This Week Training Theme- Transitions

Organizing the Program

      I am always looking for ways to be more organized and systematic. Taking care of 20 horses by myself (Tucker helps several days a week), trying to have a training program for 12 of those 20, and getting a 3 1/2 year old off to school, oh yeah and being a wife, has my mind generally in a tornado. There are days when I saddle up a horse, look them in the eye and think, "What the hell am I going to do with you today that makes us feel like we made some kind of progress." I have to simplify my program into a plan that I just get in the saddle and execute. So, I have decided to give each week a theme and everything I do during the week with each horse will have that theme as it's touchstone. This week, the theme is "Transitions."

Why Transitions

      In every riding discipline success at some point hinges on the quality of the horse's transitions. It is the tell-tale sign of the rider's communication with their horse. If the transitions are braced, anxious, confused, involve a buck, anything but smooth- the horse and the rider have not come to an agreement about what they are doing. In good horsemanship, the outcome is horse and rider having the same goal in what they want to accomplish. Transitions (halt to walk, walk to trot, halt to reinback, trot to canter, collected trot to lengthened trot) and the agreed upon communication between rider and horse to achieve those transitions make a horse trainer and a trained horse look good. But quality transitions, soft and gentle, relaxed and balanced are a very difficult thing to achieve and most riders settle for a little better than pretty bad because they want to get on to the movement or jump or exercise.

      In the past transitions for me were about getting a better score in a dressage test. I learned what I thought they were looking for in the horse and rider and I worked hard to mimic an image in my mind that got a good score. There was nothing wrong with that except that I was missing the point- that a good score was just a by product of good communication. The communication was the crux of the matter. Evidence that I was only getting half of the message was the fact that my horse could do a lovely halt in a dressage test but ran away with me after a jump.

      I digested this recently after a Buck Brannaman clinic where the communication that I gained with my horse, Z (Izod WW) could be repeated in any situation I put him into: jumping, trail riding, dressage... I was even ready to give it a try among some cows. The horse and I had an agreed upon language not just one answer for one problem like: halt at X.

In Practice on the Farm

      Today, I rode five horses: Scotty (8 year old, 13.3h pony), J'adore (17 h, 3 year old warmblood), Phippen (5 year old 16h OTTB), Crown (6 year old OTTB, and Rocky (4 year old warmblood stallion) with the theme of transitions in mind. I also had an exercise of poles set up that I am planning to build into a jumping exercise later in the week. I worked my transitions through these pole exercises which added an element for the horse to negotiate before and after the transitions. Regardless of where the horse was in training, I tried to take the focus on transitions as a way to practice our communication.

     J'Adore being the youngest is just learning the basic signals for transitions and a good effort on her part is an accomplishment. She is a large horse and although basically balanced has a lot of body to figure out how to maneuver once she does a transition. I started out mostly working on walk/halt and halt/rein back transitions. I tried to get her to listen to the slightest cues and always tried to introduce a transition with a change in my balance and seat position before I used my hand. Instrumental in this work was having taught her the one-rein stop and to soften to my contact at the halt. Once she listened to me, I could easily transition from the walk to halt to reinback and then walk again, I move on to adding the trot and eventually the canter. At any point when I felt like I was overusing my hand to get my point across I took it down to the next slowest gait, interspersing halt and reinback to re-emphasize that she should balance on her hindquarters as opposed to her fall forward into my hand.
   
     Scotty and Phippen are a little older and have some baggage from their previous life with which I have to contend. Scotty always seems to start out in a hurry, over-reacting to any cues to go forward, with a quick tempo that makes that short-legged pony movement feel like riding sewing machine. As the ride progresses he often relaxes and his movement gains suspension and length of stride. Phippen, being previously a racehorse has a similar issue in that he loses his balance, falls on his forehand and quickens. When either of these horses are asked for a downward transition they tend to pull on the bit, brace their necks and lift their heads. I found that in order to improve their transitions I had to improve their balance before the transition. If I tried to do this with just my hands, I encouraged their braced back and hard mouth. Instead I tried to take the idea of the one rein stop which they are both familiar with, and basically I "hinted" at it by putting their quickening trot into a small circle. As the circle got smaller they had to shift their balance and step underneath themselves and often volunteering to slow down. Also the small circle is increased work. As soon as they gave me a better rhythm, I opened up the circle to a straight line and offered them an easier job as long as they kept the rhythm and balance I wanted. Once I repeated this several times, they started listening to the first cues of my change of balance and shifted their balance in anticipation.  J'adore was taught from the start of her training that the change of body position and one rein stop indicated a downward transition, but often to improve her balance within the gait I do the same small circle or the "short serpentine" that Buck Brannaman teaches in his clinics. (I will have to save an entire post for my experience with Buck's "short serpentine.")

     Crown, even though he was a racehorse, poses a different challenge in transitions. Crown has an extraordinary natural balance that is both a result of his uphill conformation and his God-given way of going. Even though he has a gallop that won almost $70,000 on the track, he will shift his balance and break to a slower gait as soon as you take your leg off and sit back. But Crown wants to always shorten his body and brace his back in the downward transition. I used the "short serpentine" before the downward transition in an effort to keep him loose in his back and not anticipating the downward transition. I also found that any transition upward or downward, after lateral work was improved because he concentrated on using his hind-end and back during the lateral movement.

     Finally, there was Rocky, who I trained from the start in much the same way that J'Adore is being trained, so he is always keenly aware of shifts in my balance and body. However, we regularly struggle with two challenges. First because he is a young stallion, he is very easily distracted by activity in the barn area or field. It is not that he does anything rude, he just checks out of the work were doing to take a good look around. Keeping his focus can be a full time job that involves a lot of creative exercise. I have had to develop almost a second instinct about what will catch his attention and become more interesting than the distraction before I lose his attention. In practice this means that I constantly change direction, change the bend of his body, and repeat transitions until I gain his full attention. The more I challenged him, the better he got. The other difficulty with Rocky is that he tends to alternate from no connection to the bit, to biting down on the bit and feeling rigid in the hand. Although he may be doing a transition on cue, he feels disconnected and shifting. I found that going up a gait, for example from trot to canter then back to trot, improved the trot because the first strides after the downward transition he was moving forward and taking the bit without becoming rigid.

"Practice Does Not Make Perfect Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect"

      I heard this quote at some clinic and did not realize it was first made popular by Vince Lombardi, coach of Green Bay Packers. Lombardi knew what anyone trying to coach an athlete to success does, practicing the wrong plays doesn't win the game. I often think about this when I am riding and it definitely puts the pressure on. If I continue to accept something mediocre, I will have a whole lot of mediocre and nothing of the best. Focusing my rides on transitions seems a good place to start achieving the best. And it's simple. I don't need eyes on the ground to tell me it took five strides of walk to get that halt.