Why professional trainers, breakers and instructors ride for submission.

Why do most professional trainers, breakers and instructors ride their horse into submission?

Short answer – it’s the quickest and easiest way to get their desired results.

Trainers and breakers only have a short period of time to get big results. They also are very competent riders that don’t baulk at a horse bucking, bolting, rearing and acting out and will just ride them through that behaviour into submission. They simply don’t have the time to spend with the horse to take it at that individual horse’s pace.

Another reason why professionals work for submission is because they don’t have the time to develop the trust and relationship to get the results this way.

Getting our horses to say “yes”, as opposed to submission (not sure what this means – read this first), is because what and how we ask depends on how well-established our relationship, trust and leadership is established. This takes time. With any of my students that get a new horse, I recommend that it takes a year minimum. Normally, when you send your horse away on training, they get maybe 6 – 8 weeks to get the horse to confidently and safely to walk, trot and canter, and to look after their rider. It’s a big ask!!

Lastly, when someone comes to us as an instructor and trainer, it’s not because they are happy with where they are with their riding and how the horse is working. It’s because they want to step up and ride at better level. So for us as instructors and riders, to get more from our students, we have to put pressure on our riders and get them to ask more from the horse.

The horse will nearly always protest because the quality they have been working at has been good enough, so why should they put more effort in? We have to put more pressure on the horse and push through their argument to get them to try harder and often do something they’ve never done before (for both horse and rider) and figure out what that something is.

Where this “push through” doesn’t work.

• Our horse doesn’t know how to process pressure;

• There are gaps in our horse or riders understanding of the aids;

• The horse isn’t physically ready to do more;

• There are underlying traumas (whether physical or mental) that take longer and need more support through those developmental processes.

Is your horse coping with its training? We would love to hear from you!

Submission Vs Yes

We talk a lot about submission in the horse industry. It is one of the qualities of training we are marked on.

In the dictionary, submission is defined as:

• “The action of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person”.

• “The act of allowing someone or something to have power over you”.

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the kind of relationship that I want to have with my horse.

All my life I had been taught how to bully my horses into submission. To be bigger, scarier and stronger than my horse and anything it could be scared of.

I used to hop off at the end of a ride feeling guilty about how I had treated my horse.

Not that the way I handled them was particularly brutal or heavy handed. It just wasn’t the relationship or the experience I wanted to have with my horse. It wasn’t the relationship I had with them on the ground. I didn’t understand why that’s what I needed to get what I wanted from my horse under saddle.

As an instructor for kids and beginners, I also understood that they physically (and for the kids, mentally) were incapable of dominating a horse into submission. The lack of strength, coordination and balance in the saddle (and for the kids understanding) meant that the horses weren’t doing as they were told because they weren’t being made to.

There had to another way to get cooperation from our horses.

This is where Training Trainability came from. How can we engage our horses in the learning process so they enjoy the training sessions and want to participate?

One of our core philosophies is to ASK, not force.

Training Trainability gives the horse the opportunity to say “no”, which a lot of riders and trainers don’t agree with. This is understandable, because if you’re horse has never been given the opportunity to say no they really take advantage of it and will just about to say no to everything!! This can feel like you’re going backwards with your training and your horse is being naughty, so riders can quickly give up on doing it this way.

This method of training is about empowering the horse’s voice so:

• They choose to participate in the training, and

• They also can feel comfortable about saying that’s enough when they feel pushed to their limit mentally, physically or emotionally.

It’s about us, as trainers, to think outside the box and find motivators other than how hard we can kick, use the whip and pull on their head. It’s about developing a trust, relationship and bond with our horse, so that they want to spend time with us and look after us.

It doesn’t mean that there is no discipline and we let them walk all over us. It’s about establishing clear boundaries and expectations of behaviour so that when we work with them they are respectful and safe.

When it comes to performance pressure where we are stressing their intellect and physical condition however, we must take our time and let them say “yes” or “no” rather than expecting submission of everything we ask for.

To learn more about how to apply Trainability to your horse, click here.