By Shana Ritter

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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 Relaxed Walk at the Longe Line

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The Relaxed Walk at the Longe Line

You can communicate so much in a subtle way to the horse at the walk. You can influence better the bend, carriage, size of the circle, and rhythm/tempo if you begin by establishing it at the walk. But not every horse is so keen to walk at the beginning of the work session, I know! They have to learn through gentleness, calm groundedness, and guidance. Once they learn how then it becomes a habit.

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Four reins and two bits… oh my, how do I start?

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Four reins and two bits… oh my, how do I start?

So you have decided to take the leap and start using a double bridle but you want to make sure you do it correctly. We have put our collective years of experience together to give some advice to help you achieve this.

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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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Tip: Walk it before you ride it [+ VIDEO]

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Tip: Walk it before you ride it [+ VIDEO]

It can be incredibly useful before you ride an exercise to get the lay of the land by walking the whole exercise on the ground. It's a common practice when memorizing dressage tests, but can be just as helpful when schooling. It lets you concentrate on what needs to happen through each phase of the exercise, to think about where the transitions are and where the hard parts may be for you or your horse so you can have more success in riding it.

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.

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How To Switch Focus (What to do when it’s not going well)

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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.

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You have to fall in love with the process

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You have to fall in love with the process

To become a great rider (hell… to become great at ANYTHING…). You have to fall in love with the process. Because that is what it is about. It is ABOUT the process. In other words, you have to be willing to do the work. You have to want it bad enough to endure the struggle… to get back on the horse when you’ve come off unexpectedly… to come back the next day after a bad ride and do it all again (hopefully better)…

 

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2018 Goal Setting (for Riders)

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2018 Goal Setting (for Riders)

It’s that time again! The New Year is upon us... and I'm willing to bet that you want 2018 to be the BIG BREAKTHROUGH year for you and your riding, right?  Have you set New Year’s Resolutions before and not kept them? I know… silly question. WE ALL HAVE! You know why? Because it is human nature, and the nature of resolutions sort of sets us up to fail. This is why...

 

A question about elbows and hand position

A question about elbows and hand position

In one of our Facebook groups someone asked a question about elbows and hand position. She had been told by a trainer that she should keep her hands forward, close to the withers of the horse. Since she is not very tall, she has to round her shoulders or tip forward with her torso in order to put her hands where the trainer wants them to be. That compromises the integrity and the effectiveness of the seat, of course.

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Develop your own training plan

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Develop your own training plan

The thing is, every training problem can look slightly different, so I can’t really outline every possible problem and the process I go through to fix each of those problems. Not right here, anyway. But what I can do is share with you my own personal process for dealing with any problem and bringing it to a successful resolution. For the purposes of this article I must be quite general, of course, but I do give a couple of brief examples of how the process can look in certain scenarios.

Goal Setting for Riders

Goal Setting for Riders

One of the keys to success is to learn how to set clear goals, and then to set up a plan to achieve them. For me, personally, the process involves considering the logistics so that I can determine where I am overestimating my time and energy available (because I tend to dream big, but that dreaming process is important, too) but also so I can make some decisions about how to prioritize my time and energy so that I CAN achieve those goals. Without clearly thinking these things through, it is all too easy to get distracted by all of the things that happen in life. There is SO much to be distracted about! And whereas we cannot - nor should we - put the rest of our lives on hold in order to move forward in our riding - if we have clearly laid out our goals, prioritized which things need to make way in order for us to achieve these goals, and then revisit these goals regularly (I review and visualize my goals DAILY - that is a topic for a whole ‘nother newsletter!), then we stack the odds in our favor that we will at least get closer to our goals, if not achieve or surpass them altogether.

Learning to ride in a new era

Learning to ride in a new era

Equestrian culture has changed drastically throughout the centuries, and it continues to change at a rapid pace. Many spend their time and energy bemoaning the loss of the bygone methods, culture, and ideology, and I, too, used to belong to that camp… the camp that idolises the old masters and thinks they and everything they did was infallible. But with age and experience come some hard-earned insights, and I no longer view the history with such rose-colored glasses. There was a lot of good then, indeed, but it was not all good. It was not perfect,  and like all other arts, equestrian art is evolving. It continues to evolve. It flows through time, adopting some new values while relinquishing others. Equestrian art is, therefore, a dynamic art. It changes and it can be changed.

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