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Tip: Activate the Inside hind leg [+ VIDEO]

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Tip: Activate the Inside hind leg [+ VIDEO]

To keep your horse's energy level up and keep him lively when riding exercises which combine a number of patterns and movements, you can take advantage of your horse's reorganization of balance that occurs at the beginning of a new line (arena pattern) or change of direction. Activate the inside hind leg for a couple of strides with your inside leg or a vibration of the whip to ask the horse to pick it up a little sooner. Since he is busy rearranging his feet and his balance, he can't brace against you or use the ground against you, so the driving aid has a better chance of going through. Activating the inside hind leg in this manner allows you to enter the new line or movement with a little more power and emphasis on impulsion. Once you achieve this activation, you can become more passive for a few strides and, if necessary, repeat the request again, and if you change direction, you can activate and “speed up” the new inside hind leg.

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Tip: Turn like a compass [+ VIDEO]

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Tip: Turn like a compass [+ VIDEO]

In riding turns, many riders turn their heads and shoulders too far in the new direction, while their pelvis remains more or less straight. The horse, however, tends to follow the alignment of the rider’s pelvis. He will typically go where the belly button is pointing. If you want to leave the current line of travel by riding a turn, you have to indicate this by rotating your pelvis and pointing your belly button in the new direction.

Tip: Periodically video your Riding [+ VIDEO]

Tip: Periodically video your Riding [+ VIDEO]

It is really normal and common to get to a point where you feel like you aren’t making progress. You may even feel that you have slid backwards and things are getting worse. Our perspective can get so skewed. We are influenced by others we see around us. And we THINK we should be on a faster progress schedule. We THINK we aren’t making progress fast enough.

But here is the thing. Good work takes time. One of my old teachers used to always say. “Time and distance overcome the resistance.” We can take this to mean that it just takes time and really, steady work to really overcome the bigger issues.

It is about every day showing up and doing the work.
It is about paying attention to details.
It is about polishing, polishing, polishing.

But the problem with that is that when we are “down in the trenches” doing the day-to-day work, we tend to get hyper focused on the problem we are working through. And we tend to not see the progress we have made.

Michelangelo's horse and setting the statue free

Michelangelo's horse and setting the statue free

The famous Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo is credited with having said: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” This implies “setting the statue free” by chiseling away all the rock that is not part of it. It is similar when developing the gaits of the dressage horse. Every horse has his own, unique walk, trot, and canter, as well as his own, unique piaffe and passage, which the trainer has to find and bring out, by eliminating everything that prevents the horse from moving optimally in his own, unique manner.

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10 Tips To Instantly Increase The Effectiveness Of Your Training!

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10 Tips To Instantly Increase The Effectiveness Of Your Training!

Training horses is pretty difficult, if you want to do it the right way. There’s so much you have to keep in mind at the same time to get optimal results. You are literally your horse’s fitness trainer and mental coach!

The most important thing in training should always be the well-being of your horse. Training a horse with integrity is different from forcing him into performance ‘tricks’. 

The training should always lead to an improved balance in order to prevent injuries. Tendon injuries for instance, are often a result of the horse being crooked (even a tiny bit crooked) which leads to one leg consistently carrying more weight than the others, which will increase the stress and the wear and tear on the tendons until the horse is lame. 

The same goes for problems in the back or pelvis, caused by the horse being ridden with a hollow back. That is why it is so important to do things correctly. Because I know how much time and effort it takes to train a horse well, I am happy to provide you with some tips to train more effectively.

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Game Changers: Some Important Discoveries In My Own Journey

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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.

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Reasons Why Your Horse Is Not On The Bit - Part 2

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Reasons Why Your Horse Is Not On The Bit - Part 2

Everything is connected in riding. Rhythm, balance, self carriage, straightness, suppleness/stiffness,  back movement, rein contact, impulsion, collection (i.e. flexion of the haunches) are all interrelated and influence each other. Rider balance and horse balance, rider crookedness and horse crookedness, rider stiffness and horse stiffness affect each other in very direct ways. Any improvement in one area leads to improvements in all the other areas. Unfortunately, it works the other way around, too: a problem in one area will also have negative repercussions throughout the entire system.

 

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5 Common Rider Errors In Leg Yield

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5 Common Rider Errors In Leg Yield

There are 5 mistakes that happen very frequently and that make it almost impossible for the horse to perform the leg yield correctly.  Many riders struggle with the leg yield, especially in the trot. So I decided to discuss the subject in a newsletter article in the hopes that it will be of interest to others as well. You can apply this discussion also to the “real” lateral movements. Most of the points I address are universal and tend to occur in all lateral movements.

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