Balancing the Athlete: Whose Job Is This, Anyway?

Here's a question I want you to sit with for a second before I say anything else.

Whose job is it to develop you equine’s as an athlete, mentally, physically, emotionally? 

Not just train the movement. Beyond teaching the cue. Rather actually building the capacity that has to be there before the movement even means anything.

I think a lot of us answer that question without meaning to. We think it's the horse's job, somehow. He's an athlete, he should just be able to do this. Or we think it's time's job. Give it enough months and it'll show up. Or, if we're honest, sometimes we think it's the movement's job. Do enough shoulder-in and the strength will follow.  Mind you shoulder-in is pretty miraculous if we do it correctly and give it time…

But I don't think any of those are quite right. I think it's our job. I think if we're asking a horse and /or mule to do this work with us, we've signed up to be their physical therapist and their personal trainer, whether we ever say those words out loud or not.  And we are, as a horse or mule owner and rider, the head team coach who organizes and manages nutrition, body work, dental and hoof care, tack fit, etc etc… it’s a big responsibility.   As the team coach we need to understand why we do what, when, and how. 

And here's the part that took me longer to admit: that includes me too. My body, mind, and emotions are part of this partnership. If I'm asking my horse to build strength and coordination and endurance, I don't get to skip that question for myself.

That's what this episode is about. Welcome back to The Balance Point.

Last time, we talked about something that felt almost backwards. That the most trust building thing you can do isn't showing your competence, it's showing your need. Asking for help.

I want to pick that thread back up, because I don't think it stops at relationships. I think it applies to bodies too.

When you commit to a real protocol for your horse, or for yourself, you're doing the exact same vulnerable thing. You're saying, this body doesn't have this capacity yet. Not "I'm failing." Not "something's wrong." Just, honestly, not yet. And I'm going to build it, on purpose, instead of pretending it's already there.

And we need to build that team and gather those resources to build it. That's the same trust we talked about last episode. It's just aimed at the body instead of the relationship.

ASSESSMENT BEFORE ACTION

There's a principle I come back to constantly in my own riding, and it's this: the horse should know the answer before I ask the question. And that’s my job to set up.  I usually talk about that in terms of preparation before a movement. But it applies just as much before any training program even starts.

Before we build a protocol, we have to know where we're actually starting from. Not where we wish we were starting from. Not where the horse was last year. Where the mind and body actually are, right now, together.

And I want to underline that phrase, together, because I think we tend to separate them. We'll say a horse is "just being difficult" when really his body isn't ready for what we're asking, and the difficulty is tension, not defiance. Or we'll chase a physical fix for something that's actually a mental or emotional bracing. A tense mind lives in a tense body. You can't fully assess one without the other.

Let me give you a picture of what I mean.

I think of a horse who, every single time, would rush the moment you asked for canter. Riders would call it hot. Some would call it disobedient. A few even called it dangerous. And the instinct, understandably, is to correct the behavior. Add more contact, turn him… etc... I’ve even seen run him harder longer...  That rushing of the canter is actually very common in horses and mules that are not balanced or don’t fully understand the cue etc… The strength needed for a great canter while carrying a human is not just ‘there’  it needs to be developed.  This is a horse whose hind end hasn't been taught to carry weight yet. Structurally, he doesn't have the strength to sit and push off correctly into the transition, so his body does the only thing available to it: it runs forward and pulls itself into the gait using the front end instead. The rushing isn't temperament. It's the honest physical answer his body gives to a question it doesn't have the strength to answer any other way.

The emotions behind the canter can get confused… equines generally use the canter for flight or play.  If your ask is not very playful feeling to them they may default to flight.  So it’s our job to teach the body and the mind to understand what we want so they can have the mental, emotional, and physical balance to respond correctly. 

But when you actually assess that horse honestly, mind and body together, a different picture shows up. Once you see that, the whole training plan changes. You're not correcting a "bad" transition anymore. You're building the strength that makes a good one possible.

That's the whole point of assessment. It doesn't just tell you what's wrong. It tells you what a horse's body is honestly capable of right now, so the plan you build actually starts where he is, not where you wish he was.

Ok… so what is this assessment… 

Step 1: IDENTIFYING ASYMMETRIES

Here's something true of essentially every horse, and every rider, you are not symmetrical. Neither am I. Neither is your horse and mule.

There's a stronger side and a weaker side. A side that bends easily and a side that resists. A hind leg that steps deeply under the body and one that hangs back just a little. This isn't a flaw. It isn't something gone wrong. It's just true of bodies, and it's some of the most useful information you'll ever have if you know how to use it.

I hear from riders constantly who are stuck on questions like this: my horse feels weak behind, which exercise actually helps that, versus one that just tires him out. Or, I don't know if I should be doing shoulder-in or leg yield. Or the one that comes up more than almost any other: how do I know if the movement I'm asking for is actually lifting through the back and the base of the neck, what people call the thoracic sling, or if he's just moving his legs sideways without any of that support underneath.

Those aren't small questions. They're exactly the right questions. And the honest answer is, you can't know which exercise to reach for until you know which asymmetry you're actually working with.

So identifying asymmetry isn't a diagnosis you deliver once and move past. It's data. It tells the protocol what to prioritize. A horse who's weaker through one hind leg needs different early exercises than one who's tight and hollow through the ribcage on one side, even if from the saddle they can look similar at first.

And this is where I'll say the same thing about you, the rider. You have a stronger hip. A side you post the trot on without thinking, and a side that takes real effort. If you don't know your own asymmetry, you will quietly train it into your horse, because your body is asking for the same shortcut in the saddle that it's asking for on the ground.

So spend some time thinking about, feeling, and observing yourself and your equine.  Which shoulder is stronger?  Which way do you and your equine bend better?  Where do you feel the lean… does your horse or mule tend to drift right or left?  Which lead is easier and straighter?  Does one hamstring look bigger than the other… etc..  These are all clues to what your body and your equine’s bodies need.

Set 2: BUILDING THE PROTOCOL — YOGA, STRENGTH, ENDURANCE

Once you actually know where a body is starting from, mind and physical capacity both, and once you know where the asymmetries are, you're ready to build something. Not a random collection of exercises. A protocol. Something with an order to it, because the order matters.

I like to think about this in three pieces, and honestly, they're not that different from how any of us build fitness in our own bodies.

The first piece is something like yoga. This is the relaxation and Flexibility work. Suppleness through the topline, the ability to bend and release rather than brace. This is the R in relaxation, balance, and willingness, (RBW)  the three pillars we've spent months building on this podcast, and it comes first here too, for the same reason it always comes first. You cannot build real strength on top of tension. A brace absorbs effort instead of using it.

The second piece is strength. This is where shoulder control and hind end control live. This combined with yoga or flexibility becomes mobility and proprioception or coordination.  Before any lateral movement means anything, the horse has to have the actual physical strength to hold himself in a new configuration and still carry a rider well. 

The third piece is one I haven't talked about much on this podcast yet, and it's endurance. Stamina. The capacity for the first two pieces to hold up under real, sustained work, not just for a few strides in a lesson, but across an actual ride, an actual season, an actual competitive round. Yoga gives a horse the range. Strength gives him the power. Endurance is what lets both of those things still be there twenty minutes into the ride, not just the first five.

I'll be honest with you about why this framework has been on my mind. There's a book coming out this month from Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist a lot of people know from his podcast, and it's built around exactly this idea: that health isn't one thing you either have or don't have, it's a set of foundational practices, protocols, that you build deliberately over time. I haven't read it yet, it isn't out until partway through this month, so I'm not going to tell you what's in it. But the premise alone struck me, because it's the exact same structure I keep coming back to with horses. We don't get an athletic, capable body by accident. We get there through a protocol, applied consistently, in the right order.

Step 3: THE PROGRESSION — LATERAL WORK ONWARD

Here's where it all starts to connect. Once you know the mind and body you're working with, once you've identified the asymmetries, and once you've built real relaxation and real strength, lateral work stops being a checklist of movements to collect and starts being what it was always meant to be: a tool.

Shoulder-in isn't a box to check before half pass. Each one is asking a specific question of a specific part of the horse's body, and the order you introduce them in should follow the asymmetry and the strength you actually found in assessment, not a syllabus that ignores the individual horse in front of you.

And this is the same progression that eventually opens the door to collection, real engagement, and further down the road, canter work and flying changes. None of that is a separate skill bolted onto the horse at the end. It's the same protocol, just further along. A horse who has genuine relaxation, genuine strength, and genuine endurance has almost everything he needs for any athletic endeavor no matter how it’s being used.

Step  4: THE HUMAN BASELINE

I want to turn this same lens back on us now, because I don't think this conversation is complete if it's only about the horse.

If we're asking our horses to go through an honest assessment, to name their asymmetries without judgment, and to build strength and endurance deliberately, we owe ourselves that same honesty.

What's your tension? Where does your body brace instead of release? Which side do you unconsciously favor every time you get in the saddle? Do you actually have the core strength and balance to sit a canter transition correctly, or are you, without meaning to, asking your horse to compensate for what your own body hasn't built yet?

I think about a rider I worked with who was frustrated that her horse kept falling in through the left shoulder in every circle. She'd tried half halts, outside rein, more inside leg, and nothing stuck. When we actually looked at her position, the answer wasn't in the horse at all. Her own shoulder was collapsing to the inside on every single circle, an old asymmetry from years of favoring one side, and her horse was simply following the shape her body was giving him. He wasn't falling in. He was doing exactly what she was, unconsciously, asking.  Once we adjusted that position and strength no more outside rein or inside leg was necessary… she could relax into the canter a bit.  

Developing the equine athlete and developing the human half of the partnership were never two separate projects. They're the same one.

As the head coach for your team (your equine and you) you need to be able to identify and gather the team of professionals that can support you and your equine.  Body workers, dentists, vet/doctors, etc… You need to surround yourself with the information and skills to build an awesome protocol for you and your equine as athletes. 

This entire progression, honest assessment, identifying asymmetry, building relaxation and strength and endurance, and then letting lateral work do its real job, is exactly the road map I've built into the Cohesive Rider Course. It's not a collection of movements to memorize. It's the protocol underneath them, the one that makes the movements make sense once you get there.  This is also exactly what we move through in the Monthly Journey Membership.  Every month we address how to work through another layer of equine and human development.

If any of this has been circling in your mind while you listen, that's probably a good sign it's worth a closer look. I'll leave details in the show notes.

Next time, we're going to zoom in on one specific piece of this whole picture: transitions. Not just the walk to trot, trot to canter kind everyone thinks of, but transitions as the honest, ongoing conversation they actually are between an equine and human.

Until then, ride on.