Creating Yourself Through Horses - William Micklem

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guest tell us who they are and what it is they do. Good morning, Samantha. Good morning, everybody. It’s very good to be invited on your podcast and I look forward to communicating with all of your listeners in the future. It’s all about education, it’s all about communication.

And I suppose that’s where my life came in is about communication. My father injured in the Second World War and was very restricted in what he could do, but he was not restricted in his ability to communicate. And so from an early stage I suppose I was influenced by him as a great coach, a great communicator and somebody who saw the huge benefits from working with horses. So I have been driven all through my career by the fact that I definitely believe and know that an association with horses is good for US. 30 years ago we started Festina Lente in Ireland, which is the biggest equine therapy centre in the world.

We have 36 full time staff working with over 400 students each week. Some of the most incredible challenges in life. To see the work that the association with horses does, it’s quite extraordinary. Yes, there was a famous advertisement used by Guinness, the Irish drink, which I’m sure you’ve heard, where they filmed a group of Cowboys in Los Angeles, but what I would call urban Cowboys. And these were a group of men who were living in a very difficult part of the world.

And it’s pretty grim. And they started rescuing horses and training horses. And to this day they still rescue and train horses. But the key point, the punch line of the advert is did did the man save the horse or did the horse save the man? And I think that’s what we’re so lucky working with horses.

It’s really only horses that can do that, and wolves can do that. But horses do it in a very special way beyond what we get elsewhere. I started in Cornwall, the son of a horse dealer and I did everything, show jumping, dressage racing. And then I broke my back when I was 15, what we call pointer pointing, which is a type of racing at a more amateur level and that has always restricted my riding activities. So I went on as far as being on the British junior event team, but then my horse hit a fence and the refracture in his foreleg.

And so that was the end of really doing that riding at in eventing at that level. And then I began to specialized in pure dressage after a little gap when I didn’t do horses. I recently did a Ted talk called the Go Rules, which will explain my background a little bit more on that period of life. But I was a pretty unhappy person when I was that age when I had stopped doing horses and felt that I couldn’t do horses because of my back injury. But when I came back into horses, I came back as a coach and early on, even at that stage in relation to the Go Rules, I was always the sort of person who didn’t like being shouted at and being told a lot of rules which are always negative, don’t do this, don’t do that.

So I set out to produce a set of rules that were positive, which the gold rules. So I have 5 gold rules and amazingly as the Ted talk we’ve now had, I think it’s 1.3 million listens. So obviously spark in people, people who learn so much about their horse and so much about horse riding generally, but they don’t learn the priorities of life, of how to look after themselves and how to have a strategy to make sure that they can cope with everything that comes in front of them and make the most of their potential. So that’s what the go rules are about. I was, as regards an American connection, I was conscious early on in my life of the cowboy westerns, and particularly Gene Autry and the stallion Champion, Champion the Wonder Horse.

I suppose you’re not old enough to know about Champion the Wonder Horse, but he was absolutely huge and he made the 5060 films with Champion the Wonder Horse star in all of them. But I was aware early on that he had what he called the Cowboy Code. I’m just going to read you the Cowboy Code because I came across this and it was part of what made me say we have to do more in our teaching and in our communication to help people have a better attitude #1 the cowboy must never shoot first. Hit a smaller man or take unfair advantage two. He must never go back on his word or a trust confided in him three.

He must always tell the truth four. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals five. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas 6th. He must help people in distress 7. He must be a good worker 8.

He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action and personal habits 9. He must respect women, parents and his national laws 10. The cowboy is a patriot. And I always remember coming across those for the first time and I think a lot of politicians would be find those sort of that code very useful. And I think we have to have a code in horsemanship.

So I talk about everything we do with in the equine sports is being life enhancing for both humans and horses. So for many years I have talked about treating the horse as a horse and doing the important things that are necessary to make sure we treat them humanely. Now, in recent years, thankfully, it’s reached the top of the agenda. More so many people are talking about whether it’s natural horsemanship, but they’re talking about treating horses as horses. More things I’ve always done is to avoid keeping horses in single stables.

So I always keep horses in small groups and you don’t necessarily need a lot of land or a lot of space to do this. And I say to people who’ve got, for example, 4 stables, I’d say knock down the walls so that three of the stables can be 1 area. And then gradually you introduce the horses and they can live in groups of two or three. And my horses have always had turn out. It doesn’t necessarily have to be superb turn out.

I was in Germany about a month ago going along the Rhine, and I was so sad to see horse centre after horse centre. And it was a hot day with all of these horses being by themselves in tiny little paddocks. Now all you have to do is change your attitude of mind and say horses are social, they get on in Group and you don’t get a lot of accidents if you introduce them in the right way. If we tore down all those barriers and whether you’d got, for example, there was one particular place that had 50 individuals, tiny little dirt addicts for the horses. We tore down those fences and allowed a sort of track system.

It’s remarkable how much better the horses will be, how much happier the horses will be, including having a natural pecking order and horses are herd animal in my they need a natural pecking order. So there’s that aspect. And I think so many horses are overfed, under exercised, isolated, bored, and that’s all part of the picture of treating horses humanely. Although I’ve spent most of my life on the other side of the fence, which is about training horses, training them to give it a way which they are more comfortable. And that that is that’s an absolute key thing.

I find that at the lower level, people have an attitude that we’re training riders and the horse is just part of the equation, too much about the horse. But even at the lowest level, I talk about to my students about even on day one when they’re on the horse for the first time. Yeah, I say you are now becoming a trainer. You’ve now become a trainer. You’ve sat on the horse.

You will influence that horse. And we talk from day one about the senses of the horse and how we communicate with the horse and what are they saying to us from day one. And of course, it adds a huge positive dimension to their learning and they love it. And another small example of more novice riders that the rising trot is absolutely key. If you read all of their old fashioned manuals and things like that, you’re taught that possibly even have to ride, start off riding in the old days without a saddle.

So you developed a good seat. Certainly there are advantages of that, but there are huge disadvantages. For the horse or for a horse to have a rider going and sitting, bumping around on their back is agony. And then they associate the human being coming along is something not very nice. So the key thing is to teach the novice riders not to ride without their irons, but to ride with their irons and do a rising truck where they just kiss the saddle each time, kiss the saddle with their seat each time that they lower their seat to the saddle and it is alluring to the saddle.

This may seem a very small fry, but it’s absolutely huge for the horse because the vast majority of novice riders can, in a very short space of time, be taught how to do a balanced rising trot where they interfere with the horse’s back. And of course, the balanced rising trot is the first cousin of a light seat encantor, which means it’s the first cousin of a jumping balance. So you can go in a very short space of time to doing a lot with your activity and particularly allowing your horse to get out of the arena and make more progress. It’s a key thing for me that horses and riders should get out of the arena. Now I know that there are many people riding and they’re restricted in what space they have.

But again, it’s really more an attitude of mind of people gathering together and saying let’s make a facility that’s suitable to ride outside. So there’s some turn out. You do riding tracks around your turn out area. If there’s some country districts nearby you, you arrange, if you can trailer your horse to a competition, you can trailer your horse to a riding area where it’s got some forestry or something like that. And that’s absolutely huge.

And of course, when you get out and about, not only is it good for the horse mentally, but it’s fabulous for the rider mentally in a safe situation. So getting out is super important. But I want to quote you. I want to be rude and quote one more line. I don’t know whether you again, you must be old enough to have heard of Bing Crosby.

Oh, yeah. OK. Bing Crosby is one of his biggest hits was called Don’t Fence Me In. And it was interestingly, the lyrics were done by a man called Cole Porter, who did most of the big hits for Frank Sinatra and people like of that area. And he says, oh, give me land, lots of land.

And a starry sky is above. Don’t fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love. Don’t fence me in. Let me be by myself an evening breeze and listen to the murm of the Cottonwood trees send me off forever.

But I ask you, please don’t fence me in. And it just connects beautifully to this idea that don’t have to spend our whole life in an arena, particularly in a small arena. So arenas should be better designed. You often get at the centre a big riding centre, you get 3456 separate arena. They were all linked.

You can and at times make a ride in a much bigger area. Some of the continental arenas, particularly in Italy, are like that. They’re quite beautiful and they have planting. There’s just a different feeling about them. And one thing they don’t have is square corners everywhere, square core, an anathema to me.

Not good at all. But I was telling you a bit about my life. So I specialized in dressage for a while and then I went to America running a the Fullman School of Equitation for a dressage trainer called Robert Hall. And then from there I came to Ireland as the national coach. And I worked particularly with training coaches, which has always been a priority for me, and also with the junior and young rider event teams.

And again my background being in with all the disciplines, it made it easier for me to do that. I am on the side of the fence that says we need to be very careful in eventing about specialist training. The specialist trainers individually are very good but we need to do the dressage with a view to the cross country, with a view to the show jumping. Vice versa. There’s a trainer training the British team now and was the German team in eventing called Chris Bartle.

He was an international dressage rider, Olympic dressage rider and he has a real all round knowledge which makes it easy to work one discipline with a view to the next. I have been not convincing people about this for a long time, but we’re now coming full circle and I’ll believe that event trainers, like the very famous French trainer you had in the United States called Jack Lagarth, who had all three disciplines and Burt Dunemathy, a very famous show jumping trainer, had knowledge of all three disciplines. Both of them were high level dressage trainers as well as jumping trainer. I believe we’re coming back to that, that for eventing and for general riding and for novice riding you need an all round knowledge and that it’s possible to direct people in in a way which suits their strengths. And that’s another key thing from me is work from your strengths, not your weaknesses.

So many people tackle the horse and they say we can’t do this, it’s trot is bad. So then they spend ages in the trot or it’s something else is bad so they spend ages doing that. And of course, the horse gets depressed just as the riders get depressed If you always work on the things they can’t do as opposed to a thing and do. So I see a big jigsaw in front of me the whole time. And I’d say that force and rider can do that part of it, that little piece and that can do that little piece, and then that little piece and that little piece.

And gradually all the bits of the jigsaw puzzle fit together. But I always try and work from the things they can do as opposed to the things they can’t do, and then just stretch it out a little bit. And that philosophy is absolutely magic for a culture, a trainer. The vast majority of my sessions, I want the riders and the horses to feel better about life, not worse about life. Suddenly everybody wants to be taught by you because there is that sunny feeling coming out.

And sunny is a keyword that I use in all of my coaching is that you need to be generous and you need to be sunny. It’s we all know about being demanding. We all know about hard work. We all know about up early in the morning. That’s about being demanding and crossing the TS and dotting the I’s, measuring things twice, cutting them once.

We all know about that side of things, but the other side of that is to be generous. It’s to be positive and avoid focusing on the negative because negativity kills as opposed to positivity builds. And people say you’re being unrealistic there. As a coach and a trainer, you’re selling people the dream. And it’s not possible to have all these big dreams.

And I say, I concentrate on the realities of where we are, whatever they can do. And I think of the possibilities. So realities to possibilities. And if you don’t work the students with the idea of the possibilities, then again you tend not to be enthusiastic and you tend to miss out on the opportunity for people to fulfil their potential. During this period of time I wrote a book, The Complete Horse Riding Manual, which a company called Dawling Kindlesley who make fabulous books.

It’s 400 pages, it’s over 1000 photographs and amazingly, we had to do this in eight months. I won’t tell you the full story, but they didn’t press the green button go until they were supposed to do it for a year ahead before my book, any book that size that Darling Kindersley did. They took two years, then Darling Kindersley were taken over by Penguin and then at the time went down to one year and for various reasons it went down to 8 months. And this was a huge book, but I used it. I used something which I used tell people all the time is that inch by inch life’s a cinch, yard by yard life is hard.

So I took the book there. I worked out eight months, 32 weeks, how many days, how many hours I had, and then what I had to do it in each, how many words I had to write in each hour. And it came back to the fact that I had to write a 260 words each hour. And if I did 260 words each hour based on a six day week, producing a minimum of 2500 words each day, then I would complete the book in the desired time. If you look at the big thing, it’s oh that’s impossible.

There’s your game, there’s your big book, but as you come down you end up with little action steps in by inch. And that’s something that’s with all people is such a powerful thing to be inch by inch. And also just midway through my period in Ireland, I took up the job of being training director for Mark Phillips, who now I think is based in America as much as anywhere else, at his equestrian centre in Scotland. I was there for about four or five years and that’s when I seriously started about trying to do something with my what I call my Micklin Bridle. It’s now called the Micklin Bridle because I had been aware for years and years, in fact ever since I was 10, that the horses skull has one wide jaw and one thin jaw.

I don’t know whether it’s going to show up here, but I’m going to try it anyway. I’m going to bring a skull in front of me here and I’m going to take it apart and you’ll see that. I can see the general outline. This one here, the top jaw is much wider than the bottom jaw and that walls, that’s the teeth. The upper jaw, molar teeth here stick out about about half an inch to 3/4 of an inch both sides.

And I was aware of this ever since I was a child of 10 when I was in a pony club unmounted rally. And I was told about the upper jaw being wider than the lower jaw. And that was because the horse rotates its teeth to macticate. And I was aware therefore that these sharp edges of the upper jaw teeth, there’s potential for damage as the nose bed on the outside and the teeth on the inside squash the flesh on the inside. So that was the beginning of me thinking there must be a different way to have nose bands and then I realized that there are, we are called the infra orbital nerves which come out just below, come out just underneath where most people put their cavis and nose bands.

I was aware that with tight cavis and nose bands pressing there that you’re actually numbing the nerves, which are the motor sensory nerves for all the lower part of the face and that’s where you have the bit. So if you have a cranked up nose band or you have a nose and that even it may not be cranked up, but a horse fights against it, so they open their jaw and press against it, you’re actually numbing the area where you have a bit. So the Micklin bridle has no pressure on the protruding upper door teeth and it has no pressure on the infra orbital nerves. And it was one of the first bridles in the world to have a single headpiece without that little narrow noseband strap going underneath so that you don’t have pressure on the trigeminal nerves and things like that. The area behind the ears is a very sensitive part for a horse, so it’s designed to avoid pressure there.

Now there are a huge number of people copying that idea. You know, if you put a nose and a cavis and nose band on, there’s 360° round the horse’s jaw. There is leather. People try and make the Michelin bridal shape and they make little angles, etcetera, but most of them still just do it up around the back of the jaw. So it’s so locking the jaws shut.

My bridle doesn’t lock the jaws shut and also the position of the nose piece. All the research has been done is that low drop nose bands are probably the worst of all because they press on the very sensitive and rather narrow nose burns at the bottom of the skull. So I hate drop nose bands like that. I think they’re cruel, Should be banned high up people because of the nerves etcetera. No good.

But in the middle it’s the best place. Some Nicklin bridal fits in the middle. It was an exercise to start again from scratch, to take off the woolly overcoat if you like, and to look at the skull, design it from the inside out. It looks very different. So when I first started, it took without it, a word of a lie.

It took 12 years of taking the bridle round to various people trying to find somebody who would manufacture it and believe in it. But they all said, oh, that looks terrible, that looks so different. But now people realize people have got used to it. The young people who started with the Micklin bridal, they look at a traditional bridal. There they are.

This is so it’s now accepted and all of the copies are really a compliment to me and to Horse Wear Ireland who were enough to take on the challenge of marketing the Micklin Bridal. And of course, it’s been a huge success, number one bridal in its category. And I’m also I can be big headed enough to say I love the fact that my book has been translated into 12 languages, including Mandarin, of which horses in China are really taking off. Yeah, I actually just saw that for sales in China are they’ve gone up like 250% in the last like year. And it’s great to hear that they’re they have access to resources like classical riding technique and.

The main man in China in terms of classical riding has been a man called Jeremy Michaels, who’s a fellow of the British Horse Society. So during the period but when I was in Ireland, I trained and passed and became a fellow of the British Horse Society. And that was something I’m very proud of. I would’ve made my father is an educator, very proud. But it’s it’s a fellow of the British Horse Society, Jeremy Michaels, who has played such a big role in China.

And I think that right, we have a lot of fear in Ireland about what the tariffs are going to do on the export of horses to America. But but the slack has been more than taken up in the last two years by the exports to China. And now the level of expertise in China has risen so much that horses can of course be treated in a much better way. But this is an important point I would make about treating horses in a better way. There’s a huge problem with people being aggressive and rude about how we work horses and whether we should work horses.

And the online abuse is just terrible. And then connected with that, that there is a tribe of coaches and teachers who still teach in an old fashioned way, I think military way, thinking that shouting over demanding, really demanding is the right way to go. That produces is people running away from the sport. Yeah. And all the online abuse encourages people to run away from the sport and think it’s about sport.

It’s a most wonderful sport because of all the things that it does, the mental advantages which I mentioned before, and then for young people to get off their machines and outside and have discipline and have a relationship with a horse. It it’s just magnificent family activity. Whichever way you look, there are huge benefits of being connected with horses, but as soon as you start having this row about all this horses over bent or this horses can’t do this or shouldn’t be, and you can only ride if you ride like this, etcetera, it’s not helpful. So what you have to do is to tell people what you should do and how exciting it is when you’ve got a good rising truck, what you can do with your horse. Now, I totally disagree about people who want to use gadgets to force their head in a particular position because what they’re saying is don’t do this.

Don’t put your head up. Everything I want to do is the other way around. Do this, do that. So put your head and neck wherever you want to. But then as you work with the ingredients, work with the level of direction, the level of speed, level of impulsion, you can gradually put the horse through between the aids because it begins to use it’s back as it’s uses uses it’s back, it puts it’s head in a better, better position.

So the position of the head and neck is dictated by what they do from behind. But connected with this is we suffer from in the horse world, we suffer from overcomplication. We have to make things more simple. You know, I’ve been a horse book, but no sport has more books about it than horse sports. And that’s fact.

If you go on Amazon, you can find 3 1/2 thousand books that are published about horses. No other sport where you find it, as many books as that. But as a result it means that there’s a lot of complication, a lot of different methods and people get in camp and they get in that camp and they make it too complicated. As an example of that, I keep coming back to in terms of what we want from our horses is for them to be 3 things. Calm, forwards and straight, very old fashioned, calm forwards and straight.

And I add acceptance. The horse needs to accept you therefore, but it takes a lot of trust and it takes time to do that. So you have acceptance, calmness and straightness. Now what’s unusual about that is acceptance is all about a mental side of things. They’re building up a mental connection.

Calmness, it’s all about mental. Forwardness is a mental thing and they’re thinking, they are thinking forward mentally. So three of those four are mental, but the people have the scales of training which have taken root in the horse world for the last 50 years as 40 years. First of all, they then that’s when they were first put down on paper. So they’re not as old as most people think they are.

It was just something done to try and bring people together. And when you talk about the scales of training, the way that most people present it is none of the scales of training, none of the six scales of training are anything to do with the mental side of things. And that’s disastrous. And I’m going to make this point in the strongest way. The second scale in the in the scale of training is Los Galassenhite, Louis Galassin site.

I hide A German word, but people translate this as suppleness, which is a physical thing. But the translation of Louis Galassinite is letting go, a willing letting go and a willing letting go is very much mental. So they knew at the start that this was a priority early on in the scales is that they should have this willing letting go. In other words, translated as something being physical in the modern scales of training. And worse than that, it’s all put as a pyramid as opposed to scales.

So at the top of the pyramid, they put collection. It’s a nonsense for the average horse and rider to say the collection should be our main priority. It’s a scale of training. Our main priority is impulsion or a propelling force working together and going forwards. And all the scales of the training going up and down will help produce that.

So in this modern day and age with good people in the horse world, good coaches, etcetera, and yet the vast majority of people mistranslate the scales of training and it leaves them astray. So that’s why I base my priorities on calm, forwards and straight. And I call that a constant. You’ll see it in my book. I invented this concept of having constants on the one hand and variables on the other.

So the constants are acceptance, calmness, forwardness, a straightness, and what I call purity, which is the correct beat of the horse, the natural way that a horse goes with outline and steps on the other side. You’ve got the right direction, the right speed, the right impulsion, the right balance and the right timing. So we’ve recently had the European Championships in horse track, even at a very high level at the start of a cross country. I will talk to my students and I will say #1 have the right direction #2 have the right speed. Anybody who goes into a jump off against the clock, even at 5 star Olympic level in show jumping, those riders are concentrating on having the right direction, right speed, and the rest has been prepared in the horses themselves over a period of time.

But there’s a good example of simplicity. So you have every exercise will have different variables all the time. We have the same acceptance, calmness, fullness, straight, etcetera. And as soon as you start talking like that, everything becomes much more simple. Gosh, we make things complicated.

I like. Sorry, how did you develop this, like philosophy or just underlying understanding of horses? Because I feel like there are plenty of people who are in horses for as long as you’ve been in horses who one either never developed this or are just starting to understand that this. But also you got her as a young man, which I’d assume created kind of angst or anger. So to then come out of that and still find calmness, How do you think you’ve developed that?

I’m an inveterate student. I’m curious. I remember reading a quote from Einstein saying that he had no particular ability, he was just passionately curious. Little thing like that hit me. I had this long period of time where I felt that I wasn’t bright enough, wasn’t intelligent enough, didn’t go to university, etcetera.

As I increasingly got into the craft of coaching, I realised that so many of these high level, very intelligent people were bad communicators and bad coaches. And in fact, it was possible for me to do much more. And that’s what helps him be a better coach because then I can look at my students, whether they’re riders or horses, and again, emphasize the possibilities. So I’m very proud that quite a large number of the coaches that I’ve worked with have progressed to quite a high level, are teaching around the world successfully, happily. So many people I mentioned earlier to you about people getting burnt out, certain people in the horse world in the professional side do get burnt out too much last of them.

But you won’t get burnt out if you have some good values in your life like the Cab Ode. And you won’t get burnt out if you are getting genuine pleasure and happiness by what you do. Do you think it’s possible to have? Because I feel and I don’t, I haven’t been around the world with horses. I really am only coming from being in the United States with horses.

And I live in Aiken, SC. So like I’m pretty surrounded by it. And I just see so many people who have ambition and that willingness to work hard, but that doesn’t always translate to happy, healthy horses. And so I think, and I struggle with this as well in my own mental side of riding, is we have goals and things that we want to achieve, but horses don’t always make that easy. You’re right there a week away from this goal and your horse kicks itself and even silly stuff like that.

But sometimes I really worry that with social media, it prevents people from being able to be curious and be able to get out of these. I call them like loops of I’m not good enough. And it literally could have nothing to do with you, could have schooled all your horses really well and whatever. But there are just so many riders who I feel caught almost in burnout, but they can’t let go and they can’t give up. And I just don’t know how to get a message.

Have calm, accepting horses, but also take those same principles with yourself and be calm and accepting of yourself and where you’re at. So yeah, I guess I’m just wondering if you were working with a 25 to 30 year old rider who’s ambitious and they’re no longer able to make a 25 and under team, but now they’re headed towards seniority and they feel like they haven’t made it. How do you work with the mental side of that struggle with riders? And in a very simple way, both with you and with the horse, we have to be honest about your current level as regards what you can do and what your horse can do. We have to recognize that and then even on Day 2, we see that there’s a little progress with the horse there.

That’s a personal best with the horse. So we have to recognize that. Then there’s a personal best for you and a personal best for the horse. Personal best for you to get there is keeping up of the personal best. The concept of the marathon, Running a marathon is a wonderful example for horse coaches because in a marathon people generally speaking are super pleased initially just to complete that marathon and they may take 4 hours, four and a half, five hours to do it.

And then over a period of time maybe they start getting fitted running half marathons and they come back to the marathon. It’s their second marathon and they probably run half, half an hour more quickly. It’s a personal best. Now they are still an hour or over an hour off the best runners, but they are so delighted. Generally speaking, I’ve done, I’ve not really completed the marathon.

I’ve done it in a better time and to apply this principle on daily basis. So I talk about APBA personal best all the time. I’m as you would and athletics. I also add on to that EAPA stands for personal action. Now the person you describe and yourself you obviously there’s lots of action.

There’s lots of work and discipline. Mayor Angelou said nothing will work unless you do people in the horse world. There probably are more people who are good at the personal action than outside the horse. Well, so I from PA to PB. So concentrate all the time on your personal best and you need to work with somebody or maybe a team of people around you and that’s super important in terms of making progress.

Don’t aim to do it by yourself, you with the help of others. It doesn’t have to be an international coach, but if you’re really interested in really doing high-powered work in the future, you need to get associated. You need to start studying the best in the world. Don’t waste your time with other people. PA, personal action, PB and then PC, which is competence in education.

You have something, particularly in America, you have something called mastery education. So you don’t progress until you have mastered something. People would accuse my father and accuse me of being too particular about little things. But you need to be particular about the little things if you want to get mastery of the little things. Then allows you to blossom.

A simple example of that is mounting and dismounting. I’m very particular about how people mount and dismount so that it’s safe for you and it’s easy for the horse and it leads to other things. So the way that I teach mounting and dismounting with the right hand on the front arch will mean that it’s very easy to progress to vaulting on and vaulting off. Now you may not wish to vault on and vault off, but there are a lot of kids that like to vault on and vault off. If they had the right technique for mounting it, they will.

They have to progress to that. And if they’re working with young horses, they’ll be much safer. And all the way through the process, there are things like that, that simple things, but they relate to the bigger picture. Therefore you don’t have to retrain and retraining, as you well know, probably takes 3-4 or five times longer than doing things right at the start. And horses are first time learners, so they learn something that’s not helpful at an early stage of their life.

It tends to stay with them until after a long period of time. You may be able to correct the situation, but horses tend to remember things that have happened to them in the past. It’s being the competition bug is sometimes a disadvantage and we ask too much of our horses, we ask too much of ourselves. So I would try and I would do competitions and say I would, we all need challenge. I would do competition, but I would concentrate on the personal best.

You might not win the competition, but you’ve got an extra percentage point in the dressage or shapes of your circles were better. You may not win the show jumping class, but you did things on an even counter stride as opposed to pulling up and going faster and losing your balance, etcetera. So all the time it’s recognition of personal best, recognition of improvement. And then most wonderful thing is, even as you get older, the horse can allow you to do really quite a high level and often highest level because horses are not only a sport for all, but they’re a sport for life. The number of people riding at a much older age should be absolutely enormous, and I would like to see more adults who haven’t had contact with horses, who haven’t ridden as children on ponies.

I’d like to see more of them introduced to horses by using methods that allow them to overcome the fear factor. So I built lots of little wooden horses, and on those little wooden horses people would learn to mount and dismount, hold the reins, do a rising trot, all the basics, how to approach the horse. And therefore half an hour later they were ready to get on a horse. It was much easier for the horse because the rider already knew the basics, they knew the length of leather and particularly they could do a rising trot and horses were happy and riders could make more progress. There’s so much can be done in what I call a novice circuit.

I have a rain simulator so you can get hold of the reins and the machine moves the rain. So you feeling of how to keep a rain contact but allow with the movement of the horses head and neck. And the use of the videos that we have these days can be huge and the use of mirrors and things like that. A purpose built place for adults to go where even without a coach they can practice the basic techniques and get comfortable. So the way they get on a horse, it’s very easy.

I’m always impressed with Western riding that you can get on a horse within a relatively short space of time and you go out walking and slow canter within a time period that’s so much shorter than the English riding. We tend to ride in unsuitable saddles. The novice rider our saddles have got, our competition saddles have got smaller and flatter apart from the dressage and it makes it more difficult for the novice rider. And what is when you’re dealing with people who are coming from a place of fear, either very beginners or, I do notice with adults who are getting into horses for the first time, there is this level of fear, which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing because horses are big and should be respected. But that fear can cause people to tense up and not ride desirably.

And even at every level, even if you’ve ridden at three star for 15 years and you finally move up to four-star, I’m sure there’s fear there. How? And again, not necessarily in a negative way, but just in a physiological way. What do you think it is that allows the people to get over the fear? I understand your question totally because I was fearful of riding when I was a child and started later than my brothers to ride and remained fearful for a period of time.

And I’m also was also afraid of heights and afraid of flying and things like that. So for coaches, it’s often easier for somebody who has difficulties to become a good coach than somebody who just find it super easy. Somebody who’s never been frightened on a horse can’t understand why somebody’s frightened. And somebody’s always found writing generally super easy. You can’t understand why this person is finding it difficult to coordinate.

You have to be able to use both hand. You have to be ambidextrous. And I was very one sided. So I’m aware of these things. But to me it comes down to three things.

Number one, I would be inquiring #2 explain that little moment. Wonder two. Number two, I’d be demanding and #3 I would be generous. So inquiring, demanding and generous. So when I’m inquiring somebody who was fearful, talked to that person or they investigated, they’re curious about it.

When you look at the statistics of flying in an aircraft is safer than going on the road. Now that’s a statistic which really helps me as regards being fearful about flying. When you that is the case and when you learn more about the capabilities of an aircraft and the little bit of buffeting, going through bad weather, etcetera, you realize that’s pretty simple, easy for an aircraft to cope with. So #1 I’d be inquiring. So on the horse’s back you’re fearful.

So study your subjects a little bit. What fearful of should you be fearful of this? Is it because you haven’t done some of the basics? Now once you’re curious about your subject, you realise that you can’t really even be bucked off as long as horse doesn’t fall over. If you have a balanced seat and don’t sit heavy in a rodeo, you have to, by the rules, sit in the saddle and you have to rake the horse’s sides.

If you could keep your seat out of the saddle, then you would never be backed off if you had preparation for it. I often say, Can you imagine yourself on a flatbed lorry or truck beyond that truck on the back of the truck and you’re riding down a bumpy road and you are they nail a chair to that truck. If you sit in the chair, you will soon be going up and down and you fall off the chair. But if you stand on your feet and allow the joints of your leg to act like a spring, you can go down that bumpy Rd. without a problem.

So if that is your fear about being backed off, not being able to go with the horse, there’s an example once again of the rising truck. In terms of being demanding, I come back to my inch by inch thing. You have to go back to what are the essentials. If you are worried about jumping, you have to go back to a progressive inch by inch system whereby you start with a pole on the ground. When you’ve done that, you start with the pole on the ground and you gradually build up the two poles on the ground to being a related distance.

Suddenly you’re not fearful of that, but most people are fearful because they’re trying to run before they can walk, and so you take it back inch by inch. And thirdly, about being generous, you have to be prepared to believe in and find your talents and potential. You would lose out. We lose out if we fail to realise that talent and potential are where you look for them. So you have this, people have this feeling that they don’t deserve this, they’re not like this.

The impostor syndrome and the vast majority of people at one time or another do have the impostor syndrome. You lose out if you don’t join and build teams and use the power of partnership. You lose out if you’re not magnanimous and solution orientated. You lose out if you don’t keep human and the humane values. And as you do that, as you work as a member of a team and you work to be sunny, then the endorphins kick in.

You’re happy. And as you’re happy your brain works better. Now I realise that I’m sure you’ve at times when I don’t know, you’ve lost your way and you have to be at such and such a place because you get all, you lose the way again. You can’t think about which way, which is the right or I remember being so warped up in tense when I was a child and I had to introduce my father to somebody else who I knew and I couldn’t remember his name. I couldn’t remember my own father’s name because brain glue that comes in this tension.

So it’s amazing that if you can relax and be laid back, be happy, be sunny and realise that you have huge ability. Everybody has huge ability in different ways. Then suddenly put those three together and you get you’re you’re starting to do things successfully. As you do things successfully, you keep repeating the success. You get confidence.

And as you get confidence, you get Hurridge. So Hurridge comes from doing all of those things together. Yeah, I know. And it makes so much sense that I found I’m laughing because I’ve recently realized about myself, I’ve always known I’m a little neurotic. I blame Pony Club.

Can you just tell me about that? You blame Pony Club. Well, for me specifically, I hate being late to things and I hate being late and unprepared. And so I freelance ride primarily. And so I’ll tell a client, OK, I’ll be there at 10:00 tomorrow.

And as horses do, I’m running late. And I find sometimes even if I’m not running late, I will find myself getting so tense about the possibility of being late. And then I’m like, just relax, because you’re going to show up at this barn all frantic and what are you going to get out of the horse if. I can interrupt saying just relax isn’t going to help, but what you can do is say the night before you’ve made your timetable, you know what time you’re going to leave, what you put in some extra time in case of things going wrong. And with horses you’d often need a lot of extra time.

Morning stables, first of all, put in a mechanism there that allows you to just go through your process without that stress and brain. But you can’t, it doesn’t work. Saying I hear this all the time, relax to so and so. Exactly, no, it totally. And that’s.

So that’s what I’ve done is I’ve actually realized that just giving myself the preparation beforehand and then reminding myself throughout the day, oh, you’re not rushing and. Then a huge thing, and I know we’re running out of time, so a huge thing is to count your blessings. You know, it’s easy for me to sit here and say that, but you think about it, you have so many things in your favour. You’ve had many things ever since you were born, which is a quirk of nature. You won the race there to be born if you like, and you stand here healthy, able to communicate energy, interest in horses, etcetera.

And here in Ireland today, it’s the most beautiful day. Hunting the blessings is important. We need to count our blessings and there are all sorts of personal examples I’m sure you’ve got where people are, life has not been very kind to them. Life is not as it should be. Life is as it is and you have to make the best of that and we all have to make the best of that.

But the joyous thing with horses is that the horses can do so much of the physical work and indeed the mental work that suddenly you become so much more powerful. It’s the epitome of teamwork. And but the in teamwork, I remember working in places, everybody had to start at the same time, finish at the same time. Everybody had got the same number of horses. Everybody had to do exactly the same all the way through and wear the same clothes and all the rest.

That is not helpful. You work from strengths, people are different. And when you start using people’s strengths, suddenly everything becomes as a team, you become much more powerful. There’s a poem, which I’m not sure whether I can remember, but I’ll try it anyway, about four horses, which emphasizes this business about all horses, all people being different. And normally I introduce it by saying that in 1976, the bicentennial in America, they had a horse race from from the West Coast to the East Coast.

You did 50 miles a day and it was timed each time and you could have two horses, two quarter horses, 2 thoroughbred horses, 2 endurance horses. You had two of any type of horse you want. What sort of horse do you think won the race 3600 miles across America? Probably the thoroughbred. It was a pair of mules and a pair of mules were first and a pair of mules were 4th.

It’s I do this to emphasize how different, how different people are, and everybody has their own strength. I’m just going to try to remember this poem once, but forgive me if I don’t remember it. But dashing chaser, head on high, told of his triumphs. There was I balked at the brook, but in the straight I showed them how to carry weight. The War Horse rolled A fiery eye, dreaming of battles.

There was I, the equine tank, our chivalry. The very name revolves around me, the pony tossing tangled mane nade ere they bred you I was there when man chased mammoths Neath the sky and painted caverns There was I. The donkey pricked his patient ears as memories drifted down the ears, then spoke. I heard a child’s first cry and by his Manger there was I. So it’s just a beautiful little poem written by a lady called Joan Wanklin just to emphasize how different those horses and ponies are.

And same thing applies to human beings. So when we talk about fulfilling our potential and assessing the realities of the situation, knowing yourself is very much part of that equation. I don’t talk about a lot of people say you should know yourself, you should know yourself. I talk about creating yourself. So our brains, the things that between your ears, we can do extraordinary things with the brain with the right preparation, the right training, simple things like realizing that a basis for developing the brain is to be inquiring, to be demanding and to be generous.

So this and you’re generous not just to your horses, you’re generous to yourself. You’re sunny about yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Yeah. And I think it’s just such a good message for so many writers to hear because it’s so easy, especially in today’s social media, to compare and to never feel like you’re where you’re supposed to be.

I loved that quote. Life isn’t should be, It is. It really is so true because we can try to hold ourselves to just a higher standard. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. And always be grateful because we have the ability to do this and have these conversations.

You’re obviously brave and a good communicator to be able to do this blog, so full of admiration for you doing. It thank you. It’s been funny enough. The trickiest thing has been the imposter syndrome because all of a sudden I get to talk to all of these professionals and I go, Oh my God, I have no idea how to ride, but it makes me better. I get to go out, take this piece of this and hopefully it helps other riders do that as well and it just gets these conversations out there.

And you have probably less than half my age, so you have a lot of years ahead of you as well, a huge bonus. We’re in the AI. Realm One thing I forgot about, as well as the Micklin bridle, which obviously is now famous, I have the Micklin girth. Which horses? When you look at the horse shape, you stand by your horse when you go to it next and look at its shape, the rib cage is like a cone.

So if the rib cage goes, it’s your face, the front of the horse, it goes in like that. So the distance, if you are measuring the distance at the front of the girth round the horse from one side to the other, it’s a shorter distance at the front and it is the back of the girth. But most people have the girths sort of the same length both in the front and the back of the girth, which is why you get different tensions on the girth straps and the holes get stretched, why the girth tends to slip forwards. So my Mecklen girth is, it’s very simple. It’s designed from the actual shape of the horse.

It’s narrower in the front. It’s shorter in the front than it is at the back, which means it hanging up, it makes a bit of a circle or part of a circle rather piece of paper going around a yoghurt pot that’s done as a cone. If you take the piece of paper off, it goes as a circle because it’s a shorter distance at the bottom of the pot than the top of the pot. It’s amazing how these simple things, for years and years, hundreds of these thousands of years, people are putting girth on the horse, but they meant so often that girth is not good for the horse. The same applies to bits.

The vast majority of bits sit sideways in a horse’s mouth and therefore the horses. Then comes was a vet. Yeah, it’s once you go down the rabbit hole of tack fit. I just had a force who was displaying. I’ve had this horse in training for two years and I come back and all of a sudden the horses just angry and mad.

I thought maybe she was heard bound. And then I go, I actually was chatting with Sue Dyson on this podcast and I realized, Oh my God, no, this horse is telling me her tack isn’t right. And we got we changed the saddle and we changed the girth and all of a sudden the horse I pick up the canner for the first time and I’m like, Oh my God, she didn’t even have a crappy canner. Like she just look physically couldn’t move and in what we had her in. And again, nothing was necessarily in fitting.

It just was not correctly fitting exactly. And the saddle fitter explained it like it’s like wearing a pair of shoes that just don’t quite fit. And I think so many times riders look when things start to go wrong, riders look for what it could be. But I think a lot of times we take the blame ourselves. So we go we’re just not doing something right or we’re just doing.

And sometimes it really is as simple as just try a different girth or just try a different bridal. I ride bridal lists. I ride in a row palter, but bridal lists a lot. And actually when I ride in a bridal, it’s the Miklom because by a very sensitive horses and it’s just what I find them to be the quietest in. And also you can almost customize the fit of it.

No horse goes in the same bridle because everything is fit just right for them. And yeah, I just think there’s so much that we’re learning about how much of our sport is based on tradition versus like how much can we change to keep the tradition because it’s nice to have, but also we can make everything better for horses and that’ll make things better for riders because we’re not banging our heads up against the wall. But but yeah, I think there are so many innovations and things happening that are really just improving the quality of horses lives. And it’s great to highlight that’s if it’s so easy to talk about the negative PITA and this, but to talk about, Oh no, this is what we’re doing to actively improve even just at the base level horses, lives and careers. That’s where I came in, talking about making the training life enhancing for both human and horses.

So at Festina Lente, the majority of horses for the majority of time go bitless. In the Micla Multi Bridle, which is designed to go bitless, it’s remarkable how happy they are and how much they understand the cues from the bitless bridal and they’re very happy and designing a more lightweight bitless bridal which is also going to come out. It’s the overall comfort which is important and people say that’s fine, you’re just doing it for riding therapy, you’re doing it for lower level riders. They have been so excited over the last number of years with Jessica Bridal Werner and her mayor Delira who won the gold medal at the World Championships, the last two Olympic Games. All about work at home is done in a snaffle and with the Micklin bridal and obviously not it wasn’t done in the competition, but that’s my we’d like to see in the future the snaffle bridles being allowed even at the highest level.

Michael Jung is another one with Chipmunk, who just won the silver medal in the European Championships in Walnut, Lexington this spring when all of his riding in preparation for the Olympics last year in France. I have the film there. He was in the Michael Bridal and the most obvious one is Hendrik von Eckerman who won the World Cup in Omaha in 2023. He jumped in a Micklin bridal. So we had, we had Henrik in the show jumping Micklin bridal, we had Jessica and Delira in the dressage gold medal in the Micklin bridal.

And then you had in the vaulting, you had the Micklin bridal being used for the winning for the lunch work. That was that’s the Mick. So even though the people, we have problems with people copying it etcetera, etcetera. So from a business point of view, it’s challenging, but from a from a point of view of just being so happy that more horses are happy, we change the way that people have been looking at bridal wear, that makes me very happy. And I like to think my father is up there somewhere saying it all started in the Pony Club.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness you listen to that lecture when you were 10. But you know what, that’s part of my personality is that those little things stick with me. Congratulate you on overcoming your challenges so that you do what you’re doing so successfully, and I hope that your listeners will come back to you. Awesome.

How do people follow along with all of your stuff? I know we mentioned the Micklin Bridal, but I’m sure there’s other stuff. Well, just Google William Micklin and everything will come up. The Go rules is a Ted talk. Just William Micklin, the Go rules will come up and it’s made a It’s not a day goes by without people contacting me about the Go rules.

Saying changed eyes has made it easier for them. And rule #1 is have a go, rule number, have another go. The rules will relate to different colored rings. So I have this green ring at the bottom of my bed. So when I wake up in the morning, I say, am I going to make the most of this day that have achieved or haven’t achieved, whatever my situation, am I going to make the most of this day?

Have a go. So that’s this morning. I said have a go. And then it’s a black ring is to have another go because it takes but having another go, you do it with the help of other people and then produce the goods is the yellow ring, which is the one I carry with me all the time. But I was talking about masterful training, doing things.

It’s very important you get the little things right and you end up doing things well. You can hit them with rest of them on the on the Ted Talk. And if you look up Micklin Bridal, you’re going to be directed through to horse wear. I’m sure people want to send you questions. You could pass them on to me and I could pass the answers back.

I’m very happy to do that, or maybe we can have a conversation in the future based on the questions. Thanks so much for joining me. It’s a pleasure. Thank you very much, Samantha, and have a good day. Yes, Sir.