E186: 로리 스티븐스(Lori Stevens) - "피트니스 기초"

My 15-year-old has muscle memory for all these fitness moves, and she's had three strokes, and her balance is off. But she nails these tuck sits, rock back sits, things down to stand, all the things that are fitness foundations. She just nails. She has them so in her body. So it's kind of a great thing, I think. I can imagine that that would be a huge benefit, especially now at her age, you know, trying to help keep her in good shape and keep her around as long as you can. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that first line in the class description says the class is about connection, training, observation, behavior, and the joy of fitness. So I want to kind of talk about that. First part first, right? So how does connection fit into fitness? So in my view, training and teaching our dogs is about connection. It's about them doing the things that we teach them. But it's also about their connection to us. So it's kind of the part of joy. I mean, it's kind of the joy of living in our lives with our animals. When we develop strong communication via teaching, we are building a connection. We are building a trust relationship. This assumes, of course, that we're using positive reinforcement in our teaching more than anything else. But there's something about fitness that I love. And that's that maybe I intended to bring this up later in the podcast. But I'm going to say it now. And that's that there's a certain amount of pressure on us as handlers when we're preparing for a trial or we're preparing for something where we're going to be on. And we really, really need this behavior in a certain behavior to go well. In fitness, I think we can be a little bit more relaxed and we can just enjoy the whole process of training those fitness behaviors and seeing our dog enjoy them. And that, to me, really helps build that connection. I don't know. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about, you know, the observation piece of that? You know, why are observation skills important for fitness? And then can working on fitness actually improve our observation skills? I hope so. That's my big goal. One of my big ones. So, you know, I think we're taught when we first learn how to train our dogs, we're taught to look for some body language behaviors in our dogs. And we don't necessarily focus so much on their right hind leg or, you know, how they're going through the process of learning or how did we mark that behavior at the right time? Or do we deliver that reinforcement in the most efficient way? And so in this course, I hope to really stress observation and for people to improve their

observation around things that they aren't already spending most of their time observing when they're teaching. So by, I mean, every week we'll talk about observation. Every week we'll talk about observation of alignment. You know, alignment's important because we want the right muscles to be used when the dog is doing a certain exercise. Slow motion video is the bomb here. It's just such a good tool because we can see where we might be messing up our dog. You know, they may not be learning as quickly because we're facing slightly in an angle or our cue is such that it could be tighter and cleaner and more communicative to our dog. Or we're reinforcing across the room, throwing a treat across the room and spending most of our time waiting for our dog to find the treat and come back versus maybe just reinforcing right next to the platform or book we're working on. So there's just so many things that we get into a habit of doing or we take for granted. And so my hope is always that when I'm teaching a class that we're improving our observation skills. I like that. And I like that you kind of pulled out the two pieces there, right? Both like, you know, it's not just about body language. It's about actually being able to see the behaviors and make sure that our dog is doing what we actually want them to be doing. Absolutely. Yeah. Can you just talk a bit more about the types of things that we're specifically looking for when we're working on fitness exercises? So, you know, what kind of carryover can those skills have on our part as handlers? You know, what carryover does that have for other training? So, so many of the, of the foundation fitness behaviors are used in sports. For example, the tuck sit, the sphinx down, the stand, the rock back sit, you know, all these things are, are used in, in sports. So the better and more practiced our dogs are at them, the more successful they'll be. And we will be. These exercises carry over to our training of anything because we're actually practicing our teaching. We're practicing having this relationship in a, in a fun environment. And then all of that carries over to teaching any new behaviors. And I, and I would hope that people that take this course will have, will feel like they got, they have, they have acquired more of skills themselves, right? Their dog has acquired more skills in the learning and they've acquired more skills in the teaching and learning from their dog and how their dog responds. It really is always two way. We're both the teacher and the learner and our dog is both the teacher and the learner. I like that.

And I like that you're kind of intentionally pulling out, you know, both roles that we can both improve in the course. So obviously you love fitness. I think there are probably quite a few misconceptions out there, including the idea maybe that all fitness behaviors are just learned. They don't really require much training or the idea that, well, it's basically the gym for the dog and none of us like the gym. So, you know, it can't be fun. Can you just debunk some of those myths for me? Sure can. So I use luring and I, I think that luring is an advanced skill. And the way I use luring is to get us quickly to the beginning of a behavior. So I might use a lure two to three times, but then I want to get that lure out of my hand. And so I want to go straight to an empty hand and shape the rest of the learning process to the final behavior I'm looking for. So I think luring is a useful, useful tool. And I think it's an advanced tool, but we want to get the food out of our hand. So we'll be focusing on that. So I think it's, I think it's a myth that we're always going to keep food in our hand, because just think about if you're following food around, you're not really experiencing all this movement in your body and what you're doing. You're focusing on the food, right? So this is a very mental and physical behavior we're teaching, as most are. And we don't want the food to be the primary focus. We want, how do I get this? How do I get the reinforcement to be the primary focus? And it's not reinforcement if you're carrying it around initially, right? It's following the food. So that's a myth for sure. I mean, I'm just hoping everybody will be a better teacher, really, and experience the joy of training and maybe training in a new way for, for those that don't have a lot of training experience or those that may be, maybe think that, that fitness is mostly about luring. I hope people get better communication with their dogs, a better connection, better trust. And, you know, let's go to your gym example. Um, so I hate going to the gym if what I'm going to do is lift weights and sit there for 30 seconds and then, or a minute, and then lift, do my second set, and then wait 30 seconds to a minute, whatever it is, then do my third set. I would much prefer doing, um, circuit training where I can keep going. I have three or four exercises in a row I'm going to do, and I do a set. I go to the next one. I go to the next one. And ideally that's what we want to do with our dogs. We want to keep that training momentum and we want to make it fun.

We don't really want to go, okay, we're going to do 30 seconds of this or 10 reps of this. And then we're going to, you just hang out here, dog, you know, I'll get back to you in a minute. So we can keep that training momentum and that joy going. And sort of, um, you know, the difference between, you know, literally maxing yourself out every time and, and actually doing stuff that's kind of, you know, enjoyable and moving your body. Right. I knew you mentioned some of the skills in there. You mentioned like the tuck sit and the sphinx down and a rock back sit and kind of isolating the different pieces. Can you talk more about just the skills that the class includes? What's up to your teaching? Sure. Um, yeah, so we'll include those, but, um, one of the things we're going to be doing is learning how to stand strong. So many dogs are, uh, and, and the habit of, of training is all about, um, hurrying up and doing a lot of things, but being able to stand strong is an important skill. So we'll work on standing and we'll work on targeting, uh, a lot of the skills, nosed hand, a lot of the skills that you would use in tri-ball. For example, which I hear you have a class this term. Anyway, um, we'll do spins, we'll do sidestepping, we'll do backing up. We'll do, um, basically a lot of basic behaviors. However, I caution people, this is not a beginner class. It can be taken by beginners. That's fine. But it can also be taken by advanced trainers and, and intermediate trainers, you know, wherever you feel you're on that spectrum, because I think it's always useful to have another set of eyes on us. We can always improve. Let's see. What is Ken Ramirez's line? Um, advanced training is just the basics done really well. Right. So this will be hopefully being a chance, give us a chance to work on the basis basics and do them really well. So we talked a little bit about, about learning and we talked a little bit about, uh, you know, the gym. Um, are there other misconceptions that people tend to have about fitness that you want to debunk or talk through or? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I sure do. I don't think you need a lot of fancy equipment. So this class we're going to use very minimal, very minimal equipment. You don't have to buy anything really, except for anti-slip material. Um, you, we don't need years ago, you know, when fitness first started any concept of fitness for dogs, everybody bought a peanut and everybody assumed you need to put your dog on a peanut. I like working lower to the ground. Um, I like staying safe. I use more equipment in my fitness in five course, which is in April, um, which I think

this class is a good prep for, but I want to be able to, um, do fitness out and about on my walks. You know, I can use a log, I can use rocks, I can use stairs, I can use park bench, I can use so many things. And in my house, I have, you know, I don't have bricks in the house, but I have brick in the backyard. I have, um, you know, I can use a plank, a long piece of wood with anti-slip material on it. I can use, um, all sorts of things that are just household items. So I think it's a myth that we need to buy a bunch of fancy equipment and that's the only way we're going to be able to keep our dogs fit. And I think it's a turnoff for some people. That's one thing. The second thing is, I think a lot of people buy the equipment before they've experienced any fitness and then want to hurry up and use the most advanced equipment. And I think, again, we really need to build those foundations before we start adding more and more equipment. So it kind of was two sides to that. That's like the, um, you know, Cirque du Soleil folks, how they do those fancy gymnastics up in the air. It's like, oh yeah, let's throw you on that equipment your first day at the gym. So yeah, that goes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So in the syllabus, you specifically call out the environment a couple of times. And I was really curious how that kind of fits into, into fitness and, um, and the class. Yeah. So anytime we're teaching a behavior, the environment is important. And when we're teaching, um, fitness, it's, it's no different. So when we're learning these foundations, we want to make sure we're working on a non-slip surface. And this is, this is funny to me because, or not funny, but it's just something I've observed a lot over the years of teaching this. And that is that people will swear to me, it is not slippery. This platform is not slippery. And I'll say, okay, could you just, could you just humor me and put anti-slip material on it? And let's look at the difference. And it's like a huge difference. So even if we don't see our dog's paws slip, sometimes they're slipping. So that's part of the environment, right? Um, the flooring, the, you know, being able to work on a yoga mat versus being able to work on a linoleum or hardwoods. You just don't want to start on anything, a slippery floor. You want to start on a yoga mat or a type of, um, carpeting or rubber flooring that isn't slippery. Having our treats ready as part of the environment, having them in a pouch or a pocket, knowing what we're going to do and stepping up to do those and setting up, um, let's just say we're going to work on a platform.

Um, okay, well, if we set, if we put on the floor, a platform and a fit bone and a peanut and, uh, you know, and a chew toy for later, you know, we've got an environment that's crowded with, with, um, choices. Right. Um, so how, how can we make the environment conducive to the, so that the shortest path to learning occurs that we don't have to deal with all the distractions of other dogs running around or barking or which piece of equipment do I get on? I want to get on this one or this one and this one. I'm just going to go chew on the story. So, you know, the environment matters and we are part of that environment. And so, you know, all of a sudden we show up to train out of the blue, um, on stilts and in a clown outfit, you know, that we've just set our environment up for possible failure. It would be quite the bombproof dog who could, uh, handle stilts without, uh, any prior training. Um, yeah, it'd be pretty amazing if we could do, but anyway. We could walk on them. Yeah. Right. Uh, can you kind of talk us through an example of the type of workout students will wind up working through in this class with their dog? So, um, we're going to go through focusing on two behaviors a week. And, um, once we have three or four behaviors, we can work on those three and four behaviors and we can, uh, do a circuit through those three or four behaviors. So I'm not going to really talk about workouts as much as I do later in, in fitness and five. Um, I'm going to talk about workouts in terms of choosing three or four exercises and cycling through them or, you know, doing a circuit with those three or four exercises. But first I really want people to, to focus on all the other things around these behaviors. So I'm not even going to introduce circuit training early on, even though it is a sample lecture. I'm going to introduce it a little bit later in the course because now what we're doing is learning about observation. We're learning about the environment. We're learning about our dog's alignment. We're learning, um, we're building that connection. We're having fun, all of those things. And so to try and do that plus a workout every week would be a lot. So I don't know if that, that helps, but, but we will do circuit training, but we'll do it closer to the last part of the class rather than the beginning part of the class when we don't really have all the, enough behaviors yet. Mm-hmm. So just to clarify, when you're talking about circuit training, you are talking about one behavior a few times and then onto the next behavior, right?

Not like an obstacle course where it's one behavior, second behavior, third behavior and back, right? The opposite. Yeah. So the opposite. Okay. Yeah. So what I'm talking about is let's say we're going to do, um, six to 10 sit to stands as our behavior, six to 10 sidesteps, that sort of thing. Right. And we're going to do a set of three of those. Okay. So we would do one set of sit stands. Then we'll go to sidestepping. Then we'll go to whatever the next thing is, pause up on something. Um, and then we'll come back to the second set of sit to stand. So, so it's basically a circuit where we're doing one set, uh, for each thing. We just keep going. So we keep the interest level up and we get a break from that one exercise. So it's important how, that we don't choose four exercises that work, that stress working with, you know, a particular set of muscles, right? We want to mix it up. We want to move the dog. That makes sense. Okay. If folks are kind of listening and they're interested in the class, you mentioned you don't really need much in terms of equipment. You mentioned the no slip surface. Yeah. Um, are there skills they need before signing up? Are there other things they need before signing up? You know, maybe you could talk about kind of who the class is a good fit for. Yeah. So, um, they will need a yoga mat and anti-slip material. Both of those things. If they don't have, uh, the yoga mat is for if they don't have rubber flooring or, um, or some kind of carpet that's not slippery. Um, they can use a book or two wrapped in anti-slip material. Um, or they can use platform in a book or platforms. It just depends on what they have. Um, they could buy an aerobic platform, for example, a human one, and then put anti-slip material. I get kind of obsessed about the anti-slip material, but anyway, really they don't have to have, um, a lot of training skills. You know, it's helpful if they have a little training probably, but, um, I, the first week I'm going to post a lot about, um, training and some of it is an overlap with fitness and five, just things to remember about training. But for sure, beginner trainers can take it and for sure, intermediate and advanced trainers can take the course. So it really is kind of the spectrum and at gold, which filled right away. I was super happy about that. The gold students, there'll be people in there that have taken fitness in five, and there will be people that have never taken my courses. And I have no idea what kind of training. We'll just go to wherever, you know, with each team, it's wherever they're at. That's what we'll focus on.

So, um, you know, gold to gold, it doesn't matter at all. The super big bonus about this class is that Ellen Yoakam is, um, RTA and the Facebook group should be really fun and really active. And, uh, I'm going to pop in there a couple of times. So, you know, a little bit more than I usually do. So I think we're going to have kind of a, a cool, um, setup and it should be really fun. That sounds awesome. Anything else that folks need to know or should know about the class? Well, there's plenty of rim and bronze, bronze and silver. So sign up. I hope to see you there. I think this is a really good course to take before Fitness in 5, which is kind of a lot of stuff. Um, Fitness in 5 will be taught April 1. And so this is a really good prep course for that, for that one. But also it's a prep course for any conditioning course. So if you're going to take a, um, another conditioning course, this is also good prep for that. I think you'll just go in with better skills and you'll get more out of an, a class that covers all aspects of fitness than you would if you just go into that class. And at the same, at the same time, you're learning everything else about fitness, you're learning, um, these foundation skills and, and that's just, you know, we can only learn so much at once really. And I love Fitness in 5 because people take it over and over and over again. But I think this is really going to help people take that and get more out of it. As a kind of final question here, the one that I've been asking everybody lately, you know, what's a lesson that you've learned or something that you've been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training? So I hope it can be that I'm learning it from a dog because, um, what I'm learning is, is about being flexible. And, um, when you have a over 15 year old dog who's had three strokes, some days, um, she's stronger than other days. Some days she's more into training than other days. We usually walk two to three miles a day and we always do at least one fitness session a day. But, um, what we do and, and how, you know, I might think we're going to do X, but reading her, I might change that to a simpler exercise just because the one I planned isn't going well. So she's teaching me to be quite flexible and to move with her instead of going, but you used to do this. Let's do 10 of these and then 10 of these. So, and I do circuit training with her to just keep her behavior momentum up. Awesome. I think that's important. It's a slightly different take on the train the dog in front of you, right? For different reasons, but it's kind of gets at that, that message too. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Lori. Thank you, Melissa. I appreciate it. It was fun talking to you. Always. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week, this time for a reverse interview. Uh, Sarah Samuels is actually going to join me and interview me for a change. Um, and we'll talk mostly about Tribal. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast on iTunes, the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensounds.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. Happy training. Today's show is brought to you by pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense pense