rain. Give me more time for the horses though.
All sorts of news after a short blogging break.
Play Day at Larisa Taskers'.
This was a great fun day with 18 horses turning up. I had flown in overnight from Philadelphia so was feeling a little tired. Didn't bother going home, just straight to the play day. Fantastic weather for it, if a little hot. I spent some time playing with Mini, still working on getting his mind engaged on the circle as he has the tendency to tune out as a result of past lunging. I use travelling circles a fair bit for this so that obstacles keep appearing in his path. That way he has to "wake up" to avoid them :-) . As a tactic it seems to work well. He also has a tendency to lean on the halter at times. I used two methods to overcome this. First I asked for a direction change every time he leant thus putting a stronger feel on the halter, but a feel with a purpose to direct his feet in a new direction. As this progressed I just applied a little more pressure every time he leant and released as he flexed his neck towards me. The trick to this is not to leave the release to long. I have a boundary for my arm beyond which he can move my arm but with increasing force. As soon as he releases enough to but my arm back inside the boundary all the pressure is gone. This is a little like using a patience pole but as we don't have one I have to use mu body and arm instead. This takes longer as my arm cannot provide such a sharp edged boundary as a pole does so my intention cannot be conveyed as clearly.
I also got to play with some of our friends horses which was really good fun. I basically concentrated on getting straightness on a circle with both of them where each part of the body is the same distance from me as they circle around. Any body zone that is too closed is gently requested with my focus then stick and string to move out. As I always say "you can never play with too many horses".
Riding Bonitao.
This has been going really well, to the extent that I went for my first solo hack out on him recently. We had great fun exploring the woods together. Two highlights were chilling out while he grazed at a beautiful natural pond in the woods, and when we arrived at a very steep part of the trail having him ask me what to do and then accepting my leadership to walk down the slope. We did get a little lost which resulted in a longer ride, but that just added to the fun.
In the indoor school I have continued to work on my cantering which is now getting much better. The key was forgetting to worry about HOW to have a good canter seat and just concentrate on how the canter felt in my body letting my body work out how to achieve the desired result for itself. I could go off into a discussion on sport psychology and motor engrams but will save that for another blog. We have also been practising weave and figure 8 pattern without reins. This is great practise for focus. I find that if I again forget about the details as to where to put arms, legs etc but just focus then it all goes pretty well. Start to micromanage my body and we wander off to explore the school at random.
Time to head to the yard for more fun, and if it stops raining a hack.