Ride From Inside

When you learn a sport, a lot of emphasis is given to how to do a particular action, but very few people talk about how it feels to do something. The beginner is stuck and struggling to understand the meaning behind the instructions they receive. If they are very fortunate, their coach will be able to tell them the instant they get it right so they can try to remember it. Even then, they are usually trying to remember the steps they took to get to that point.

This is dead wrong. The most important factor in being able to perform is the feeling you have inside when you do it. This is probably why so called naturals seem to progress so fast without coaching. The only point of reference they have is the feeling of doing something, and they aren't hampered by a mass of verbiage explaining it.

Very few sports are taught this way. Some golf coaches use the method, and I've also heard of at least one tennis coach that does.

This is also the classic method used to teach Zen archery that Eugen Herrigel described in his book Zen in the Art of Archery.

The process of analyzing how someone accomplishes a task or action is called modeling. It was developed in general terms by Bandler and Grinder in the development of Neuro-linguistic Programming. They developed ways of asking people who were masters of something how they were able to do what they do. The structure of their questions breaks the complex activities down into simpler and simpler chunks which can be easily taught. The questions also force the resource person to pay attention to what is going on inside. This inner condition came to be called State and turned out to be one of the most important parts of the whole process.

As far as I know, Tony Robbins was the first person to take the idea of state and apply it to sports. He made the internal conditions the most important factor. These conditions were both kinesthetic feeling and thoughts or ways of looking at things. This could also be called attitude.

Once Robbins had the analysis part down pat he found that he was able to teach people karate, pistol shooting or almost anything else in about one-fifth of the time that was necessary for normal coaching.

Only one person that I know of has done anything like this for horseback riding, and that is Sally Swift. She calls her method of teaching Centered Riding. States are conveyed by means of vivid mental images that trigger corresponding conditions in the mind and body of the student. It is really amazing stuff. There is a good post about it, as well as a list of books on the Northern Horse Blog. From all I have heard about centered riding, it could improve your performance and enjoyment 100% in a very short time.