Successfully working with animals and children!
Coaching Arabella Ralston Saul- and her horse!
There is much talk about the link between sports and business coaching. Sheila Reynolds usually works in corporate environments but explains here how many of the same skills are applicable in the world of horses. Sheila describes how she applied her coaching and training skills with her obvious love and knowledge of horses - and raises the question 'which was I coaching - the horse or the rider?'
'I make no distinction - children are animals' John Huston, Film Director
My association with Arabella began when she was just twelve years old and declared to me that she wanted to ride at Badminton Horse Trials one day! Not a bad ambition for a twelve year old with a scruffy and somewhat malevolent New Forest pony as one mount and a rather large 14.2 showjumping pony as the other.
There are individual as well as team categories in all horse competitions, but of course the truth is that you are always at the very least a team of two - you and the horse. The big problem with this, of course, is that of communicating across species. A problem compounded in Arabella's case by the fact that she was extremely dyslexic.
For me as the coach this meant that verbal communication was somewhat limited, leading to too many misunderstandings. The trick was (with Arabella as with the horses) to set up the circumstances whereby horse and rider would do what was needed; get them to practise how this felt; congratulate them - then get them to do it again!
Riding across country was Arabella's great and natural gift, so there was little work to do there except to ensure that she remained aware of the vital importance of keeping her centre of gravity slightly backwards - achieved by keeping her heels down and not leaning too far up the horse's neck when in the air over fences.
Show jumping she found a little more difficult, the slower pace leaving both she and the horse more time to think coming into a fence, and wonder whether or not they were going to meet it at the correct pace and distance. Practise in counting down strides to fences improved confidence and soon problems here were virtually eradicated.
Dressage is a matter of performing geometric exercises at a proscribed pace and at an even rhythm which is dictated by the length of stride that the horse takes. For Arabella with her dyslexia, 'drawing' these geometric shapes (squares, circles, figures of eight) was acutely difficult as she did not visualise the shapes as one would expect.
We overcame the 'shapes problem' by placing buckets on the ground - if she went around a bucket in each corner, she was making a square; if she went inside the buckets, she was making a diamond; if she went inside the four buckets, but around another four, strategically placed, she was making a circle!
Equally, to get the even, rhythmic pace required, poles were placed on the ground at equal intervals for the horse to stride over. Making clicking sounds each time the horse took a stride in order to vocalise the rhythm (like a metronome) compounded the feel for the rhythm and established this in horse's and rider's heads.
Get the feel - practise it - relax and allow it to become habitual, make it fun. I can think of no easier and more effective way of learning. Whether I was communicating more effectively with the horse or with Arabella, I sometimes didn't know, but in the end what did it matter? They were a team and one couldn't do the job without the other.
The question of motivation is the only one where I believe there is a divergence in method. For, although I firmly believe that horses know when they have won, and enjoy the sensation if the partnership is as it should be and they are not just being used as a vehicle for a human being's ambition, they do not have to deal with being beaten.
Human beings, however, do have to deal with this. Horses may miss the 'high' of celebration and excited chatter in the lorry on the way home, but the humans have to dissect and rationalise how they came to be beaten and why they are not the best. The most effective way to do this is to aim for personal excellence.
I have come to think that if you chase competitive success for its own sake then it will run from you as fast as its legs can carry it. If you aim for excellence and regard winning as its reward, then you are more likely to win. And only ever compete against yourself. If you did better than last time - good. If not - get back to work!
To be effective, motivation must be born of love for what you do and must be achieved against the highest standards of honesty and decency. If you win because you have cheated, or undermined your opponents so that they are not performing at their best, then you have not won. You have just lied to yourself - the most corrosive lie of all.
Sadly, mental and physical thuggery exist everywhere - in business, in the kitchens of restaurants, within the church, and in academia. It is perfectly possible, however, to be ambitious without being a bully; good without being a sanctimonious bore; and successful without being smug. And, I think, it is more rewarding and much more fun!
I believe that this life is all we get, so we might as well have a damned good time. My advice to anyone in any capacity is to assess what you do qualitatively, not quantitatively. And if you are forced to judge yourself by quantitative rather than qualitative statistics - change the system or leave. If we all do that things could change.
In Arabella's case, her love for her horses and for the sport of eventing negated any necessity to convert her to an understanding and appreciation of the values of kindness and good sportmanship. Exasperating and stubborn and often seeming able only to learn the hard way, she nevertheless taught me much more than I ever taught her.
Now, I mostly work in warm, dry buildings, transferring communications and computer skills to people employed in large corporations. Seeing strangers form into supportive teams enjoying one another's company is tremendously rewarding, but weekends out in the cold, sitting on a fence watching young horses work is still the greatest joy I know.
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