Create the Pattern, Then Strengthen It

What happens after your horse finally gets it?

That quiet phase — where the lightbulb moments slow down and training starts to feel like repetition — is actually where the real work happens. In this episode, Kristi picks up from last week's ringside conversation with Sandra and Lazura and goes deeper on one of the most misunderstood moments in the RITE System journey.

Lazura knew her job. She was doing her job. She was just waiting for the click that used to come sooner — and that waiting was the lesson.

Kristi calls it the second hill. It's less exciting than the first one. It's also where most riders accidentally undo the progress they've worked so hard to build.

In this episode: — Why the phase after "she's got it" is the most important phase of all — The difference between creating a pattern and strengthening one, and why they require completely different things from you as a rider — What Sandra noticed in the saddle when she chose patience over progress — Why horses always tell the truth about where you actually are in the training, whether you want to hear it or not — How the long middle — in riding and in life — is where transformation actually lives

The quote from this episode: "Once we create the pattern, then we strengthen the pattern. She's got the pattern. You've got the pattern. And so now we have to strengthen that a little bit more." — Kristi Newman, Creator of the RITE System

Want to know what your horse is actually trying to tell you? Head to theritesystem.com and take the quiz. It takes about three minutes and it will help you figure out what's really going on in your partnership — not what you think the problem is, but what your horse is communicating. That's where it all begins.

theritesystem.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome back to Hear Your Horse. I'm Christy Newman, and if you caught the last episode, the one with Sandra and Lazura, I want to pick up a thread from that conversation because something Sandra said has been sitting with me all week. She said, it feels like her brain is expanding, and my brain is expanding at the same time about the same things. I mean, come on, that's it. That's the whole thing right there. But what I want to talk about today is what was actually happening in that lesson. Because from the outside, it probably looked pretty quiet. No dramatic breakthroughs, no flying changes, no big moment. It was a spring morning at the farm. The footing outside was frozen, muddy, stabby, which, if you're in Ontario, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And Lazura was stiff because she hadn't been able to move properly out in her paddock on her free time. We were working in, we were working on loosening her body, settling her in, and then we were doing something that sounds deceptively simple. We were making her wait a little longer between her rewards. That's it. That was the lesson. It sounds so small, right? But what was actually happening in that arena was profound, and I think it's one of the most misunderstood, it's definitely not understood, it's misunderstood moments in the entire right system journey. Remember, right stands for reward integrated training for equines, but I think I need to upgrade that to reward integrated training for everyone. Because it's not just for horses, it's for people and horses. And it's useful outside of the horse world as well, in case you want to connect some dots to the real world, I say in quotations. So today we're going to talk about what I call the second hill. The moment after your horse understands something, when you have to move from creating the pattern to strengthening it, because that's where people get lost. That's where they accidentally undo their own progress. And honestly, that's where horses teach us something pretty uncomfortable about ourselves. Let's get into it. Okay, so here's what was happening with Lazura. She is a smart mare, like genuinely clever. She had figured out the pattern, the sequence of movements, the rhythm, the what comes next. She understood her job. She was doing her job, and she was fully expecting to be clicked, which is the rewarding, and treated at the usual intervals, because that's what we'd built together. That was the agreement. And then we started spacing it out a little. Sandra described it perfectly in the interview. She said, You could almost see Lazura thinking, like, I'm sure I'm doing the right thing, but you're not clicking and rewarding, so what's happening? She wasn't wrong. She wasn't being bad. She wasn't refusing. She was genuinely puzzled. And there's this moment. And if you've worked with positive reinforcement, you will know this moment where the horse sort of searches. You can feel them thinking. They try the thing, they wait, they try a little more, and they're learning right then and there that the click is coming. It's just coming later. Their job isn't done at the marker anymore. Their job is to carry the conversation further. And what I want to sit with that for a second, I want you to think about that. Because it's not nothing. That is a significant ask. You are taking something that felt certain and secure, and you're moving the goalpost. And every instinct in that horse is going, wait, but I did the thing. That was the deal. Lazura is also working through spring stiffness, which matters more than people think. Think of your own body. Her body is less comfortable than it was because it can't move on her free time in her paddock, like usual, with this stabby footing. It's just been not nice, the footing. She hasn't been able to stretch out and move freely the way she normally would. So she's coming into the lesson carrying tension that she didn't put there. And now we're asking her to hold a movement pattern longer, build more cardio and coordination, and trust that the reward is still coming even when it's delayed. That's a lot of trust. And here's what I love about Sandra. She felt it. She said there were moments where she wanted to go to Cantor. They were just that in sync. It felt good, but she stayed patient. She held the line because she understood that the lesson today wasn't about canter. The lesson was about strengthening what they already had. That kind of rider self-awareness is everything. So let's talk about the pattern and why this phase is so tricky. In the write system, there's a phase I come back to constantly. Create the pattern, then strengthen it. That's a phase and a phrase. Those are two completely different things, and they require two completely different things from you as a rider. Creating the pattern is actually the more exciting phase. This is where you're teaching something new, where you're watching your horse figure it out, where you get those light bulb moments that make you text your horse friends at 7 a.m. Because, oh my god, she did the thing. The feedback loop is fast. The rewards are frequent. There's energy and momentum, and you can feel progress happening in real time. Strengthening the pattern is quieter, slower, less Instagrammable. And it's the phase where a lot of people, without realizing it, actually start going backwards. Not because they do anything wrong exactly, but because the quietness of it makes them think nothing is happening. It's actually, I'll be honest, it's actually kind of boring, I say in quotations here, because there's no quick progress, there's no quick feedback loop. So riders will start to like introduce something new, or they go back and repeat creating phase, the creating phase because that felt better. Or they get impatient with the horse for not progressing faster when actually the horse is exactly where it should be, doing exactly the right thing. They just need more time in this phase that the rider is comfortable giving them. So you just need to be patient. This is the strengthening phase. This is strengthening the body. This is where the muscles get built. This is where the patterns start to build, and you get the horse gets more comfortable in the pattern. Where the cardio develops, where the coordination becomes automatic instead of effortful. Think about writing with your dominant hand or trying to write with your less dominant hand. That's challenging at first. You're creating a new pattern. And over time, if you kept practicing, it would become more automatic and it would become easier. In the moment when your horse is waiting for the click and having to carry themselves, anyways, it is where you need to be the most patient. I think of it like this: you know, when you're learning something new, just like I talked about with the hand, you're learning a new language, a skill, anything. And there's that really satisfying early phase where everything clicks and you just feel like you're totally getting it. And then it gets a bit dull because you have to do it again and again and again and again. And it's not new anymore, and your brain isn't lighting up the same way, like no dopamine. That plateau is not a plateau. That's where it's going into your body, that's where it becomes yours. But it feels like nothing is happening, and so we do this very human thing where we sprint to the next new thing just to feel the dopamine of learning again. Horses do a version of this too. Lazura was searching for old, the old pattern of the click because that felt right. That felt like certainty. And we were asking her to find a new kind of certainty, one that comes from inside the movement, not from the external marker. That is not a small ask. So here's where I have to get a little honest with you. This is not just a horse training concept, this is a life thing, and I notice it constantly in my clients, in my own work, in the way we all approach change. We are very good at starting things. We are dramatically less good at the long middle. The long middle is where the actual transformation lives. It's where the habit becomes automatic, it's where the skill becomes instinct, it's where the relationship deepens past the polite surface into something real. But the long middle is uncomfortable because it doesn't feel like progress. It just feels like doing the thing again. And so we often, without any malicious intent at all, abandon it. We add something new, we decide we've got it, and we move on. We get bored and call it a plateau. What Sandra did in that lesson was something a lot of writers actually struggle to do. She felt the pull toward the next thing, toward Cantor, toward the more exciting thing, and she chose to stay right where she was. Because she understood that staying was the lesson. The reward was in the strengthening, not in the advancing, in that moment. That takes a certain kind of maturity that I think horses genuinely help us develop because they will always tell you the truth about where you are. They can't be impressed by your ambition. They can only respond to what's actually in front of them. Lazara wasn't grumpy about the longer intervals because she's a bad horse. She was searching because she's a smart horse. And that search, that moment of wait, I know this, but it's different now, is exactly where the growth happens for her and for Sandra. So if you're in the middle of a training challenge with your horse right now and it feels like nothing is happening, I want to offer you this question. Are you in the creating phase or the strengthening phase? And do you know the difference? Because if your horse understands the pattern, if they can do the thing, even imperfectly, even stiffly on a cold spring morning, then maybe what they need from you right now isn't something new. Maybe what they need is more of the same, held a little longer, trusted a little more, create the pattern, then strengthen it. And if you want to go deeper on the right system, on what we do and understand how this whole layered approach and way of thinking works, not just the click, but everything that comes before and after it, come hang out with us. Check out the quiz that's on the website in the description. There's a lot of good stuff. Uh, the community is full of riders. We're growing, expanding, and we're just changing the way we think and how we show up for our horses. Thanks for being here, and I'll talk to you next week.