What I Learned at Fast Track

It’s been almost a year since I returned from the Fast Track program at Parelli’s Florida Campus last November and I have been thinking this week about something head instructor John Barr told the class on our first day. He said that we would learn a lot during our four weeks at the program but we might not realize all of what we had learned until well after we returned home. So after reflecting this week on my experiences both in Florida and here in Delaware since I returned home, I’m going to try and summarize what I learned at Fast Track.
Probably the most important lesson I learned while in Florida was that I had been confusing ‘calm’ with ‘relaxed’. My horse Sonny is an easy going guy and there isn’t much that gets him excited, so I thought that most of the time, he was pretty relaxed. When I got to Florida and watched all of the instructors and many of the other students work with their horses, I began to notice how often the horse would blow and how infrequently Sonny blew, especially when I was riding. I began to ask questions about the signs of relaxation in introverted horses and to watch Sonny really closely when I was working with him. It was then that I began to realize how very subtle the signs were that could tell me the difference between Sonny just being calm and being truly relaxed. His head might be an inch or two lower in carriage, his breathing might slow ever so slightly, his lick and chew would become a little less secretive, his mouth might relax slightly, his gait might become slightly more rhythmic. The signs were very subtle and only if I was paying close attention could I see the signs for what they were. Once began paying close attention, I discovered that often I wasn’t giving him enough time with a particular exercise to become truly relaxed.
When I returned from Florida, I gave Sonny a week off and then I did an experiment aimed at getting true relaxation. I decided I was going to go into the arena, and using the pattern of ‘follow the rail’, see just how low I would have to stay on that pattern to get Sonny to relax enough to blow. I put Sonny on the rail and began to walk. We walked for 30 minutes before he blew. During that entire time, he walked calmly around the arena. He wasn’t upset but it took him a very long time to give that sign of relaxation. Clearly there was something going on here and that brings me to the second lesson I learned at Fast Track.
My second important insight from Fast Track was that there was a lot of brace going on when I was riding Sonny. Clearly some of the brace was Sonny but I started to recognize in Florida just how much brace I had in my riding. Often this came when I wasn’t feeling particularly confident. I would brace in the stirrups and then Sonny would brace in response. Another situation that often caused brace would be when Sonny would have a stiff and bouncy trot. Sonny was capable of a nice jog trot but often, as a result of a lack of rhythm and relaxation, his trot would get very large and hard to ride. That would cause me to brace in my stirrups which in turn caused his trot to stiffen further. It was a vicious circle.
This brings me to my third insight from Florida, that despite my best attempts at shimming, my saddle, a saddle in which I was very comfortable, was causing problems for Sonny. When I got home, I bought a new saddle. The change had an immediate, positive impact on Sonny. The first day I rode in the new saddle, Sonny blew within five minutes of me mounting. The second day he blew in less than two minutes. The third day he blew almost as soon as my butt hit the saddle. Sonny’s gaits also changed almost immediately. His head lowered. His stride became long, smoother and at the trot, much easier to ride. Because of the change in his trot, I found I braced much less which also had a positive impact on our fluidity. Of course this change resulted in some other issues but I have worked through most of them. (See the post “Fear of Flying”)
The fourth insight I had at Fast Track, and this one has probably been as important to our progress as the ‘calm vs. relaxed’ realization, is that I developed a whole new understanding of the meaning of ‘neutral’. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the concept of ‘neutral’ when playing the seven games on the ground but I had very little understanding of what ‘neutral’ meant when I was riding. I realized while I was in Florida just how much I was fiddling with the reins when I was riding. My hands were in almost constant motion. They didn’t make big movements. I didn’t jerk on Sonny’s mouth or make exaggerated corrections but I was playing with the reins all of the time when I was riding. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for Sonny. He must have thought I was nagging at him all the time. No wonder he didn’t move as well as I wanted off my leg and seat, he must have been consumed by the micromanaging I was doing with my hands. Poor boy!
When I came home from Fast Track I made a concerted effort to plant my hand on his withers when I was riding and just leave it there until I needed to make an actual correction. By letting Sonny make mistakes rather than prevent him for making them, I took a leap forward in creating a better connection between Sonny and my seat. Who would have known that the finger bones are connected to the seat bones?
Fast Track is a very individual experience. There were 45 students in my Fast Track class and we were all over the board in terms of our skills and our relationship with our horses. I went to Florida worried that I would be the oldest, least experienced, least physical fit and least skilled person there but I learned that I wasn’t; a fact that was a great relief to me. I put a lot of pressure on myself while I was in Florida and to a certain extent, that pressure tested my mental, emotional and physical fitness.
Physically I did better than I expected I would. I have really bad knees. One of my knees has been bone on bone since I was 22 years old (I was 62 when I arrived in Florida). I seldom work more than three or four hours a day with horses. In Florida we were going from 7 AM to 7 PM and often we rode for three or four hours in the afternoon. Sonny’s pen was a long way from anything and I walked more than I have since I was in college. The first week was agony and I hurt all over. I went back to my rented apartment each evening and took enough Advil to stop a truck. I didn’t sleep well and I can’t remember ever being so tired but I soldiered on and by the second week, I felt better. Eventually my knees did get the better of me and I didn’t ride for part of the fourth week but I was thrilled with how well I kept up with the pace.
Emotionally, I didn’t do as well as I had expected. For 28 years I worked for EI duPont de Nemours, a major chemical company. Much of that time I held high pressure management jobs. I figured spending a month with my horse in Florida among supportive, like-minded people would be a snap but it was harder than I imagined. I found that I often felt quite emotional, particularly when being exposed to something new. At least part of the emotion was due to being so tired all the time. I had a good friend who once said that “Fatigue makes cowards of us all,” and certainly the lack of sleep didn’t help. But I also think that I set high standards for myself and trying to live to those personal expectations created a mental and emotional stress that I hadn’t anticipated.
I was helped by something that head instructor John Barr told us. He said that each of us was on his or her own journey and that we each were “exactly where we were supposed to be” on that journey. Accepting that idea helped me deal with the emotional stress and also allowed me to give myself permission to stop riding during the last week when my knees really began to hurt. Without that permission, I might have tried to push through and keep riding, only to find that I had damaged my knees beyond repair.
Spending the month in Florida at the Parelli Center was about the best present I ever gave myself. Sonny and I came home with a better relationship and I came home with a greatly enhanced understanding of the principles and the tools that embody Parelli Natural Horsemanship. I also came home with a better understanding of what I need to do to keep growing as a horseman and the determination to continue on this journey so I can help accomplish the mission of making the world a better place for people and horses.