Four reins and two bits… oh my, how do I start?
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.
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.
A New Way of Looking at the Training Scale
My understanding of the training scale is constantly evolving and changing, based on my practical experiences and observations. The first time I heard about the Training Scale (Skala der Ausbildung) was during theory lessons for the German Bronze medal, which is the prerequisite for participating in recognised shows. For the exam we had to memorize the terms Takt (rhythm), Losgelassenheit (relaxation/suppleness), Anlehnung (rein contact), Geraderichten (straightness), Schwung (impulsion), and Versammlung (collection). - And that was pretty much it. There wasn’t really any explanation for what these terms or concepts were about, or what the relationship between them was. We only had to be able to name them and to tell how to recognise them.
Don't lose sight of the whole picture
This week’s blog is another practical tip that comes out of mistakes I made in the past. Every time something goes wrong it is an opportunity to look more closely at what is happening, how it is happening, and why it is happening. It is a great chance to learn something new and to gain deeper insights into the biomechanical and psychological causalities in riding. So, in many ways mistakes are blessings in disguise because they can push us further along and help us attain a higher level of understanding and competence.
Investing In Yourself To Help Your Horse
You have probably all seen funny memes and jokes in which the horse has the best of everything - custom saddle, top notch farrier, regular massage, osteopath, chiropractor, you name it - while the rider wears old, worn out boots and breeches, and takes some ibuprofen to keep going. There is often a stark contrast between how well we take care of our horses and how much we neglect to take care of ourselves. Sometimes this probably has to do with the limited availability of funds. So we prioritise the horse over ourselves.
The "HOW" of Learning Rider Feel - Part 4 of 4
So what IS Feldenkrais? And how can YOU use it in YOUR riding? Very simply Feldenkrais lessons refine your ability to ‘listen’ to the information from your senses that lets you know the quality of your balance, breathing, posture and movement. It is this ability to pay attention to the subtle nuances of your sensory feedback mechanism that makes the difference between the effortless co-ordination of great riders and expending too much energy for the job in hand.
As a rider, it can help you to recognise and inhibit the unhelpful muscular efforts that interfere with your performance. You will become more discerning and improve your sensitivity, so you can respond quickly and easily to your horse. You will become quicker at identifying how to adjust any part of your body so you can ride how you’ve always wanted to. If you want to experience this now try this short Feldenkrais lesson…
The "HOW" of Learning Rider Feel - Part 3 of 4
Recently I was out on a hack with a friend. She was asking about Feldenkrais and how it applied to riding. She had observed me having lessons with my trainer and was struck by my ability to easily move my body in a particular direction or with a certain quality.
I explained that Feldenkrais lessons improve the quality of our action and that we can apply the experience of moving better to our riding. She looked puzzled.
The "HOW" of Learning Rider Feel - Part 2 of 4
In my last blog I described how I got to a pretty low point in my horse-owning journey. Before Shana’s email dropped into my inbox, I had felt compelled to have lessons with one of the yard staff because it seemed easier to fall in line with their wishes rather than to be on the receiving end of their sniping or criticisms whenever the classical trainer that I wanted to work with came onto the yard. I had also surreptitiously signed up to a couple of online trainings with people who seemed to have a similar philosophy to my own, but I was not having any success in translating their teachings into my riding. I was at the point where I would sail down the school on the right rein, trying to apply what I’d learnt online about steering, but with no positive result whatsoever. I was frequently to be spotted stuck in the corner of the school while my horse ate the hedge. Amusing though this was - and I do have the capacity to laugh at myself - this only served to contribute further to my feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment.
The "HOW" of Learning Rider Feel - Part 1 of 4
There’s nothing like the feeling when everything comes together and you are totally at one with your mind and body. When I’m in that state, where the lightest of intentions turns into effortless action, it’s the most exhilarating feeling imaginable. Some people call it being in a state of flow, but I think of it as being ‘in the zone’. When I’m in the zone, I feel completely in balance, I feel strong yet light and, most importantly, I have this immense sense of freedom that allows me to be totally spontaneous.
Game Changers: Some Important Discoveries In My Own Journey
As riders and teachers our particular approach, our techniques and methodology, our focus is very much a result of our own personal journey. It is shaped by the difficulties that we had to overcome, our own weaknesses, our discoveries, our teachers, the horses we have ridden, the books we have read, the other riders we have interacted with, and also by the students we have taught.
Occasionally, our personal journey leads us to discoveries that are real game changers for us. To others, they may be insignificant, but to us the world will never be the same afterwards. We can almost divide our riding career in pre-discovery and post-discovery. That’s how much these discoveries helped us improve our own riding. These game-changing discoveries will be different for everyone. In this blog post, I want to share some of my lightbulb moments that have helped me move to a higher level of understanding and practical skill. Perhaps they will be helpful for you as well, and maybe you can think of your own momentous discoveries and share them with us.
Turning The Pelvis With Ease
This week's newsletter article is a guest post by one of our guest teachers in our courses, Catherine McCrum. Catherine is a Feldenkrais practitioner and Gestalt psychotherapist living and working in London. The Feldenkrais Method is a way of improving how you move and function in daily life with a particular focus on how your unconscious movement patterns and posture holds you back from doing what you want to do with ease and grace. She works with a wide variety of clients and students from athletes and performers to people with neurological difficulties. Her original training was as a ski coach and trainer which she finds very applicable to her relatively new love of riding and her horse.
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’?
How To Switch Focus (What to do when it’s not going well)
It happens to all driven and focused riders at some point. We get so focused in on what we are trying to work on that we lose perspective or we forget to add in enough variety of other things because we want to “fix” this certain issue (and we want to fix it TODAY!).
On the one hand it is important to have a level of perseverance. Giving up at the sign of the slightest resistance or problem is not a path to success, but there comes a point where our dogged perseverance can backfire and make the matter worse. In those circumstances, we need to shift our gears, pivot in our approach, and shift our perspective.