I love teaching beginners.  I love passing on my love and understanding of horses.

Teaching more advanced riders, who have learned somewhere else, can be a challenge.  You don’t know what they have already learned (other than what you see) and how well they understand the principle of the teaching.

The first thing I say to them is – “Since I don’t know what you were taught, I may repeat things you have already heard or learned.  Or I may say it in a different way that you might understand it better.”  When I was working with a student recently, I was just doing my “Thing.”  Things I teach the beginner/intermediate riders automatically.  Things we do just for the fun of it, to take their mind off the fact that I’m drilling them on something new.  Something so simple I don’t give much thought to.  All of a sudden there was an Aha! moment.  Happening right before my eyes.  It was as simple as using more leg and weight than hands to turn your horse.

I had set up cones like we were going to run a set of poles.  Now remember we are riding English.  She was using too much hand, and not enough (if any) leg, and was over turning.  When you over turn going in one direction, you have to really over turn to compensate in the other direction.  I asked if she had ever driven a boat?  She said no, so I had to explain how the water has to work past the rudder in order for the boat to turn.  People always over turn the wheel on a boat because they are not getting an immediate response, and then they over turn in the other direction to compensate.  It’s not like a car that responds immediately.  When I showed her she didn’t have to use her hands to turn (they were just support), and she should just use her legs to push the horse sideways through the cones, that’s when it became an Aha! moment.  This is a girl who has been riding for years.  She did some Eventing in college and no one ever explained this to her?  Hello, what was her Dressage trainer thinking.  I explained how when her body turns, her weight shifts and so does the pressure of her seat bone into her horses back.  She was amazed and tickled to have learned something so simple but valuable.  I explained how this would relate to approaching a jump.  You don’t have to turn your horse’s head to move your horse over as you approach the jump.  This will sometimes cause your horse to do a flying change and mess you, and the horse up for your take off.  Just put your leg on her, move her whole body over at once, and keep going.

We talked about how so much of Western riding can not only be fun, but beneficial to training your English horse.  It’s refreshing to work around cones, and barrels when trying to execute simple maneuvers, the same ones you would use in Dressage.  It just shakes things up, and gives you a new perspective and approach to the same old, same old.

I know this is something I have mentioned in previous posts, but it was all new to her.

Yes you may have to use 20 Questions to find out where you start from, but the true answers come when you actually watch someone performing a movement or task.

Questions anyone?