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Ask The Right Questions

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Ask The Right Questions

This week I want to touch on something that is very important in training and riding, but unfortunately, it is hardly ever addressed in lessons or in books and magazine articles. It has to do with training strategies. How do you decide how to proceed next with your horse? How do you know how to improve a movement, a transition, a turn, the rein contact, the horse’s suppleness, or any other problem you may encounter? Many good, experienced riders make these decisions purely intuitively, based on their gut feeling and their experience with many different horses, and these riders are very often correct in their decisions. But this kind of skill is unfortunately difficult to communicate and to pass on to others.

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8 Habits Of Highly Successful Riders

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8 Habits Of Highly Successful Riders

8 habits that will make you a successful rider. If you prioritize the items on this list, you and your horse will progress, slowly but surely. Whenever you feel lost or frustrated, return to this list, check if you have been implementing it or if you have become sloppy with some of these items. If you put one foot in front of the other, you will succeed step by step, even if progress sometimes seems to be painfully slow for all of us.


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Polishing the Pebble

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Polishing the Pebble

Not everything in riding is glamorous. Not everything is special, magical, and brilliant.

Much of the most important work we do, as riders, is work that is simple - even mundane - in its simplicity. But it is where the real treasures lie.

It is one thing to teach a horse a new concept, movement, or skill set. This is important work, too, but at first, it will come with many rough edges. When you introduce it to the horse, you get it in its crude, unpolished form. It is far from “finished” and the real work unfolds from there.

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The Thinking Rider

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The Thinking Rider

Every horse and every training situation presents us with challenges and problems that we need to solve because no horse and no rider is ever perfect. There is always something that can be improved. In a sense, these imperfections and shortcomings give us a job. Without them, we would have nothing to do.
In order to decide what topic to work on, which exercise to choose, or which aid to give, we have to analyse the horse and the training situation. We normally notice surface level symptoms first, such as a rein contact that is too heavy, or too hard, or uneven, or a stiffness in the hindquarters, shoulders, or rib cage, or an issue with a turn, transition, or movement.

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Inclusive Focus. Getting into the Right Frame of Mind

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Inclusive Focus. Getting into the Right Frame of Mind

When I was a teenager, I had no problem getting on any horse, any time, anywhere. Riding a horse was a little bit like riding a bike. Simply get on and go. Over the years, this changed considerably. More and more, I realised that I had to be in the right frame of mind, and the horse had to be in the right frame of mind in order to be able to do productive work. Otherwise, I would rather not ride the horse. This frame of mind is not so easy to describe. It’s something that evolved slowly over many years for me. I need to feel grounded, at peace, with a sense of inner calm, so that I can focus on the horse without being distracted by thoughts about other things. If I am upset or angry, it’s not a good time to ride.

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Good Rides and Bad Rides

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Good Rides and Bad Rides

We have probably all had days when we felt like we had completely forgotten how to ride, when it seemed as if we couldn’t do anything right. I suspect that as long as we ride, we may never be completely safe from experiences like this. Fortunately, the incidents seem to become fewer and farther in between, the more we learn. - Or maybe we just don't take bad rides as personally anymore, because we know that we will have another good ride again soon. Just like we know after a good ride that there will be more difficult ones waiting for us in the future.

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Who Are We To Judge??!

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Who Are We To Judge??!

When Alois Podhajsky was the director of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, he sometimes noticed that someone watched him during the morning workouts with a disapproving eye. So he sent his groom up to the gallery to relay the message: “The Colonel couldn’t help but notice that you disapprove of his training. He is inviting you to come down and ride his horse for him because he would love to learn a better way.” Not surprisingly, nobody was brave (or incautious) enough to take the bait and say: “By God, I’m going to get up on this horse and show him how it’s done!” That’s a very clever and very effective way to silence the peanut gallery who thinks they are so much better than the riders in the arena who are actually trying their best to do a good job with their horse.

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Building a Better Relationship Through Trust and Communication

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Building a Better Relationship Through Trust and Communication

In order for the horse and the rider to become the best versions of themselves and the best possible team they need to have a good relationship. The basis of this friendship between horse and rider is mutual trust, mutual respect, and effective communication. In all three areas, the burden is on the rider to prove herself to the horse, that she can be trusted, that she deserves respect, and she needs to learn to become a good communicator.

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Understanding Resistance

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Understanding Resistance

When I returned to riding as a middle-aged person, my first horse had a very loud ‘no.’ He was cheerful enough about doing the things he wanted to do, but my goal - to learn dressage - prompted a storm of tantrums and hissy fits of truly epic proportions. This, of course, felt horrible. He was treated well, I thought, and the requests I was making were not very difficult. So why did he spend his time looking for ways to make my life hard? Why did he keep saying ‘no’?

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Mindfulness - Wherever You Go There You Are

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Mindfulness - Wherever You Go There You Are

In practising mindfulness (as with Feldenkrais) you have to bring your whole being into the process. In my opinion, this is exactly what all of us need to do in order to be a true horseman or woman.

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How to set your riding goals in 2022!

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How to set your riding goals in 2022!

Happy New Year! It’s time to set our 2022 Riding Goals!

The New Year is upon us yet again. I think for most of you, it would be fair to say that 2020 and 2021 may not have gone according to plan for you, but if you were creative and resourceful, you may have been able to find a way to still continue your progress and learning, in spite of the less than perfect circumstances.

Not to make light of what has been a very tough two years, but I think it is also important to take stock of what HAS gone well and why. Times like this can teach us valuable lessons such as:

✵ No one else is more responsible for your learning more than you are.

✵ You are in charge of your learning.

✵ When there is a will, there is a way.
✵ Within every problem, there is a solution.

✵ You are more capable than you may have previously realized or believed.

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We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

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We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

We don’t know what we don’t know. That can make progress difficult because we may not know what to work on, and we may not be aware of certain mistakes we make.

There are strategies, of course, with which we can discover some of the things we don’t know that we don’t know. The fastest and easiest way is to take lessons from a good teacher on a highly trained school master. Together they will let you know very quickly what is missing and what you need to work on. Unfortunately, this is not an option for most riders.

What Does Alice Cooper Have To Do With Dressage?

What Does Alice Cooper Have To Do With Dressage?

When I wrote this article we were travelling through Germany and Austria by car for a mixture of work and vacation. We combined fun things for the kids with some teaching and business meetings. During the longer road trips we tend to like to listen to a variety of podcasts. The day before I wrote this article, we were listening to the latest edition of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in which he interviews Alice Cooper, the rock star.

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Listening to 'No'

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Listening to 'No'

When I returned to riding as a middle-aged person, my first horse had a very loud ‘no.’ He was cheerful enough about doing the things he wanted to do, but my goal—to learn dressage—prompted a storm of tantrums and hissy fits of truly epic proportions. This, of course, felt horrible. He was treated well, I thought, and the requests I was making were not very difficult. So why did he spend his time looking for ways to make my life hard? Why did he keep saying ‘no’?

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