The Tölt Tales

Episode 9 - Guðmar Þór Pétursson

• The Tölt Tales • Season 1 • Episode 9

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We continue with an Icelandic guest for our episode #9 with Guðmar Þór Pétursson, accomplished competition rider and owner of Hestaland. Guðmar tells us about about his life in Louisville, Kentucky, his Patreon teaching videos, and the life back in Iceland. 

We enjoyed learning from Guðmar´s philosophy and hope that you get inspired too.

Links to follow Guðmar and his farm Hestaland:


Music by Cob.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, @the_toelt_tales.

Lionel:

Hello, and welcome to The Tölt Tales Podcast. Hello, Guðmar.

Gudmar:

Hello.

Lionel:

How are you?

Gudmar:

I'm great, and you?

Lionel:

Yes, I'm quite good. We had a nice time today at Hestaland. With one hour of your training was very educational. And now we force you to record this podcast.

Gudmar:

No problem. I'm glad to have you here.

Lionel:

So might sound weird, but maybe people that listen to us might not know you, though I will find that very curious. Can you talk a bit about yourself, present a bit yourself?

Gudmar:

Yeah, so my name is Guðmar Pétursson and I live here in West Iceland, close to Borgarnes in a place we call Hestaland. It's like a horse operation, horse farm. We are, we do all kinds of, we obviously do training and selling and things like that, a lot of teaching. And then we have a tour operation. We do all kinds of tours here. We do tracking, you know, long tours, week long tours, we do educational tours. We do all kinds of combination tours, like knitting and writing and sagas and writing and, and photophagy and writing and, you know, different kinds of combinations. So we have most of the summer booked for week long tours like that. Then we do here a lot of what we call winter workshops, which are the people you met here in the barn today. They're doing like a Monday to Friday kind of workshop in the, in the winter. I do online teaching quite a bit. We have a Patreon page with hundreds of teaching videos and subscription methods or ways. And then just a lot of training and a little bit of competing. I've competed quite a bit through my life and I'm slowing down with that a little bit now. It's a lot of other things happening, you know, business is booming. And yes, I can see that. So to compete at the high level takes a lot of time and efforts. So I'm a little bit still competing and I enjoy it, but I have to pull back a little bit to take care of my business. Which is a luxury problem.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

I used to live in the US for a long time. I lived in Kentucky in the US for 10, 12 years or so. Right. My wife is American.

Lionel:

OK.

Gudmar:

So I'm actually half American myself. Or, you know, I have a dual citizenship. So I lived there for a long time. That was a great, great experience. And I miss those times and I'm glad to be back. And we have a great place here. So, yeah, so I think if anything else you want to know about me, I guess you just ask.

Lionel:

I'm just curious to know, are you coming from a horse family?

Gudmar:

Yeah, I can say I come from a horse family. I started riding when I was six years old. However, my parents are not professional riders. They were just like pleasure riders. My father was kind of involved with politics, so to speak. He was like, you know, judging and things like that. But professionally, I was the only one in the family that took it that far. But I'm raced with horses and we had a little mini farm with a house and a barn and a few hectares. And so I just walked to the barn every day and I started riding when I was six, I think five or six. And I've been riding riding ever since. That's many, many years ago.

Lionel:

Yes. Usually when the people are not coming from Iceland, we ask why Icelandic horses. I guess it's a void question for you.

Gudmar:

It is. And in that sense, of course, there's only Icelandic horses in Iceland. But I did live in Kentucky for a long time, and I did try a lot of other breeds and study a lot of other breeds. And I think that's one of them. I think that always kind of stands with me. And I think that developed me a lot as a horse person. I got the insight into a lot of other horse breeds and horse worlds and tried different breeds. And for the longest time, I was determined to buy a Friesian horse. It never happened, but it was very close to happen. I had somebody who wanted to buy it with me and I was going to train it. I'm kind of glad it didn't happen, but it was a cool idea at that time. And I trained some thoroughbreds, non-tantrum, Arabians, and I trained different kinds of horses and other gated breeds, of course, on my clinics. So I got to know a lot of other breeds. So I guess I had the opportunity of switching if I wanted to at some point, but I didn't. And I'm also glad I didn't do that. But there's a lot of great horses in the world, of course. We like to believe that Icelandic horse is the greatest of them all. That's everybody's opinion.

Lionel:

Don't say that it's a podcast about Iceland. Exactly.

Gudmar:

No, no, and that's my belief. I have gotten to know great individuals and other breeds, and I was glad to do that. And I think it developed me a lot as a trainer and a horse person to get to know all the breeds.

Lionel:

Yeah, I was about to ask you if you had helped.

Gudmar:

I think, as I'm to say, the more I got to know all the breeds, the more proud I was of our Icelandic horse. But it doesn't mean that I didn't meet great individuals. But as a breed, I think the Icelandic horse is very unique, very special. But you can find great individuals in every breed. But as a whole, I think we have a very special horse. But I think it developed me a lot. And I used to say that, I think, coming back to Iceland, that every Icelandic horse person needs to go outside of Iceland for at least a few months and just see the world. Because we are raised on a small island. That's the size of the one state that I lived in, Kentucky. It's about the size of Iceland. And there live as many people in Iceland as in a medium-sized company working in the US. So we come from a small island in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, and it is great. It's a great island, but it's only one breed here. And I think it's really good for Icelandic horse people from Iceland to get to see other horse worlds.

Lionel:

Yeah, this morning during our training, you referred at least one or two times to Western horses.

Gudmar:

Yeah, I saw all this and I worked around those people, and I saw a lot, and I took clinics, and I really opened up my mind to a lot of other techniques or a lot of other approaches. And I think it's something we can pick up from everybody. I mean, like, the Western horsemanship is a great horsemanship. It's different goals than what we are after.

Lionel:

True.

Gudmar:

But there's a lot of techniques that can apply. Obviously, natural horsemanship is becoming the base of most things. And then, of course, we have, you know, Tresors and Baroque Tresors. We were influenced from there. So I think it depends on what you're doing, kind of, but there's little things you can pick out in many places. Even if nothing else, often just the mindset and the attitude towards something, because everything starts in our heads, you know? Like how you, the attitude you have towards horses and the approach you have towards horses. Just that alone, you can learn that from anything, any good horse person.

Lionel:

When is the last time you bought a horse?

Gudmar:

The last time I bought a horse.

Lionel:

For yourself or the company? I'm not picky about it.

Gudmar:

Last week, probably.

Lionel:

All right. Okay. Congratulations. That's the other purpose. Is it for breeding or competing? Maybe less competing?

Gudmar:

So I've been buying quite a few horses lately. This is for the operation, like for the short rides and the longer rides. All right. So I bought the last one of those a week or two ago. And then I'm in the process now of buying a horse that is going to be for training and resell, potentially. So it's always something, so we have to, our business is growing quite a bit, so we need more and more horses for the rides. And both the short rides and the long rides. And then we're also doing quite a bit of selling. So we have clients that come here to look for horses. And we're always making sure we have some good horses on hand. Usually those are horses that we buy and work with a little bit and get to know them well and use them for lessons and clinics and whatever. And then so by the time we sell them, we know them very well and we can present them. Sometimes the horses that we are working on and proving and making some young, promising horses and then keep working with them. So yeah, so there's always something happening.

Lionel:

Yes. I usually ask you, what is the day of a Guðmar look like or a week of a Guðmar look like?

Gudmar:

Maybe we can say that one of the good things about this business is not how many days are the same.

Lionel:

We've been told that before.

Gudmar:

That's what makes it interesting. But there is some routines at some point. So for example, now when we have a winter workshop going, which we have three ladies here from the US doing a winter workshop, and that's Monday to Friday. So then we meet on Monday morning and we go through things. I give them two project horses. So and I give them a piece of paper to evaluate those horses. So this morning on Monday morning, they wrote those horses by themselves. I didn't tell them anything about them. And then they have to fill out the form to evaluate them that we've been through. And then in the afternoon, I give them lessons and we kind of make a plan on how we're going to go forward. And then the rest of the week is going to be me teaching them lessons every morning and them working independently in the afternoon. That's how every day is going to go. So I teach them in the morning and in the afternoon, they work by themselves. And while they're working, I'm typically doing training myself. And then on Friday afternoon, we will re-evaluate the progress and see how it went.

Lionel:

Wow. Okay.

Gudmar:

And then obviously we have lunch there at 12.30 or so, 12.30. So that's like a winter workshop week is kind of like this. There might be some afternoons that I'm not here, I have to go do something. But other than that, when there is not winter workshop. I tried to write some horses most days. I'm not always successful at that because it's a quite big farm. So we are doing some maintenance somewhere. You know, we have a guest house, so we have to go there. And I spent a few days the other day painting some rooms. And then there is like, we have a competition regularly, so we have to go practice for the competition. There's people like you that come and take lessons. So there's some schedule like that. So it's very different. But I would say, like, I am, to try to sum it up, I try to be responsible for training of like four or five horses myself.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

Four to six, maybe. That are like on my list, so to speak. And then I'm overseeing the training of the others a little bit. So some days I spent helping the other trainers a little bit. Or they ask me questions or what I'm supposed to do with this horse, and I'm looking at them and working with them. So I try to kind of keep enough training going for this four to six horses of myself, that are the horses I'm competing on or upcoming competition horses, something like that. And then aside from that, if it's not went to the workshop, it can be anything from maintaining something or improving something, or going to look at horses to buy or showing horses to sell. It's quite a bit of square meters here, you know? So there's always something to be done. Not that I do it all myself, but at least I have to make sure it's done. Yes.

Lionel:

Traveling? Do you do a lot of traveling?

Gudmar:

I travel enough.

Lionel:

Do you schedule them?

Gudmar:

Yes. I do a few clinics a year abroad, mostly in the US. I go to some demos and shows sometimes, and things like that. But I don't travel nearly as I used to.

Lionel:

Okay. There was a period where you travel way more?

Gudmar:

Yes. There was a period where I did a lot of teaching around the world, all over the US, Canada and Europe. I might go 22, 3, 4 times a year or something, or some clinics. And that kind of like, you know, it was a great experience and I'm glad I did it. And I met a lot of good friends and clients and everything. And I enjoyed it. But at the same time, it gets old to live in a suitcase. And especially when you have a farm now, and then, you know, a few kids, I got four kids, two older, but two younger, and a wife, of course. So it's like it's always a time away from the family. So I had already started to think about developing some online teaching system.

Lionel:

Yes, we're going to talk about it. It's very interesting. But you mentioned multiple times the US. You keep a close connection with the US. Kentucky, you mentioned you lived in Kentucky.

Gudmar:

Kentucky, yeah.

Lionel:

And do you keep close contact with Kentucky? I probably pronounce it badly, sorry.

Gudmar:

Kentucky, yeah, I have friends there that I work with. And also I work quite closely with the people that took over my business in Kentucky.

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

And they're doing a great job there and staying very busy. I work very closely with a friend in Colorado.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

Who's just here. Yes.

Lionel:

Yes, we met, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gudmar:

I work very closely with a friend in Boston area, and then also one in Vermont area.

Lionel:

Yeah.

Gudmar:

So like I have like this key places I go to now, usually every year, sometimes twice a year. And I work with closely, I go there to teach and help them with something sometimes, and some shows and stuff. And then they often bring groups here for tracking and teaching and things like that. So it's kind of like goes in both ways.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So nowadays it's like, it's this kind of this circle we can call it, like we, I help them and service them the best I can and do clinics and whatever. And they come here and bring people here for training and lessons and tracks. And then a lot of those people are also, I connect with them regularly on through the online teaching. So yeah, so I do to go there quite a bit. And when I do clinics, it's usually there occasionally in Canada, but most in the US.

Lionel:

Yes. You have close ties with the US anyway. So if that's okay, we could talk about training horses. We had an hour with you and I'm not going to talk about our personal life, but I think you were one of the first person I watch online with your first video on YouTube. And we're going to talk about your presence online. But when we talk about training, we talk about system, usually methodology. I don't know what is the... We use the term system.

Gudmar:

Yeah.

Lionel:

Can you describe a bit your approach? How do you approach a new rider with a new horse?

Gudmar:

I think if we talk about training, methodology or like ideas, I think it's safe to say, I said this many, many years ago, and I think it still applies that in the basic horsemanship, and I think this doesn't only apply to me, but at least to me and maybe many other of my colleagues too. In the basic horsemanship, I think like, I'm very influenced by natural horsemanship, obviously. And when it comes to influencing the mind of the horse, it's very much natural horsemanship approach and western quite a bit. I feel like they are extremely good at that stuff, starting young horses, influencing their minds behavioral training. It comes very much from there, and I think we're all kind of influenced from there. Or I am at least influenced from there, when it comes to starting young horses and just kind of like I said, training the mind of the horse, influencing the mind. When you're teaching certain behavior or not, you know, like, you know, or correcting something. When it comes to the actual art of riding, I would say so, when it's more like the physical training of the horse, the shape and the form and the cues and the aids, and the art of riding, which is usually the long-term, you know, work. Influencing the mind, you can do that very quickly.

Lionel:

All right.

Gudmar:

You can teach the horse certain behavior or untrain certain behavior relatively quickly if you know what you're doing. But when it comes to the art of riding and influencing, or we can say influencing the body of the horse, that's like a long-term, forever work, you know what I mean? Building muscles, lengthening muscles and ligaments and whatever. And then I think we're very influenced by, you know, dressage and maybe primarily like Baroque dressage kind of in this. Like there's dressage base in, I don't know, riding a lot. You probably already noticed that in your lessons all over. Different angles of dressage too, right? So we have like German competition dressage, which we kind of moved away from a little bit, a lot, a bit maybe. And now we're more into like the classical or the Baroque kind of approach.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So I would say that's like sums up maybe just like the very, very simplified terms where the influence comes from. But then maybe I should add to that though, that like not to be forgotten is that the traditional, we can say, Icelandic horsemanship, there's a lot of things we still use from the old masters in Iceland from that, you know, has obviously changed a lot, but there's certain things that still stay very valid.

Lionel:

Not the seat, it seems.

Gudmar:

Maybe not the seat. Maybe just a tiny part of the seat. Yes. Because you're still a little bit influenced from there, and so we haven't totally adapted, in most cases, like there's our seat. So it may be more that direction, but we still are influenced by the supple hips and kind of deeper seat a little bit in some ways. And there's a lot of room for different techniques. So like we talk about certain things, but there's a window of correct, right? So it's not just one thing that's correct when it comes to, for example, seat. So yeah, I would say like, yeah, we have classical, we have the Natural Horsemanship in Western, we have Dressage and Baroque Dressage, and then we have Icelandic old school approaches that definitely still apply in many ways. And maybe, you know, we have special Icelandic things like flying pace and riding fast and, you know, things like that, that we, you know, have a harder time getting information from somewhere else. Yes, yes, obviously. So the Icelandic riding is quite unique in that case. Like we added a step to the training pyramids called riding fast. For sure, yes. So yeah, so, but aside from that, I think when it comes to teaching and training, I feel like, there's maybe a few things, like I think, like, I feel like when you're teaching, I think the general approach is you're training the horse through the student, so you're like, you're looking at this horse and you think, okay, what does this horse need to get better? What are you going to work with? And then you try to coach the student into doing that. And that's very often how it works, especially when you're teaching people obviously on their own horses. I tried to have like a system of what we do, which I was trying to introduce a little bit to you as far as we could go this morning, as far as how we use our seats and how we communicate with the horse. I think that it's very often the limiting factor when you're trying to get something done with the horse is the communication. So how can you explain to the horse what you want to do? I think it's much more rare that we are asking the horse to do something that he finds extremely difficult. Yes, of course, when you reach the top riders, which are very few, relatively speaking, they are trying to ask, they're starting to work with things that are like physically demanding of the horse. But for the general horse person, I think most of the problems are the communication. It's the communication system that we are not able to explain to the horse, like, can you take this foot, or move it across this foot, and then you move sideways, then you do this, then you're great.

Lionel:

And you cannot neither tell us very clearly, like, I cannot do this because of this or that.

Gudmar:

Exactly. So, you know, how many times haven't you been trying to do something with the horse? Okay, let's back up. And the horse is like, he doesn't back up. And like, you're thinking, oh my God, it's so hard for the horse to back up. He must like, you know, be sore in the hind end. Or he's like, he doesn't, he's not able to back up. He's super stiff. And then you put this horse out in the field, and he's running backwards.

Lionel:

Yes, physically he can.

Gudmar:

Twice as fast as you've ever seen. Or like, you know, you're teaching the horse to step sideways, and he just can't do it. This must be so hard. And then like you let him outside, and he's like running sideways, playing with his friends. So like, I think very often the, it's very rare, if you think about proportion-wise, for the general horse person in this world, I think most of the time, the limiting factor is, how can I explain to the horse what I want him to do?

Lionel:

Not the physical ability of the horse.

Gudmar:

Not the physical ability of the horse, exactly. And if they would only understand English and we could tell them what to do with their feet, they would be so much easier. But we have to create that language. And most of the work, when it comes to teaching and training, teaching riders and training horses, is to make the language. Is to create the system, how you can influence the horse's body. How can you convince or influence the horse? So he understands that when you do this, he's supposed to pick this leg up and put it there, and this leg up and put it there, or whatever. You know, those little details. I think that's the first and foremost what we're doing. Once we have a system like that in place, there's so much less limit to what we do.

Lionel:

Yes. We could replace the term system by language, I guess. That would be the same. I'm curious, you know, because obviously this morning we had a training with you. Do you have a go-to exercise that you like to give to a student that you meet?

Gudmar:

A go-to exercise?

Lionel:

Things that you like to give to the... Okay, to go to maybe the horse or the rider or...?

Gudmar:

Maybe not a go-to exercise, but I think there are certain key things that are very important, like I very believe in maybe need to be able to get on our horse, release the reins and rock on a loose rein. I think that's something that is a fundamental thing that some people forget. And especially or not less, the more advanced people, they reach a certain level and they feel like the basic things they did never need to be done again. That's not how it works. So training horses, like maybe a one go-to, we can call that like something, a takeaway. Training horses like walking up steps, right? So you take step number one is something simple and that prepares for the next step, but that prepares for the next step. And that's how you slowly walk, move your way up the steps, do more advanced things. Most important thing maybe to forget, not to forget, is that the first steps, you can never cut them away and throw them away. Or you fall. Yeah, you fall. So you always need those first steps to get up to the highest steps. So the most important thing is maybe one of the important things is like you are somewhere working on step 10 or 20 to say something and you have some issue there. Tendency and maybe even not less like my tendency and like professional trainer's tendency is like you're teaching something that you have been able or you're working on something that you have been able to do with the horse, but it's not working. And we keep fighting in step number 20 and we keep arguing in step number 20 instead of going to 19, 18, 17, 16, and back up and say, okay, we need to work on the steps before and explain something and work on something. And then maybe either same lesson or next one or something, we go back to step number 20 and see if we can figure that out. But that's sometimes something that we forget, that we have to go up and down.

Lionel:

The basis exercise have a meaning, I guess, is the basis, but it should never be like lost or take it at granted maybe.

Gudmar:

Exactly. And it's like another common mistake we do is like, you've been working with your horse, let's say for a few days and you read something great, let's say on Friday and you reach this like really nice collected, slow tempo told or whatever you've been working on. And then you take maybe your horse gets a couple of days off. And even if it doesn't get a couple of days off, you take him out again the next day. And you have a tendency to go to where you ended the last lesson, and you want to get that back.

Lionel:

Yes, right away.

Gudmar:

Right away or very soon anyway.

Lionel:

It never happened to me.

Gudmar:

Exactly. Instead of like, I say to people, okay, you start the lesson today exactly where you started yesterday, not where you ended yesterday.

Lionel:

And it can feel like a step back for sure. It can.

Gudmar:

And I think like for the most part, you start the lesson almost where you started it yesterday. But the difference is, or even next last week, the difference is maybe that you just go through those steps a little bit faster.

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

So instead of taking you 40 minutes to get to your performance, your goal, it starts to take you 20 minutes and then less and less. And that's how you can build on top of it. But you can never just, of course, you start skipping some of the basic stuff. You don't go always to every single step. But you have to always be aware of it.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

I mean, I think that's important. And if you think about the training pyramid, the training scale, the pendulum, and you think about, look at it as a pyramid, and you look at the step one is in the first, on the bottom and the step towards. And if you think about the size of its square, its box as representing time, that's the time you spent on each thing. The top is a very small little triangle. That's not much time.

Lionel:

No, no, no.

Gudmar:

There's not a lot of time you can squeeze into that little triangle on top. But there's a lot of time that goes into the first step, because it's a very big box, right? So if you think about its box representing time, you spend typically less time on each step the higher you go. And this applies to everybody. Even to you. Even to me. This applies to everybody. Advanced writer competing doesn't just spend time on collection and writing fast, in which of the two highest steps, right? You spend a lot of time on walk and keeping calm and staying supple and staying even on left and right. And, you know, with all those things that you spend a lot of time on, and then you just touch on the peak a little bit. And this is maybe one of the most important things to remember, is that you're always going down the steps again. You're always reinforcing the basics. I was making sure everything is in place there, and then you kind of start to sneak up to the highest.

Lionel:

To the highest part of the pyramid. It leads me to a small question. Is Guðmar Pétursson take lessons?

Gudmar:

Oh yeah, absolutely. I try to take lessons every chance I get.

Lionel:

All right.

Gudmar:

And I, well, first of all, we can say that like I like, for example, when I lived in the US and when I go there, I would go to big shows and expositions, and then I would try to seek out clinicians that I wanted to see.

Lionel:

Oh, wow. OK.

Gudmar:

And watch the demos and even go. Some of them I went to visit and worked with a little bit and whatever. But here now in Iceland, I have every opportunity I can. I take lessons with Aeol Rísoðsson.

Lionel:

OK, yes.

Gudmar:

He is an Icelandic guy living in Denmark, Jolli. He was my main teacher at Hålar when I was there.

Lionel:

Oh, right.

Gudmar:

When I went through Hålar. And I was going to stay connected to him since. And I used to come to my place in Kentucky to give clinics. And now I am part of a group here in Iceland that he comes to three, four times a year.

Lionel:

He comes to the round.

Gudmar:

I sign up right away if I can. So that happens regularly a few times a year. I have also taken some lessons with Julio Borba, the Portuguese guy that's in a kegneshálar with Ulil and Bergu. Those are both great horsemen and great fun to learn from them. And if you just come away with one thing, you're thrilled, but you should come away with many things. And just the focus you get there and just like to be reminded of things and learn new things and be corrected. And it's extremely important for me and probably some of the most fun thing I ever do is to take lessons from.

Lionel:

Yes, and I guess for you, it's being a rider, being a horseman in that moment. You don't have to care about Hestaland. Yeah, exactly. It's a moment for you and your horses.

Gudmar:

Yeah, you turn your phone off at the only time of the year, and you go in there and you get this hyper-focus and you get somebody that has great knowledge to look at what you're doing and give you input and help you. And that's very valuable. And I think it's extremely important, actually. How can I say this? It's like a certain place you reach at some point, I think, in your horsemanship development. It's like you come to a conclusion at some point or you do terms with the fact that you will never know it all. So I competed a lot as a kid and I did quite well and a young man. And then I went to Hålar, decided to go to Hålar, luckily. And when you come to Hålar, everybody's just even, doesn't matter how many trophies you have, you know, you just go to school, right? And I thought I was pretty damn good when I went to Hålar, my own opinion. And then you're like, you're thinking, oh my God, I got to learn all this. I have a lot to learn. It's almost like a wave that hits you, like how much you don't know, how much you need to learn. And then you go through that a little bit and you're a little bit lost for a moment. And this wave is kind of beating on you a little bit. And like you're competing to learn all these things or like you're racing to learn all these things. And then you somehow come to terms with the fact that like, you will never know at all. That we are all in the same boat. And then you start realizing, oh yeah, okay, this is just part of it. You always have to be trying to figure out the next thing. And then that becomes the addictive part.

Lionel:

To always reach for.

Gudmar:

You always be reaching and learning. And that becomes like the nurturing part. Me going to a lesson is very important for me to stay a good teacher. Because I get influenced by myself. I get ideas, I get new ways of explaining things. I learn something new that I can share. So training horses and taking lessons is like my fuel.

Lionel:

Right, it fuels your way of teaching and I guess knowing more and more.

Gudmar:

I would not like to just teach. Training, so the horses give me some inspiration. And then me taking lessons gives me inspiration. That then gives me drive to go teach to others. Right, it's very interesting. And then there's like this good old theory that you come to terms with it like, yeah, that like it's an ever-long process, it's an ever journey. You might as well enjoy the journey because it's never going to end.

Lionel:

You know, when I started riding and I started riding like eight years ago, so it's very late, my first teacher and still our trainer was saying like, you know, after five months, six months, you will feel you can go out with your horse in the forest, you will feel like you are the king of the woods, you know, he's always saying that. But trust me, the moment you will start feeling that you are not the king of the woods, it means that you went further and further and further. And the more you know, the less you know. Exactly.

Gudmar:

The more you learn, the more you learn what you don't know.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

And we sometimes say it takes about 200 years to become a good rider.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So we all have a long way to go anyway. Yes. Might as well relax and enjoy the journey.

Lionel:

We talk a lot about riding. Do you do a lot of groundwork?

Gudmar:

Groundwork is just a way to explain in more details to the horse in some ways.

Lionel:

All right.

Gudmar:

So at least one of the reasons for groundwork is that you have an opportunity here to explain some movement to the horse without needing to carry you. You see what's going on with horse's feet. It's easy for the rider often to visualize, okay, this leg should go there or whatever. And it's just like breaking it down even more. So we're always trying to break things down into as small steps as we can in teaching and training. The smaller step we can break it down into, the less likely we have arguments and confusion and conflicts. So we're always trying to make each step easy and easily understandable. And I think groundwork is a very strong part of that. We can do a lot with our young horses. So that's part of the reason it's very important to do, to teach the horse a new move that just makes it easier to continue the education once you're in the saddle. So he knows the move, he's done the move, and he can connect the cues in the ground to the cues in the saddle, things like that. But it's also important just for general ground behavior, general ground management that the horse is easily maneuverable on the ground. So a certain amount of ground work, I think, is extremely needed and important. Having said that, I'm not a huge lunching guy, for example. We do lunching, and I've done the whole thing myself, and I've tried everything. I think that's out there, but we do it here. Definitely not against it by any means, but I don't think it's going to solve all our world's problems either. I think you have to do it in the saddle. But it can be a good start to something. We don't use much extra reins in any shape or form anymore. We use trot poles quite a bit. Launching halter with the attachment to the nose. We play a lot with them on the ground. I do different things and exercises. But I sometimes think, having said that, that putting a horse into a ramp and make him run for 20 minutes is already... I mean, there has to be something more to it than that. I mean, you're communicating with the horse, you're moving him sideways, you're moving him backwards, you're moving forward. Asking him to do something, you're having to go over some poles or some obstacles or something like there's some communication and training going on. Then I think it's good. But just to make him run, I don't think that's groundwork. I think that's just exercise.

Lionel:

That's just exercise. Yeah. And again, to come back to what we were talking about system and the language that you build with your horse, for sure, if you just tell him, go and run, there's little communication going there.

Gudmar:

Yeah. I mean, I guess it's better than just standing on a stall. But, you know, there's no training involved in that. Sometimes I feel like... So, yeah, groundwork in its good shape when you're working with the horse and communicating and teaching and doing movements and etc. Then, yes, I think that's very good. And it's a good step to prepare for after riding. It doesn't replace it. It's just a step in the right direction.

Lionel:

Yes, it's a tool in the toolbox, I guess. Maybe if we can shift gear on your presence online, can you tell me how this started and why you're going online?

Gudmar:

Yeah, it started, I think, a long time ago, like, I don't know, probably in the end of my, or towards the end of my, we can say, traveling career. When I was like, when I really felt like I started living in a suitcase. As much as I like my job, teaching and meeting people, I always like that part of it. But the time away from that, I have two older kids and then have a younger one, one that's like six now and three, and she was getting born, and you have an infant and you're flying out every weekend. It kind of gets a little bit difficult sometimes, and then we started to build up the farm, and you're away a lot, so less gets done, and things like that. So I had started to think that I wanted to do online, transfer something to online, try to do some online education, and I knew I would always travel, some, and I would like to do that, and I like to meet people in two clinics, but maybe a little bit less, find some kind of balance on it. But I had a hard time finding the time to get it going, because it's like another business.

Lionel:

Yeah, it's an all new set of skills that you need to learn. Absolutely.

Gudmar:

One time, I remember I was so tired of not finding the piece and time to write stuff, to write some teaching materials, that I talked to my wife, Christina, and I actually ended up turning my phone off and checking in to a hotel down the road here, like 10 minutes away from here. And I just locked myself in a hotel room and turned my phone off and started writing up some stuff. Wow, I gotta get this going, I gotta get this going. And you know, at home, there's always something happening, and the horse is loose or whatever, you gotta do something. So that was my first attempt. And I wrote down a lot of stuff and I was going to do some courses and this and this, and I wrote down a bunch of things. And I was all night typing something on the computer. And then, obviously, nothing came out of that right away anyway. But I had formed a lot of ideas and opinions how we can do this. And then, COVID hits. And everything just stopped. And I was just like, this is my cue.

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

That's gonna happen now.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

And so I locked myself in the office at home this time because there was nobody coming anyway. So I didn't have to check in to the hotel. And I have a very good friend in Germany. Her name is Anja. And she had come here for a winter. No, we didn't even start doing the workshop. Anyway, she had come here for some teaching and cleaning. And she had been encouraging me to do this too. She was a very big pusher, pushing me in that direction, telling me to do this. And she had ideas how to do it. And I had a guy that worked with me a lot with websites and stuff like that. And basically in two weeks, three of us got this going. So at that time, what we did is, I just started like private coaching on the website. It was like different options to, once a month, twice a month, whatever it is. It's like you send me a video, I look at the video, we meet online and make a training program. Just like one-on-one with just like a good start to get comfortable with this. But at the same time, I started a Facebook page. At that time, we called it AskGudmar. And we had a poll and we started like asking questions, and I started making teaching videos every week and lecture and things like that. To make a long story short, this developed into then Facebook kind of was great in the beginning because everybody was there and it was easy to do. But when it becomes like 150, 200 videos, it becomes hard to, I think now we have over 300. And it becomes a little bit hard to organize and search. It's not designed for that. And so, and then again, obviously everybody is on Facebook. So at some point, I can't remember, three years ago or whatever, three, four years ago or something. After we'd done this for two years or so, maybe. We decided we started looking into, okay, what's next? And what happened was, which I think was a great move, we moved to Patreon.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

And Patreon is designed for this. Yes. Video categorized and community. And you can organize everything, and you have search functions, and you can organize everything into different chapters, or whatever you call it, like search functions. So that was designed for this, and it was great. So we transferred everything over to Patreon. And now we have a Patreon page, and we changed the system slightly. So the way it works is we put up a poll every month.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

And the poll has questions or has like ideas for topics.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

You know, it can be anything, but all the topics are ideas from the subscribers.

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

So I usually don't come up with the topics. It can be anything. And they come up with questions. I put, I choose three questions at a time and put them in the poll. People vote the question or the topic that gets the highest votes. I make, the first week, I make a teaching video when I write the horse. And I basically tackle that question. Like the last one was rain contact for a very forward-going horse. So we had been talking about rain contact. Somebody has a horse that is very, very forward. And he has a hard time getting some contact with the horse. He's probably leaning on too much or whatever is happening. So that was the last question. Rain contact for a very forward horse.

Lionel:

It's a precise question, though. It's not, I need to learn how to work my horse.

Gudmar:

No, but we've covered a lot of those things. We've done the training pyramid.

Lionel:

After 300 videos.

Gudmar:

Yeah, we've done the training pyramid. We've done the top line. We've done lateral work. We've done all kinds of things. We've done like, you know, why do horses stumble? How to pony a horse? You know, people come with all... So it started more like this typical thing. Shoulder in, haunches in. You know what I mean?

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

And we've done a lot of videos on that. But now it's getting fun because people are starting to get quite specific about it. Yes, I can see that. And then obviously I have to take a twist on it. And the way I approach it is that first week, I do a teaching demo video on how I would tackle. So it's basically my idea how I would tackle something like this. All right. It's not edited. It's just the camera is turned on.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

I do the video, the timer is turned off, the video is uploaded.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

There's no editing, cutting, there's no redoing, there's nothing. I try to, yeah. So that's the, my answer to that question. It's a little bit like if you were at the clinic, I was teaching a clinic and I, somebody, I was doing a demo or something and you would say to me, Guðmar, can you explain this to me?

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

How do you back up?

Lionel:

That's a tip.

Gudmar:

Okay. I would just have to like, you know, think for five minutes and then this is how I would approach this, tackle this issue. I'm not saying it's the only way to do it.

Lionel:

No.

Gudmar:

I'm not saying it's how everyone else does it. I'm not saying, I would think the same next month. I might have a different approach then.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

It's just right now, this is how I would tackle this. So this is an idea how we can do it. And sometimes similar topics come up again and we tackle them differently then. Then if we can number two, I do a part two of the video. That's either me when I keep going.

Lionel:

Yeah. Okay.

Gudmar:

Or in most cases, I teach somebody else. I take some of the interns in the barn usually, or people working here, and I give them a lesson on that topic.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

So just so people can see somebody else dealing with that same problem. With number three, I do a live Q&A. So people ask questions... On the topic? On the topic.

Lionel:

On the topic.

Gudmar:

Sometimes you get off topic a little bit, but primarily on the topic. People ask questions in comments underneath the videos. You know, Patreon kind of works in that sense, like Facebook, it's like it's posts, and you can comment underneath each post. And they can ask a question that I then answer in the live Q&A. I sum it up in the live Q&A. I watch the videos myself.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

I add something that I forgot, or I want to correct, or I want to highlight, or something. Then I answer all the questions that people have asked in those part one and part two videos. And then obviously answer questions the people that are live there.

Lionel:

Yeah.

Gudmar:

And then this live Q&A lives on Patreon.

Lionel:

Okay.

Gudmar:

So, I mean, if you don't make it to it, you could still post a question in comments and get an answer to it and listen to it later.

Lionel:

So that's three videos already.

Gudmar:

Three videos already. And then the fourth week is the new poll.

Lionel:

Yes. Okay.

Gudmar:

For the next month.

Lionel:

Wow.

Gudmar:

And that's how it goes every month.

Lionel:

And you do that since two, three years, three, four years.

Gudmar:

Yeah, when was COVID? Okay.

Lionel:

Yeah. 2020.

Gudmar:

Yeah. So this is why we have, you know, 300 and some videos.

Lionel:

Wow.

Gudmar:

So they're getting quite extensive collection. And a lot of people just use it for the collection. They just go in there, search for something. Rain Contact. It has a search function. So you can search for Pezitot.

Lionel:

Yeah.

Gudmar:

And I think there's like to explain it a little bit further. Like for me, I think everybody, when you do things like this, you have to find your style, right? And for me, if I was, it took me a while to start this. And I think part of the reason is that you're always worried about like you're making a video. I could have done it better. Let's do it again.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

Let's edit it. Let's cut it. Let's change it. Is it good or not? Whatever. So I just started this. I said I had to stop this. I have to just get, you have to just like make it real.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So it's uncut. It's real. And this is just how I felt that day. I would tackle this issue and that's what I'm going to share.

Lionel:

Yeah.

Gudmar:

And it's the best I can do right now.

Lionel:

Did you ever thought about like revisiting some of the videos and say, all right, hey, guys, this month, I will redo that because I thought about it, I improved, I had...

Gudmar:

And that sometimes comes up indirectly because sometimes people ask questions who are very similar.

Lionel:

Yes, yes.

Gudmar:

And then I use the opportunity and do that. But I think there's like two things for me that make it maybe, I think, what makes it for what it is and maybe makes it unique. Number one, all the topic ideas come from the subscribers, the students.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So these are all questions that somebody asked that I'm answering.

Lionel:

Yes, you're not steering it in the sense...

Gudmar:

I'm not steering it in the sense I want to teach this, this, this. I'm totally like exposed, you know, this throw question at me and I say, okay, I got to do something. And in some cases, I had to get other specialists. I've talked to veterinarians, talked to breeding specialists and I get to share stuff. Like I often get to share other articles from the breeding leader of Iceland, let me share articles on something. I spoke to Hålar College, Gudrun Stefán Stóttir, about sharing the system she created to evaluate the weight of the horse. Okay. So I have a lot of information in there too that I'm sharing from other specialists. Saddle feeding, I got Mummi, my friend at Austin, who's a saddle feeder, making saddles his whole life, or designing saddles. He came here and we did a series of three or four videos on saddles.

Lionel:

Wow, okay.

Gudmar:

And my sister Linda is a fitness trainer and a personal trainer, specializing in fitness for riders. And she's in university now studying this, and just about to graduate. So they came up with a question about rider's fitness. So I got her to do one series with me. Okay. So I pull in other specialists too, because I have some things I just don't know enough about.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

So I think one thing is like the unique, makes it unique is that, is the fact that it's all guided by the students. Another thing I try to be very good about or careful about is I bring out the real problems or real issues. So if the question is how to deal with a pacey horse, it's very tempting to take my best tolt horse and say, this is how we should tolt, this is how I did it, but I wouldn't do that. I take the paceiest horse I can find in the barn, and I work with it in real time, and I'd show you what I would do with this horse.

Lionel:

Is it because you feel that it's more authentic? This is what you want to?

Gudmar:

I think this is how I like to see. They call it honest demos.

Lionel:

Right, okay.

Gudmar:

And I think it's... In general, I think trainers are too shy to do it. And I understand why.

Lionel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gudmar:

But because it's relatively easy or easier for you to go online and find the book about how to do something.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

But it's much harder for you to get some information on you did that, but it didn't work.

Lionel:

Right. Yes.

Gudmar:

Who's going to help you now?

Lionel:

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's not the book.

Gudmar:

It's not the book. So you can write shoulder in and you put the left leg on the girth and right leg behind the girth. You do this at the range and sit like this. But it doesn't happen.

Lionel:

Yeah.

Gudmar:

It's just I'm not getting it. Yes. It's not working because horses are live animals. They don't.

Lionel:

It's not a motorbike.

Gudmar:

They're not a keyboard.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

And then, you know, then the problems come, you know. And so, like, for example, a good example is like, you know, a pacy horse. It's relatively easy to find information on how tall should be and the beats and the order of the feet and what needs to be in place. But to see somebody actually struggling with it, live on camera, is harder to find.

Lionel:

Do you have experience, videos where you really struggle?

Gudmar:

Yeah, absolutely. And that also makes some videos better than others. Some videos are... Those are usually the videos that people like the most, but some videos I just don't think went very well. But people love to see regular trainers also have issues.

Lionel:

Yes, also struggling.

Gudmar:

Yes. So, I mean, I have ideas of what I'm doing and I explain it, but it doesn't always go great. I mean, it is what it is.

Lionel:

It's very interesting. And the part that you just mentioned about also riding, about in the book, you mentioned it to us this morning about like, yes, when you do a circle, the inside leg is important, the outside, and what you said about like, but sometimes the horse is overbent, so you need to use your horsemanship a bit. You need to not read the book or not do what the book.

Gudmar:

Use your technique to your advantage. I think that's like, I just wanted to do it this way. This was like what I, how I would like to learn. This is how I think what's missing, you know, or was at least. And I think that it's an honest way of doing it. And, you know, I was once, one question was vikst. I don't know if you heard about vikst. Vikst is like an Icelandic word. It's like, it's when horse is told, and then they like skip into trot, kind of like this quick movement. And they like skip. It's called vikst in Icelandic. I think there's no translation to it. Skipping is the best translation, maybe. So I went to the horse rental and found a 24 year old horse that's walked for the last few years. And he is Töltos, kind of getting stiff. And he was overweight and everything. And just more like, you know, not in shape because he hasn't been working for a long time. Seriously, just been leading kids around kind of. And he was doing this and I just showed people, this is what it is. And then I tried to help him a little bit, gave them ideas how to solve it. And, you know, yeah, so I often put myself in situations that are less than pleasant. But I think that's the that's the that's how I think people learn.

Lionel:

And you mentioned it. This is how you would have liked to learn anyway. This is what you would like to see.

Gudmar:

Yes. You want to see the real thing. You want to see the real. You don't want to see how it's supposed to be when everything's said and done. You want to see how did he get there.

Lionel:

Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the journey we talked about.

Gudmar:

It's the same thing. It's a journey. And we shouldn't be shy of sharing our journey, not just the end result of it.

Lionel:

How many people there is at the moment on your community?

Gudmar:

We have about 200 now, I think.

Lionel:

OK.

Gudmar:

On the Patreon. And it's constantly growing.

Lionel:

Yes, it's good. Hopefully, it's growing even more now.

Gudmar:

Slowly but steady and there's some free trials there and stuff like that. So, it just encourages people to check it out. It's pretty simple.

Lionel:

How do we find it?

Gudmar:

The best place to find it is probably just go to gudmar.com.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

It's easy to remember.

Lionel:

Yes, easy enough.

Gudmar:

And there you can click on something that says online on Patreon or something like that. Or just go to Patreon and put my name.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

patreon.com and put Guðmar Pétursson and then it comes up. Not many with my name, so that's good. And then there's different ways to subscribe and also some free options to taste it. And we also just started this, which are free for now, this farm friend video.

Lionel:

Yes, I saw that. They are beautifully done though. It's not raw.

Gudmar:

It's really well crafted. Exactly. So that's just the idea there is just to share with people a little bit the life on the farm.

Lionel:

Right.

Gudmar:

Maybe a little bit educational sometimes too. But also just share with people like we're going to shows and practices and we're checking on the mares and giving people a tour of the farm and just kind of fun and informational in that sense. So we're just kind of experimenting with that a little bit and people seem to like it so far.

Lionel:

Yes. Yeah.

Gudmar:

To show a little bit of a different side to it.

Lionel:

Yeah. The video that I saw, first of all, it's beautifully crafted. And I think it's a different angle on what you can see online, which I really appreciate that.

Gudmar:

A little bit like behind the scenes.

Lionel:

Yes.

Gudmar:

Like this daily life on the farm and nothing unique in sense of that, it's just stuff that we do.

Lionel:

I don't know many, I would use the term big names, but I don't see too many of that online.

Gudmar:

No. I don't think so. I think it's not much at all, like at least not like this.

Lionel:

No.

Gudmar:

And I think the library is getting quite extensive.

Lionel:

Also, yes.

Gudmar:

So you can kind of find something to help you. And I think it's like, I think if people get into that kind of approach, you could, I don't know, you could maybe argue some people that like, it should be more produced or like something like that, but I feel like that's not my style. I just want to make it real. No, no, I think it's really cool.

Lionel:

Guðmar, thank you so much for taking the time in your busy schedule. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We will come back soon with a new episode. In the meantime, don't hesitate to share this episode and go and check Guðmar online to make sure that you see what he has to offer. Before leaving you, we'd like to mention that you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook and follow our adventure there. Thank you again, Guðmar, for talking to us today. Thank you.

Gudmar:

Thanks for coming.

Lionel:

Bye.

Gudmar:

Bye.

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