Bluebird Lane Blog

The Second Pillar : Fundamentals

by Lori Albrough on May 9th, 2012

Last week we started talking about The Three Pillars of Your Riding Foundation. I explained how the foundation which you are building to support your success as a rider rests firmly upon what I call three pillars. These are: the Pillar of Focus, the Pillar of Fundamentals, and the Pillar of Fitness.

The Pillar of Focus is all about your mind-set and applying the power of your attention on a daily basis towards bringing your riding goals to life. Focus also encompasses your ability to keep your attention oriented firmly on what you want, not on what you DON’T want, every moment that you are riding.

Today we are moving on to the second support for our riding foundation, the Pillar of Fundamentals.

Pillar Two: Fundamentals

Years ago, when I started taking lessons with my first dressage coach, I was very much in awe of all the other riders that trained with her. I just sort of assumed that they were all light-years ahead of me in every way. Over time, however, I observed that everyone was at their own place in their training, and that everyone kind of respected where the others were in their journey.

But one student in particular stands out in my memory. This person, let’s call her Dianna, was obsessed with the beauty and elegance of dressage. She had a big beautiful brown horse and her burning desire was to ride floating elegant trot half-passes with him (preferably in a big National Show, while wearing top hat and tails!) Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, here’s the thing. Riding the half-pass so symbolized dressage for her, that she was not satisfied with anything less. Every lesson she took had to include exercises that she could clearly see were part of the development of the half-pass. But, the problem was, she wasn’t ready to ride the half-pass. Not nearly. She couldn’t sit the trot, she couldn’t offer the horse a steady contact, the horse wasn’t connected from back to front, and she wasn’t sitting straight and balanced so the horse was never straight or balanced, either. There was a whole list of missing fundamentals.

Every attempt by the coach to steer Dianna back to the basic exercises that she needed to master first, was met by resistance. I watched this battle of wills go on for literally years. Last I saw, she still couldn’t ride a half-pass, and she was still struggling along, no further ahead in her riding than she had been back then. The top hat and tailcoat were still hanging in the back of the closet.

Remember this, What you resist, persists. You need to accept where you are in your development, and honour that place by always putting first things first. If you master your fundamentals, the fancier movements, like those half-passes, will eventually drop into your lap like a ripe plum!

Sometimes people want to rush past the fundamental work because they think it is boring, or not interesting, or not all that impressive. Nothing could be further from the truth! Personally, I would MUCH rather watch a well-executed Training Level ride, than an over-faced combination struggling with Second Level. I forget who said “The basic work, properly done, is endlessly fascinating,” but those are words to live by. I highlighted the words properly done, because it’s true. When it’s properly done, the quest for perfect practice IS endlessly fascinating, challenging, and ultimately, rewarding!

Don’t think it is any different for the top riders either. They don’t spend all day every day practicing movements. They start out every ride with a focus on basic fundamentals, asking the horse throughout the warm-up exercises a series of questions, “Will you go forward?”, “Will you come back?”, “Will you move off this leg?”. The fundamentals of strengthening, suppling, and improving the basic gaits always precedes the fancy stuff.

An Illustrative Story

To illustrate the importance of putting first things first, no matter what, let’s take a look at this story, which Courtney King Dye shared in the December 2011 issue of Dressage Today magazine.

Some people rush “the basics” in dressage training. Mythilus (her partner at the 2008 Olympics) is a perfect example of why it’s important to focus on them, instead. He came to me having shown Grand Prix twice for a 63 and 64 percent, but when I got on him, I couldn’t do a single flying change. Heck, I couldn’t even do a good trot-to canter transition, much less ones (flying changes of lead every stride).

Every day for the first six months, I cried because I felt so incompetent. In all of my sessions with him, I did about a million trot-walk transitions. My mentor, Lendon Gray, was wondering why I did these endlessly, and she eventually got on him and took it down to walk-halt transitions.

It took me a year to be able to do a sequence. Even though Myth knew the movements, he could only do them if I held him together, which greatly minimized the quality. By focusing on getting him to listen to me and carry himself and by never doing the movements holding him together in any way (even if the best I could do was a turn on the forehand and walk-halt), in two years we were at the Olympics.

To make this happen, I had to go back and work on the basics. The basics allow the horse to move on his own 100 percent and to maximize athleticism.

That was a long quote, but can we just stop for a moment and really think about what she just said there? First of all, Courtney King Dye, world-respected dressage Olympian, cried every day for six months because she felt incompetent. Let’s just let that soak in for a moment, shall we? It’s not just regular riders who feel frustrated sometimes. Now, Courtney felt that way because she was unable to ride this Grand Prix horse in a way that exhibited correct basics. But, look at what happened next. She refused to compromise on her fundamentals, she kept her committment to perfecting the basics no matter what, and in two years (two tiny years!) the duo was competing at the Olympics (the O-freakin’-lympics!!)

On behalf of all riders everywhere, I want to offer Courtney a deep and sincere thank you, for being willing to be so open and authentic in sharing her experience with us. Nothing could more powerfully illustrate that training isn’t always a bed of roses and a trail of sugar cubes, not even for the top riders. And, that’s a gift really, for all of us. Why? Because she proved that by putting her faith and her focus on the fundamentals, it turned things around and brought this horse and rider to the fore-front of the world stage in what is really a very short period of time.

Horse Fundamentals

Courtney goes on to share her idea of what exactly are the fundamental basics which a horse needs in order to do anything well. Simply, “Go, stop and steer”. She says “All three have to be trustworthy; if one is lacking in perfection, the quality is lost. The basics begin before the horse is mounted: respect, paying attention to space, listening to body language. Training for Grand Prix starts the moment we get on their back.”

To those fundamentals of Go, Stop, and Steer, I add the first three elements of the training scale: Rhythm, Relaxation, and Contact. These are the horse basics that I work on with every horse that I train, every ride: Go (forward from a light leg aid, first time, every time) Stop (come back with a light half-halt) and Steer (turn promptly and easily off the outside rein), all while maintaining Rhythm (purity of the natural gaits), Relaxation (suppleness or looseness through the body, which comes together with lack of mental tension) and Contact (acceptance of the bridle and seeking contact with the bit).

Transitions within and between gaits are the ways that we both test and develop how well the horse has mastered these basics, and through this systematic development the horse builds his self-carriage, not relying on the rider to either hold him up, or hold him together.

Rider Fundamentals

It goes without saying that the horse can only learn his basics if we have our own basics mastered. The rider fundamentals are the qualities that WE need to have or be working on.

The list of rider fundamentals is also refreshingly brief, and just about begins and ends with that holy grail, the independent seat. At it’s heart, the independent seat means you have the ability to blend in seamlessly with the horse’s movements, not disturbing his balance or his ability to move by giving unintended, confusing and conflicting input from your body. It includes the ability to control each of your body parts without affecting any other part of your position. If you are bouncing, or using the reins to keep your balance, this is telling you that you need to work on your seat. Lunge lessons, with and without stirrups, are a great way to teach your body what it needs to know.

I like to ride without stirrups at least once a week. Work on tuning your position, ideally with knowledgable eyes on the ground, is something that never ends. Who can forget the pictures of the elegant and effective Reiner Klimke warming up with no stirrups at major Championships? He worked at it. So should we! Your ability to not interefere with your horse’s way of going is a prerequisite to having the ability to actually be able to influence and improve his way of going.

The one other fundamental quality for a rider that I would add to this brief list, is that of being clear and consequent, both with your aids and your expectations. This goes back to my ABC principle explained in the articles: The ABC’s of Training: Always Be Clear, and Putting Your Horse in Front of the Leg.

Building your Pillar of Fundamentals by strengthening your horse and rider basics is an on-going process. Don’t be afraid to seek out help, guidance and support in your quest.

Now in the comments below, tell me your thoughts on the Pillar of Fundamentals, as well as any insights or A-ha’s you may have had while reading this article.

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The Three Pillars of Your Riding Foundation

by Lori Albrough on May 2nd, 2012

Your success as a rider rests upon the foundation you build for yourself through your physical and mental training efforts.

Each building block that you add as you move up the levels of riding is laid upon your foundation, which needs to be stable and secure to continuously support your advancement as far up as you want to go.

I characterize a rider’s foundation as resting upon three pillars: Focus, Fundamentals, and Fitness.

I developed this way of explaining it because the three-legged structure of a tripod is very stable and hard to tip. Even if one leg is shorter than the other two, the structure will still stand up but it will lean over, pointing towards the undeveloped pillar that needs more work. A tilted foundation will actually support you, but only to a certain point. To properly support a successful advancement upwards requires the equal development of all three pillars.

Today’s article is the first in a series that will discuss each of these three pillars in detail.

Pillar One: Focus

Discipline is the bridge between dreams and accomplishment.
- Steffen Peters, US dressage Olympian

Focus starts with your mindset, and knowing what you want. Focus is intending to do this, and wanting it enough to give it your attention on a regular basis. I’m talking daily. Daily works best. Really.

This doesn’t mean that you have to ride every day. It does mean that you work towards your riding goal every day, and there are many, many ways to do that. Even if you can’t on a given day get in a ride or lesson, work out, eat healthy, visualize your goals, and do some yoga, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do some, or even one, of those things. Don’t fall prey to all-or-nothing thinking that says “I can’t do it all so what’s the point?” That sort of thinking is going to keep you stuck.

We talked before about the power of our attention, and the rhyme I use to stay reminded of that power, Energy flows where attention goes. Your unshakeable focus is going to let you harness the power of your attention. To me, focus is the daily decision to keep your attention on what you want (NOT on what you don’t want).

So, how do you build your Pillar of Focus? Well-developed focus is so powerful I liken it to a super-power, but the truth is, anyone can develop it. The secret is to start small, so that you can experience the thrill and the energy that comes from actually completing successful steps towards your goal! The second secret is so powerful, and yet so simple that I’m afraid you are going to roll your eyes at me. But here it is, in a word: habits. Make a habit of the things you know you need to be doing to reach your goal.

So let’s start at the beginning, and don’t set the bar too high at first. Be willing to be boring and unimpressive. Start with just one thing. Every piaffe-passage transition started a long time ago as a walk-trot. The secret is, it was an extremely well-executed walk-trot. That’s what I want for you. Pick something small to focus on to start, and then actually do it, until it becomes a habit. You want it to become so much a part of you that you don’t even think about it, and if you do think about it, it is to say “This is just what I do”.

For example, say you want to improve your ability to sit the trot. So you take an honest look at yourself and say, “I intend to stretch my hips and hamstrings four times a day, eat healthy and lose these extra pounds, work out on the elliptical every other day to build my cardio endurance, and oh yeah, finally do those core exercises I’ve been reading about.”

Now I have no doubt that if you actually did all that, it would help your sitting trot immensely! But the fact of the matter is, more likely than not, your attention is going to be totally splattered by trying to figure it all out at once. You are taking on too many things and are not likely to experience completion or success in ANY of them.

My advice: Pick one. Focus on it. Do it. Enjoy the incomparable feeling that comes from completion! And, here’s what’s wild, when you do that, very often many of the other things on your list will effortlessly start to come to pass, too!

That is how you develop your big-picture focus, and achieving success with that is going to help you to develop what I call your little-picture focus. This is your focus in the moment, each and every moment when you are riding.

Have you ever had the experience of having great rides at home and then when you get to the show ground, everything changes? You find yourself totally distracted by all the goings-on in the crowded warm-up ring, worrying about the dust and the footing, and listening to your fellow competitors gripe about the judging. All of a sudden your horse feels like he was swapped by aliens during the night, and your body isn’t listening to your commands either. This is lack of focus in the moment, and you need to train for it, and build your Pillar of Focus in that area too.

Again, it all comes down to the decision to place your attention on what you want, and NOT on what you don’t want. I like to say to myself and my horse “that’s nothing to do with us” when something is trying to distract our attention away from our work. I imagine a large bubble of concentration around the two of us, and everything outside of the bubble is “nothing to do with us”.

Just watch that seemingly chaotic warm-up ring and notice the rider who is moving smoothly through their patterns and figures, everyone else magically melting out of their way as they follow their clear lines. That is the power of clear focus.

All three of the pillars of our riding foundation are equally important, but I chose to talk about the Pillar of Focus first because developing this one is going to set you up for success in the development of your other pillars.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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Moments of Transcendence in Everyday Life

by Lori Albrough on April 25th, 2012

I find the subject of happiness endlessly fascinating.

I love to reflect on what makes people happy, why we think some things will make us happy, but then they don’t, and some of the apparent paradoxes of happiness, such as how taking on a new challenge can cause a lot of discomfort — both mental and physical — in the short- and medium-term and then subsequently a lot of happiness once you’ve met the challenge, risen above, and mastered it.

In fact, over fifteen years ago, we named our Fjordhorse farm after the bird which is the symbol of happiness in poetry and song, the Eastern Bluebird. Bluebird Lane, and the Fjords which live here, have been a very big source of happiness and purpose in my life.

In keeping with my interest, I like to follow Gretchen Rubin’s blog The Happiness Project which often gives me food for thought. One of her recent posts, about watching for moments of transcendence really struck a chord with me.

In this post she talks about how in books, movies, and plays her favorite scenes are often moments of transcendence: “when, in the muddle of existence, characters somehow manage to break through everything to engage with each other, and with higher values.”

Here, Gretchen shares a moment of transcendence from her own everyday life:

And I remember when I stopped by the studio of a friend who is a brilliant painter. His studio was everything you’d imagine: skylight, canvases everywhere, plaster models, coffee cans filled with brushes, all of it.

“Wait, I just have to finish one thing,” he told me, and he added a few more strokes of paint to a landscape he was working on.

I looked around at everything, so beautiful. “Jacob, you are lucky,” I said, in a fierce voice.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

In the rush of our daily routines, it’s so easy to miss moments of transcendence. In art, they are masterfully presented, with language and emphasis that set them apart like jewels. In ordinary life, they rush by. I try to remind myself to look for them every day.

What made that moment transcendent is that she rose above the everyday elements and looked at everything with fresh eyes, realizing the beauty of the surroundings and of the man who was able to follow his passion and use his time and creativity to express himself.

I think of this now when I’m in the barn, especially at evening feeding, with the smells of clean shavings and hay, the sounds of the horses munching and pushing their hay around, looking for the very best bits to eat first, the sight of each horse, happy and healthy and well cared-for. This scene is so familiar that it’s totally commonplace to me, and yet, I realize there is no place I’d rather be and how truly beautiful it is. How lucky I am to be there! I think now of how an outsider would feel, seeing it with fresh eyes.

Even such simple moments as evening feeding can be transcendent!

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Prisco : A Super-Star of the Fjord Breed!

by Lori Albrough on April 25th, 2012

Prisco was a very influential horse in my life. I bought him in the summer of 2000 when he was five years old, from my friend Julia (Julie) Will.

Julie imported Prisco from Holland in 1996 as a yearling, when she was over there looking at horses with Vivian Creigh. Julie had been looking for a junior stallion prospect who had the ability to sire grey offspring. At the time her senior stallion was the grey, MVF Erlend. Julie was hoping to find a high quality colt that they could breed Erlend daughters to.

They spotted Prisco out in the field with another colt and were impressed by his movement. They knew one of the two boys was a son of the grey Fjord stallion Briggen, but they couldn’t get near enough to them to check their brands. Hoping for the best, Julie bought both of them and had them imported to America.

Tammy Savery was the trainer at Julie’s Old Hickory Farm at that time, and Tammy worked with the boys to get them settled down and trained.

Prisco grew up to be a wonderful Fjord horse with remarkable movement, but he was the one sired by Halstor not Briggen, and he never did have a drop of grey in his genes!

Julie asked me to take Prisco in the summer of 2000. She had recently sold Erlend and had imported Fløtren from Norway. Fløtren did not much like the idea of a second stallion, Prisco, being on the farm and it was starting to cause problems. Tammy was pregnant with her first child, and Julie was thinking of selling Prisco and needed someone to work with him in preparation for the Evaluation in the fall. I had ridden him and driven him when I visited Old Hickory that spring, and quite liked him, so Julie asked me if I’d like to spend the summer working with him.

After having Prisco at my farm for a short time, and riding and driving him all around our fields, trails and back roads, I decided I really liked the horse. I had started dressage lessons earlier that year with the goal of improving my riding, and I wanted to pursue this type of training on a Fjord horse. I thought Prisco had the movement to make him well suited to the sport. So I started thinking about seeing if I could buy him, but I wasn’t really interested in owning a stallion at that point. At any rate he was closely related to one of my foundation mares so he wouldn’t have been the greatest choice for me from that point of view. Julie decided she would sell him to me as a gelding, and thus began my journey with my first dressage Fjord.

From the very beginning, and the whole time I owned Prisco, we trained with Ute Busse. Ute came to Canada from Germany, where she trained in dressage with her father, and she became a huge influence on me. Ute is an accomplished rider who loves horses and has a no-nonsense way of communicating her expectations to them. English is her second language, and as a result she has developed some rather colourful sayings that she uses in her teaching. One of my favorites is, “Don’t open a can of worms unless you are prepared to eat it.”

In the beginning, Prisco was very, very naughty. Whenever I asked him to canter, he would buck. Actually, bronc would be a more descriptive term. Trying to go once around a twenty metre circle in a steady trot would involve scooting forward, jumping sideways, and much silliness and mayhem on his part. It felt like he was forever saying “Haha, the joke is on you!”

My motto became “I stay on!” and Ute coached me through every step. “Go forward and use up that energy”, she would say. Things improved and I learned so much riding Prisco with Ute. I always felt lucky to have a horse with such talent and joie-de-vivre, and I thoroughly enjoyed his personality and character. Prisco is a very smart horse and he seemed to enjoy the challenge of dressage training.

We began showing at primary level shows in 2001, and in 2002 did our first National shows with good results. Prisco’s sense of humour would often surface in the show ring, but if I could get through the first six or so movements of the test without him playing a practical joke on me, I knew we would have a great score. When he was good, he was very good! As time went by, and I learned how to channel his energy (and my nerves) our partnership became more confirmed, and our results more consistent.

I was honoured to have Dressage Today magazine feature Prisco and I in an article called “Fjords Do Dressage” in May 2003. This was part of a feature they did on ponies in the sport, and they used the photo shown at left, of Prisco and I taken in the warmup ring at Dressage at Eastwood the previous year.

Through the years Ute trained Prisco and me up to Third/Fourth level, and we achieved some great results, both in the show ring and in the pleasure I got from our training rides. I showed him at Third Level for two seasons, winning Champion and Reserve Championships at a number of National Shows, and Ute could ride all the Fourth Level work with him. For our scores on the National show circuit, Prisco and I earned both Bronze and Silver medal achievement awards from Dressage Canada.

Some people were surprised to see a Fjord horse showing at this level of dressage, because it was a bit of a rarity. But he won people over when they saw him working, and he developed quite a following, people always happy to see him out competing at the big shows and there to cheer him on. Julie had given Prisco the barn name of “Dutch” and we were often greeted by happy calls of “Dutchie!” from all the people who recognized him as we rode around the show grounds.

In his breeding career before being gelded, Prisco sired 13 offspring that I know of, all brown dun. Nine were fillies, three geldings, and one stallion registered in Canada who has one registered offspring himself. I owned two of Prisco’s daughters and they looked very much alike, and I had seen pictures of another daughter who also looked just like my two, and yet to my eye they did not look like Prisco at all. I always imagined that they must look like his mother. I started and trained these two Prisco daughters and found them both to be serious-minded hard workers, not at all impish like their father had been at a young age, although neither moved quite like him, either.

In 2007 I sold Prisco to my friend Peggy Peregrine-Spear. She was looking for an awesome horse for riding and driving, and I knew she would be a great owner for Prisco. Peggy has really made Prisco her own, developing a deep and solid relationship with him, taking his driving training to a very high level on the pleasure and CDE scene, and clinicing regularly in dressage with Janet Foy. Together this pair has amassed many more blue ribbons, registry awards, Championships, successes, positive exposure for the breed, and happy memories.

Sadly, our friend Julie Will passed away in 2002. We miss her, and think of her frequently. She was a true friend of the Fjordhorse. I know that Julie would be so proud of what Prisco became, a super-star of the Fjord breed!

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