I believe that many horse people suffer a severe affliction, a curse if you like, that dooms them and their horses to ordinariness. I call it exercise fixation. It’s not so much a physical affliction as a fixation towards a mindset that when we want something to change with a horse we are addicted to repeating an exercise or series of exercises in the hope it will happen. An exercise or series of exercises becomes our automatic “go-to” answer for everything.

A student was lunging her horse. It was not going so well because the horse was rushing and falling on its inside shoulder with its neck flexed to the outside. I watched for several minutes to allow the owner to experiment and try some things that might create a change in her horse. Eventually, I suggested she stop and then I asked her, “What are you trying to achieve?”

“Well, I want him to slow down and bend on the circle,” she said.

I then asked, “Why isn’t he doing that?”

She answered, “I think he is worried and won’t listen to me.”

“So, why don’t you change that?” I asked.

“I’m trying. I’m trying to get him to trot slower and to get straighter, but he won’t,” she responded.

I took a breath. “Yes, that’s right. You’re trying to get him to slow down and bend, but you're not trying to get him to relax and focus. You think by making him go slower and making him bend, you will have achieved something. But the ultimate goal is to help your horse relax and focus. It’s only when he is relaxed and focused that he will be able to circle in the way you want or do anything you want with acceptable quality. But you’re trying to make him circle in the way you want in the hope that will make him relaxed and focused. If it’s the tension and worry that is causing the exercise to screw up, then address the tension and worry and not the exercise.”

I then demonstrated how to help the horse relax and focus without adhering to any specified exercise routine. When she then asked her horse to lunge on a circle there was a dramatic improvement.

Another student came to a clinic and showed me what they had working with their horse. I recognized the quirky idiosyncrasies of the exercises as part of a unique pattern belonging to a certain school of horsemanship. I asked about the exercise to back a horse from the ground. The horse was doing as it was told, but it was not paying attention. The backup was mindless and half-hearted, yet obedient to a degree. When I explained how it could be improved the owner told me she had not used those cues and she was sure it would only confuse her horse to change the signal to backup.

I took the lead rope from the woman and spent a few moments showing the horse what it was to yield to a feel. Instead of concerning myself with the horse’s feet backing up, I concentrated on the horse having a mental change to the presentation of a feel. It took about 5 minutes of effort to achieve a clear understanding with the horse that any feel was there to direct a thought.

Suddenly, not only could the horse back up from a wiggle of the lead rope, but it also was able to back up from a slight squeeze of the nose or a light tap of my finger on a lower leg or touch on the underside of the neck or an up and down flexing of an index finger or a faint tapping of my leg with my hand. None of these cues did the horse know beforehand and had not meant anything to him before the lesson. But the 5 minutes I spent teaching the concept of what it is to yield an idea in response to pressure meant I didn’t need to teach each individual signal for the horse to back up. He was able to understand the purpose of any pressure I applied and give a correct response.

It took a bit for the owner to get the idea that horses can understand concepts because she had believed that training involved teaching a horse exercises, not principles. In other words, a horse can learn to interpret or extrapolate the notion of pressure in all sorts of meaningful ways, rather than learn the cues to a particular exercise. I’m not sure she entirely got it, but I am sure it got her thinking.

I believe that the exercise fixation that horse people suffer is the result of a compulsion of trainers and teachers to communicate their knowledge and skills through specific exercises. It seems people (like me) who teach training in any discipline rely on a narrow and specific set of exercises for each principle they try to teach. We even drone on and on about how to hold the devices like reins, whips, lead ropes, etc. We focus on telling people about things like where to look or the position of our shoulders or the direction our toes are pointing – as if perfecting these elements is the difference between success and failure. In the meantime, the important factor of delivering a clear message of what it all means in the greater scheme of yielding a thought to our feel is lost in the detail of the exercise. The result is a belief that choosing the right exercises and applying them correctly is the solution to all our horse problems. This leads to exercise fixation.

We are on the edge of teaching feel to machines through advanced technology and artificial intelligence. Yet we seem ignorant or unable to do the same with our horses who come to us already supplied with an intact intelligence capable of processing way beyond a simple signal and response mechanism like a machine.