|
Don't Hold Your
Breath
by Ron Meredith of Meridith Manor
Take a quick poll anywhere you find a bunch of horse people, and you’ll
find that the two things riders fear most are coming off their horses
and getting run away with. There’s a common solution to both of those
problems--don’t hold your breath.
When horses or people are startled or nervous or concerned in some way,
they hold their breath. When they do that, any rhythm or relaxation they
had go right out the window. Rhythm and relaxation are the first rungs
in our training tree because they’re so important to anything else that
you do with your horse. Rhythm is the one way you can control a horse.
So that’s where everything starts.
When you practice your heeding groundwork with your horse in an arena or
a round pen or even when you first go to get him out of his stall and
groom him, you need to breathe in a steady, relaxed rhythm. Your posture
follows your breathing and, as you do your groundwork, your horse is
following your posture. So if your horse gets nervous and holds his
breath, you have to make sure to watch your own breathing. Don’t hold
your own breath. You just keep breathing in rhythm and relaxation. If
the horse breaks his rhythm, you don’t interrupt your own rhythm by
holding your breath or doing anything startling.
So in your groundwork, you want to make sure your breathing is always
rhythmic and relaxed so your posture says rhythmic and relaxed. Then you
keep showing this rhythm to the horse until he develops the habit of
following it. You make your rhythm a safe place he can always go back to
if he gets nervous or startled.
You’re also developing the habit of staying rhythmic and relaxed
yourself no matter what the horse does. That’s important because people
come off horses when they hold their breath. When you hold your breath,
you tighten your stomach, brace your back, and clamp your legs. That
tension in your body intensifies the horse’s motion and bingo. You’re
bounced off on the ground.
The hard part about preventing this from happening is training yourself
to breathe when things are falling apart. So as you’re heeding your
horse from the ground, you start building the automatic responses to the
horse’s nervous reflexes that are going to help you when he startles
while you’re on his back. You’re just going to breathe right through it
and not “notice” it with any change in your own rhythm.
Whether you’re working your horse from the ground or the saddle, you can
also use a little mantra like “Breath-Ride-Every Stride” to help
yourself develop the habit of rhythmic breathing in the cadence you
want. You can’t hold your breath while you’re talking or singing. So a
little mantra like this or a little refrain you can sing is a place you
can go back to in a crisis to help yourself recreate and stay with the
rhythm you want.
In our riding classes, we sometimes play music or use a drumbeat to help
everyone keep the rhythm as they ride down the sides of the arena and
turn through the corners. If a student gets in trouble, the instructors
may repeat a phrase like “sit up and ride” over and over in the correct
cadence to help the student regain the rhythm she needs to take back
control of her horse. Figure out what works for you and develop it as a
habit to help you focus on your rhythm.
A lot of people don’t understand that you have to ride a runaway horse
before you can stop him. They grab hold of the reins and start pulling.
This doesn’t work because pulling just traps the head of an already
frightened horse and scares him even more. It also gives him something
to pull against, just like a racehorse. When you pull against a runaway
horse, you make it possible for him to run as long as he wants to.
See-sawing the reins doesn’t do much better because it’s not something
the horse understands. The pressure doesn’t create a feeling in him of
any shape he recognizes.
To stop a runaway, you have to go where the horse is and match his
rhythm. Then you start riding him forward rhythmically to let him know
you’re still leading the dance. Then you use your breathing and your
aids to slow the rhythm and bring him back to where you want him. You
have to breathe so you can keep your body relaxed enough to stay in the
saddle. You have to breathe so you can control the horse through rhythm.
Now I realize this isn’t as easy to do on a horse as it sounds on paper.
To make it as easy as possible, you have to set things up in stages well
in advance of any crisis so the sequence you need to regain control is
perfectly horse logical to your horse. So first you use your heeding
groundwork to teach the horse to follow the rhythm of your breathing and
your posture. When you get on his back, you teach him to follow the
rhythm of your seat, which is set by the rhythm of your breathing. You
want to be able to use that rhythm to speed him up or slow him down at
any gait. You want to develop the habit of the horse feeling and
following that rhythm. And you develop that little mantra or song or
whistle as a habit you can use to help you keep breathing rhythmically
when things hit the fan.
If you want a performance horse that can go to the top of his game, you
don’t want to inhibit his athletic potential in any way. If you’re
training a grand prix jumper or an advanced event horse, his unspent
energy drive after a stretch without exercise can set things up for some
bucking or a runaway. You don’t want to do anything that makes him feel
like he should put a damper on his drive and enthusiasm. That means
you’ve got to be able to rhythmically ride whatever he offers in order
to control it and shape it into what you want.
The same principle of achieving control through rhythm applies even if
you’re just riding for pleasure. If you’re out on a trail taking in the
scenery or talking with your buddy, you’re going to be in trouble if
your horse startles at something. You’ll probably be startled by the
horse’s startle, hold your breath, tense your body, and get dumped. If
the horse takes off and you manage to stay with him, you’ve got to get
your own rhythm back before you can get with the horse’s rhythm and
reshape it so the horse is going the speed you want.
Either way the results would have been a lot less dramatic if you hadn’t
taken your attention off your horse and the rhythm you wanted in the
first place. If you develop the habit in yourself of giving the horse a
rhythmic reference point stride by stride and if the horse develops the
habit of following that rhythm, that rhythm is going to be the safe,
familiar place he looks for when something startling comes along.
Just remember to “Breath-Ride-Every Stride” until it’s automatic and
things will go better the next time. |
