I used to admire the way that some riders could just get on any horse, and have it go well for them. When I was little I thought that the sign of a truly experienced rider was being able to hop on any type of horse and play a tune. So I went out and I rode as many horses as I could, and I grew better at riding new horses by matching them to a previous one. “Ah, this one goes like the spooky thoroughbred, I have to encourage his back to loosen with my light seat”; “ah this one is like the little welsh, I have to motivate her to want to be forward”. The more horses I rode, the more my repertoire improved and I could understand each horse quicker and more easily. These days it seems a little different to me: now I believe that a truly experienced rider can switch “between horses” even during a ride, whilst still on the same horse. Sometimes the horse is onward bound and spooky, and sometimes he is backing off and behind the leg. You can’t always ride the same horse in the same way. I have to speed up my understanding to not just change my riding from horse to horse but minute to minute, second to second.
I tell undergraduate university students that there is no right or wrong answer. Whether I agree or disagree with your point rests on how good your argument is. The marks don’t depend on writing down what I already have in mind, the marks depend on providing a concise, logical, referenced argument. Luckily at undergrad level I also mark the exams, so I know that this is true. At school age sadly there is a right answer, because our school system is an abomination, but that’s a different article (and Michael Rosen already nailed it: https://t.co/j3p3zEpFy4).
So what about riding a horse? Recently I had a horse who behaved in defiance of clinical diagnosis. I sat with my vet consult and worried that the horse didn’t match expectations but the vet just said “Horse hasn’t read the textbook.” It’s a phrase I now use a lot. You can expect all you like, but he hasn’t read the textbook. If you ride, then you just have to ride the horse you’ve got on the day you’re on. You can remember to keep that pesky bad habit at bay, to be more tactful or more positive, but that combination of your horse and your day is unique. That moment is unique: you might have walked the jumping distance on six strides but then you clambered over the first part and this is when you need to react. This is no longer a six, this is a hold for seven. You might have an engaged, forward dressage horse that you merely need to release to extend, but right now he’s worried about those flowers and you’re going to need a lot more leg.
Riding is an education and it’s more like university than school. There’s no right answer but the thought process is important and takes intelligence, it’s logic and reaction and sometimes research. Decision making is a skill, like any other riding skill, and something that you need to practise. People that feel nervous are often mostly worried about the what ifs, specifically what if I make a mess of it, what if it goes wrong, what if I get to the fence and there is no stride. Problem solving skills don’t just help you out of a mess, they make you feel more confident that it won’t arise. There’s no point being able to shorten and lengthen to a fence if you don’t have the reactions to know when to use which, so you also need to work on those reactions. I used to think experienced riders could see a stride and I had to learn this magic: how to see a stride. Now I realise that they just have a strong rhythmic canter and make decisions well. Similarly leaving an arena realising that he would have settled if you’d softened your inside hand is just too little too late.
So what’s the magic answer, how do we train creative decision making and problem solving skills? In equestrian coaching we tend to stick to drills: come down this distance in six strides, go from the ten metre circle to shoulder in. Drills are important because they build muscle and a skill set, but they can’t be everything. The opposite of this approach is a more game-based environment, you send someone around a course and they ride it as it comes, yes they start with a plan but they also have to react, and in doing it they practise reacting, and they build confidence in their reactions – maybe they cut a corner and realise that that distance is now just going to work better on a five. To do this the rider needs to be autonomous, they need to have a voice and not just be directed by the coach.
Another thing that’s made it from the research to (other) sport coaching is the use of silence. Sometimes silence is as useful as feedback: try the distance, OK, that didn’t work, go back and try it again. No advice, you decide what to change. The coach needs to allow the rider to develop the skill of self-correction – to learn from their own mistakes and sometimes work out their own corrections. We’re fairly good at allowing horses to do this, but often struggle to apply it to the riders. Using silence as a coach is terrifying because you want to contribute, but sometimes stepping back is the most useful thing, still observing, still being there to lead the discussion after, but setting someone up to learn rather than telling them your answers. You can avoid leaving the rider feeling that they were merely told to “jump this, jump that” using feedback and discussion and summarising well, and sometimes this can come later. If more direction is needed the type of feedback can still be tuned to self-directed learning: “his shoulder is falling out” is more useful than “more outside hand”, better still is “is he straight?”
So is it just practise? Well, as with all riding it’s the right sort of practise. The nice thing about the example of jumping related distances or counting strides to hit a certain stride length is that you know when you’ve done it well, even if you don’t have a coach with you. You can tell when you made good decisions and when you need to come again. Some days I’m so busy trying to breath correctly, keep my hips straight, my seat light and my shoulders up, that I’m too focussed on my own body. This is the death of good intuitive decision making and my stride counting becomes “1, 2, many”. If I want to practise my ability to shorten or to lengthen, or just to take an even stride, then stride counting matters. If I want to practise decision making then it doesn’t actually matter whether or not I know how many strides should be left, I just need to react to the stride pattern I’ve got and the distance in front of me. I don’t even need jumps – I do it with poles on the ground or on hacks between trees or distinctive pieces of grass. If I’m stuck as a passenger on a long car journey I even “jump” road signs. Do it in different places and it’s a different exercise because hacking through the woods horse is not the same as cantering across a field horse and yes, you learn what works in different situations but you also practise problem solving and making decisions.
I’ve used the example of stride patterns pretty consistently but to be honest this is true of a lot of exercises. Anything that you want your horse to do might require a reaction from you, and the more you create safe situations where you need to react flexibly, the more you can practise that skill set. Nothing builds confidence like knowing that whatever happens, you can probably deal with it.