A chilled Filly

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Another exercise

Talking of relaxation there was a second technique to keep in mind that I find very useful when playing online with a horse.

Bear with me on this one  

It starts with two folks holding your forearms with both hands. They hold tightly such that your upper arms are out horizontally from your shoulders and your elbows bent so your forearms are point vertically downwards. They can even lift up a little on the forearms to put you in a very awkward position. You'll find that you can barely move and indeed I have seen film of police marching someone off like this.

However the reason you can't move is that the grip on your arms makes you want to move your arms.
The trick is to forget about your arms and realise you can still move the rest of your body. So totally relax your shoulders and just leave your forearms where they are. Take a step back with one foot and gently kneel down. Then whilst kneeling slowly sit back on your heels, still keeping your arms loose. You'll find you have to be leaning forwards from your waist at this point. Then just slow raise your torso to the upright position, still kneeling and put "weight" in your arms so they drop to your sides.
You'll find that if you are still loose in your arms your opponents will be inexorably pulled off balance and if they don't let go will fall to the ground either side of you. At no point did you use your arm muscles or really use any strength at all, just position and your weight.
I weigh 86 kgs and I've had a 55kg girl pull me over doing this, so relative weight is of little importance.
Tony, my sensei, describes the feeling on the uki (guy holding the arm) as "whoa, ok I'll go over here then" rather than "your not pulling me over there". Done properly this should provide a feeling of wanting to follow the pressure rather than wanting to pull back against it.

So how does this relate to horsemanship?
I now try to avoid using muscles when I play online. I think more about body position and just having weight in my arms.
So if a horse pulls my arm out straight I don't use arm muscles to pull back. They are way to weak and when applying that much power cannot be subtle enough with the way the power is applied and released.
If the horse pulls I try to imagine my arms are very heavy and want to swing back to my side from whence they came before the pull occurred. If the horse still pulls I just think about sitting back away from the horse similar to what I just described. Not kneeling down of course, but the same intention.
The same idea of relaxed but powerful ki drawing the horse towards me. But the drawing is in a smooth way.

It is the way that the force is applied that matters rather than the amount used and to apply the force correctly I try to use relaxation and ki (intention).


After a little searching on youtube I came across Seishiro Endo Shihan demonstrating the ideas to a class in Japan. It's not the same exercise that I just described but has many of the same ideas. If you look at around 4 minutes 30 seconds into the video you'll see some ideas that more closely relate to online work. Hope this helps the understanding of my ramblings

  Seishiro Endo Shihan

Monday 23 February 2015

Loosening exercise

I have a really stiff body. Not chronic pain stiffness nor is it stiffness due to a lack of flexibility. It's a stiffness of the mind. It doesn't allow the antagonistic muscles to relax enough to allow for beautiful flowing movement as any who have seen me dance will testify. I've been working on this for a while now using aikido to help but it is still very present. Particularly my shoulders which of course impedes my riding and my softness.

I was lucky enough to actually be able to train with Endo on two occasions during the camp. Each lasting less than a minute I suspect, but long enough for him to put me to the ground and then slap my back and shoulders whilst laughing and saying "too stiff, too stiff"  

Fortunately a large part of the camp was about getting us all looser and "following a feel". Sound familiar to horsemanship training ?

In aikido the person receiving the technique (the one who has typically supplied the attack for the aikido technique to be practised on) is called the Uki. The person who is countering the attack and performing the aikido technique is called the Tori.
Uki needs to know how to move when the technique is applied or it will hurt. Move well and the technique applied to him should just feel smooth, painless but powerful. So it is important uki knows how to move well.

The exercise I'm going to describe helps uki relax their whole body and allow it to move to follow a feel.

Tori stands in front of uki and presents his arms out in front with hands palm down. Uki holds the back of toris' wrists so that their little fingers are towards the hand and thumbs towards the elbow. This should feel a natural way to hold the presented arms. During the exercise it is uki's task to maintain that grip. It shouldn't be a strong grip as that causes tenseness in the arms, but firm enough that the palm of ukis' hand at the base of the thumb is always in contact with toris' forearm.

Tori now starts to move there arms around in a rythmic flowing way. Up and down, side to side and also twisting the forearm. Start with small movements and build as the feel gets better.
Uki has the job of maintaining that grip whilst just flowing with the movement. That may mean bending at the waist, knees, moving the feet around, whatever it takes to maintain that contact and follow the feel of that motion. Whilst doing it uki should examine their body in their mind for any signs of tightness and let it go. After a while it should just feel like a smooth flowing dance with loose arms, shoulders, neck, back, hips, knees and feet. Most of all a loose flowing mind that is in the moment and following the feel with no conscious control of the body.

I have tried this before riding and, boy, did it make a difference. Even Bonitao seemed to notice it. I suddenly found I could move my body "through" my shoulders so my hands could softly remain much quieter than in the past. Particularly at canter. If I felt tightness threatening to take over I just put myself in the moment of that exercise and it loosened up again. Ritchie says she noticed an immediate improvement in my riding. Not perfect but definitely going in the right direction.

Sunday 22 February 2015

Aikido camp

My interest in aikido and its relationship to horsemanship continues to grow. Inspired by the Mark Rashid book "Nature in Horsemanshp" and personally meeting and chatting to him about the idea I have been pursuing aikido for around 2 1/2 years now. I'm at a very lowly level having just passed my 4th kyu grade, but finding the benefits are enormous.
My sensei, Tony, thought I was ready to attend an aikido camp in Stockholm and after a little persuasion I agreed. This was not just any aikido camp.
Seishiro Endo himself was going to be there. If you read his wikipedia entry you'll see that he is fascinated by the concept of ki energy and feel to make aikido as soft and powerful as possible. It is fair to say that he is the head of the version of aikido that I follow, so to train with him would be a real treat.

On Friday 13th of February I got on a plane to Stockholm with more than a little trepidation as to what I had let myself in for.
The good news was that there was a total of 6 of my friends from the Dinton Dojo going so I was in good company. All the others had been there before so that really helped in me finding my way around the city and the training.
The camp took place over three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The format was 1 1/2 hours training for each session with one session on Friday and Sunday, but two on the Saturday. The only downside was that it took around 1 1/2 hours to get from where we were staying to the training in the city. The upside is that we all travelled as a group so it gave time to chat.

The first session was on Friday evening. After the journey out to the training center we all got changed into our gis.
I had heard rumours as to how high the average grade was going to be of the participants. Mere kyu grades (below black belt) were in the tiny minority. There was a significant number in the higher black belt grade of 5th, 6th and 7th Dan. Fortunately Tony seemed to know all the high grade participants which made me feel more at ease in their company.

For the Friday session Tony said I should just stay near the back, train with whoever I wished to and just soak up the atmosphere. There was a lot of atmosphere to soak up. Around 90 people training with Endo out in front demonstrating what he wished us to practise. No, or minimal talking, on the mat whilst training, but high levels of concentration.

Endo speaks enough english to get his ideas across, but not a huge amount. Strangely this was an advantage. I had to concentrate on what he was doing, not what he was saying. And what he was doing was fascinating.

Endo is very much concentrated on being in the moment with your training partner and using ki energy in your encounters with your partner.
In English ki probably best translates as "intention" but it is more than that. I'm reading a book on the concept at the moment and it says that westerners have a problem with ki as they think too much in words. You have to try and think without words to really understand ki.

We did lots of exercises that involved feeling and moving with your training partner without resistance. Then we moved onto how to move them with minimum muscular effort. These techniques largely revolve around being very loose in the shoulders and mind. Feeling for the partner. Feeling for their balance point and then moving to disturb that balance.
Trying to disturb the balance too much is counter productive as it will lead to resistance and a battle. Disturb the balance just enough then you can move the opponent with the minimum of effort.

One thing that was noticeable was Endo's choice of language. Like I said his English is limited. But he used the words "confirm for yourself" a lot. I think he is trying to really make us concentrate on the feel and understand that feel. It is not something he can give us directly. He can set up exercises to help us feel, but we must do the feeling ourselves.
After that first session I came away with my head spinning with information, but felt I had made progress.

On the Saturday Tony said I should come towards the front of the mat more and play with the big guns at the front. I did not want to interfere with their training whilst the master was around. However I quickly understood that not only could I learn enormous amounts from the 6th and 7th Dan folks, but they could learn from me !! Because my aikido is so poor they have to work out how to move my stiff uncooperative body in the manner they want it to move. This is a challenge for them as well as me.
So I got to train with some of the best practitioners of aikido in the world ! And boy did that help me make progress fast. As always my problem is being too stiff in my body. They could use their skill to help me find more softness. Just the odd move here or there to bypass my blockages and I suddenly found I could move in ways I had not experienced before. And it felt good.
It's not that folks at my Dojo hadn't been helping me with this, but we are a mixed ability group and on a training evening I might get to train for a short time with the top folks. Here I was getting concentrated 6th and 7th Dan help. For most of the 1 1/2 hours !

After that first session on the Saturday with the "big boys" I had the confidence to seek them out in the subsequent sessions so I got lots of training with very good practitioners of the art. Lots of what they did I didn't fully understand but at least I got to feel it and see where this art form could take me.

This gives an overview of the course. I'll speak more in future about specific techniques.
At the end of the course my feet were trashed. We train bare foot and the mat surface was just a little textured. Over the 6 hours that texture wore through bits of my skin making my feet very tender. In the intensity on the mat I tended to forget the pain, but putting shoes on afterwards was "interesting".

I've trained back in Dinton since. The folks there report that my shoulders seem softer and more relaxed. I feel a new intensity to my training and thirst to get it right.

I know you'll all want to know what this has achieved for my horsemanship. I'll leave that for a later posting ;) , but it's been very very positive.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Good news !!

On Sunday Filly had a visit from Mel Isaac who works closely with Nic Barker and so knows the method Nic uses to rehabilitate horses with navicular. Unfortunately I could not be there as I was at an aikido training camp in Sweden, so my wife, Ritchie, was there instead of me.

I had been a bit nervous about this visit as it really was an assessment to see if all our hard work was bearing fruit. I've been walking her every day I have off for many weeks now to ensure her feet got enough natural wear and stimulation to help them heal themselves. I was a very nervous "daddy" on Sunday dreading to hear the result.

I needn't have been :) . Mel did not even feel it necessary to trim Fillys' feet. So that is around 3 months now with nothing but a very light rasping when I have not been able to walk her enough due to work.
Mel thought that her big issue now was to build up muscle on her right side so the emphasis should switch from walking her out to more work in the menage. In particular we need to work on her straightness on a circle on the right rein. We can do this by using lots of three track / four track work and also by varying the tightness of the circle she maintains. In effect I can now go back to more playing online and less walking out on the roads. She'll still get her walks of course to ensure she encounters a variety of surfaces to "massage" her feet.

So in general I can now see a light at the end of the tunnel and can actually realistically hope that one day in the not too distant future we can ride again.

When I get time I'll post about the aikido camp. We trained with a Japanese master could Endo. There was so much that relates to horsemanship in there I'm still assimilating it all. Here is a link to his wikipedia page which should give you a flavour of what I mean Endo wiki entry

Monday 9 February 2015

Walking with a purpose

I've been continuing to walk Filly every day I have off. We usually do around 4km according to Endomondo on mixed terrain of road and a track made of road planings. The track is particularly good as it is abrasive.
Walking is not just about the walking. We are still working on our horsemanship as we do it. As horsemanship is defined as the "habits and skills a horse and human need to act as partners" it is not just me working on horsemanship, it is Filly as well.
So the walks have two purposes.
1) to help her rehab progress
2) to build our horsemanship in an environment that is off the yard and so less predictable.

As principle number 8 of Parelli is "principles, purpose and time are the tools of teaching" this fits in nicely with the parelli program.

So what have we been working on.

On the way out Filly would really rather be in a nice warm stable with some hay so she is reluctant to follow on. As a result she is not acting as a partner as she is pulling back just a little. Often this just means she is walking a pace or two behind me not on my shoulder. So how to overcome this ? I use two methods typically.
The first is that if she ever leans on the halter I just bring up my energy and start gently jogging. To get relief from the pressure on the halter she has to trot up alongside me. As soon as she is alongside we walk again. I make sure that I don't attach any emotion to this. The jogging is not a punishment for her being behind me just a consequence. So she slowly learns that for a quiet life it's easier to just walk alongside like a partner.
The second method is an add on to the first. As she comes alongside she gets a click and a treat. So she learns that there are some positive advantages to walking alongside me.

Playing with this we now go for extended periods as partners. Probably up to 10 minutes with a quiet calm Filly plodding alongside me.

The other purpose we have been working on is just getting her used to the unexpected. For example, yesterday was a lovely day. There were some kids out for a walk and they got very excited when they saw Filly with lots of jumping up and down and shouting. Filly was not that keen on this but I maintained my emotions as flat and friendly, a sort of "ho hum" feeling and we continued to walk towards the kids. After a very few minutes she was being petted and generally loved by the children and, being Filly, liked the attention.
Likewise for cars. When we started walking she would get upset by cars coming past. The road is pretty narrow. By studiously ignoring the cars myself (other than to thank them for slowing down) whatever she did she is now pretty confident with them. Even those who don't bother to slow down she hardly reacts to.

It would have been easy to forget my horsemanship during this period, but that would have been a huge mistake. As it is I've managed to turn our daily walks into a horsemanship session and we have both learned from the experience.