With apologies to Mark for any errors, or misunderstandings... but here is my take on today.
There are 8 horses to describe so I'll break it up into 4 posts, each describing 2 horses. With another 8 horses to see tomorrow! Hope this is not information overload but writing it up helps me process it all so here goes.....
Pony 1: Grey native type (ConnieX)
Pony was not moving as freely as could be, especially in transitions as he put a slight brace in the transition. Mark got onto a demo horse for the first time, and walked around on him, nice free, relaxed walk. Then he said he was curling his toes in his boots. There was no visible sign of this but the horse tensed up noticeably. He then relaxed his feet and horse moved more freely again. He then tensed up muscles in his lower back. Again horse began bracing. His point was that rider interference is hugely important. For a horse to be relaxed and to move freely, rider also needs to be relaxed and free. Tension in rider transmits to horse. Coached rider to breathe and to focus on the 'feel' of movements by imagining that she was 'borrowing the horse's feet' so instead of using the rein to stop, or the leg to go, she just mentally visualised stopping or moving off. Once the rider quietened everything down, the horse was softer and was moving more fluidly between halt, walk and trot off virtually non existent cues. However Mark noted that if you get too carried away with a quiet, soft, relaxed feel the horse can basically start to doze off. So although you do want the softness, you also want energy! The horse has to be offering impulsion to you, so that you can then direct it softly. If it isn't there in the first place you have nothing to work with, so to get the energy levels up he advised the rider to use a schooling whip against her boot so she could elicit more energy without tensing/over-using her legs of losing that fluid feel.
Horse 2: Grey horse. Quite fine.
Rider wanted her horse to learn how to do lateral work. Mark asked her to walk around the arena and then to focus on a mental image of the horse's inside hind leg coming up and across to land under rider's outside foot. He showed this on his demo horse who began stepping across easily. Rider's horse was not responding to the visualisation so he asked the rider to add in a leg aid (his view is always START with the mental image, but add in mechanical aids such as leg/rein if needed. Over time the intent becomes enough on its own. For some horses the intent is enough from the start). Again horse was not responding, and Mark noted that the rider's legs were overly busy. She was nagging him and applying leg inconsistently and ignoring a non response while not rewarding any tries. His view was the horse had no idea what she was asking him to do. So he said don't move the leg at all until he called out 'now', 'now' and even then only to apply a light aid. The aim is not to push the horse over with the leg but to signal with the leg. Mark said 'now' just as the inside hind was coming off the ground and the rider applied her inside leg. Nothing happened initially but after a short while, horse began to yield quarters over. Mark then said she needed to 'take the whole horse with her'. In other words focus on the front of the horse moving over as well as the back. She did not use a rein to achieve this, it was all done with focus/intent. Plus patience as there were a few minutes where horse was not understanding but rider just kept presenting the same information over and over as Mark said 'now', 'now'. etc. There was no need to increase the pressure as this was a problem of understanding. And shouting is no clearer to the horse than repeating the request quietly. There was a lovely moment when the horse faltered in walk and then took a step across as if saying 'oh SIDEWAYS!'. After that, the movement just became more fluent each time as the horse figured out how to organise his legs. Again the advice was to get more energy with the whip on a boot if more energy was needed, as it was very important for this rider's legs to be very, very quiet as she had confused the horse by riding with the leg meaning too many different things and being applied too often and too inconsistently. So the horse had largely learned to tune the leg out as it had become a fairly meaningless aid. It was interesting as I see a lot of people who ride with as much leg as that - not kicking but just applying the aid over and over. I'm sure I do this myself with Zak so this is definitely something for me to focus on when I get home. In fact I can hear my RI in my head calling 'leg on, leg on, and again, keep him in canter'! Maybe all that 'leg on' business means Zak now thinks he should stop cantering every time I take the leg off which is not what I want to teach him at all!!
More later folks......
There are 8 horses to describe so I'll break it up into 4 posts, each describing 2 horses. With another 8 horses to see tomorrow! Hope this is not information overload but writing it up helps me process it all so here goes.....
Pony 1: Grey native type (ConnieX)
Pony was not moving as freely as could be, especially in transitions as he put a slight brace in the transition. Mark got onto a demo horse for the first time, and walked around on him, nice free, relaxed walk. Then he said he was curling his toes in his boots. There was no visible sign of this but the horse tensed up noticeably. He then relaxed his feet and horse moved more freely again. He then tensed up muscles in his lower back. Again horse began bracing. His point was that rider interference is hugely important. For a horse to be relaxed and to move freely, rider also needs to be relaxed and free. Tension in rider transmits to horse. Coached rider to breathe and to focus on the 'feel' of movements by imagining that she was 'borrowing the horse's feet' so instead of using the rein to stop, or the leg to go, she just mentally visualised stopping or moving off. Once the rider quietened everything down, the horse was softer and was moving more fluidly between halt, walk and trot off virtually non existent cues. However Mark noted that if you get too carried away with a quiet, soft, relaxed feel the horse can basically start to doze off. So although you do want the softness, you also want energy! The horse has to be offering impulsion to you, so that you can then direct it softly. If it isn't there in the first place you have nothing to work with, so to get the energy levels up he advised the rider to use a schooling whip against her boot so she could elicit more energy without tensing/over-using her legs of losing that fluid feel.
Horse 2: Grey horse. Quite fine.
Rider wanted her horse to learn how to do lateral work. Mark asked her to walk around the arena and then to focus on a mental image of the horse's inside hind leg coming up and across to land under rider's outside foot. He showed this on his demo horse who began stepping across easily. Rider's horse was not responding to the visualisation so he asked the rider to add in a leg aid (his view is always START with the mental image, but add in mechanical aids such as leg/rein if needed. Over time the intent becomes enough on its own. For some horses the intent is enough from the start). Again horse was not responding, and Mark noted that the rider's legs were overly busy. She was nagging him and applying leg inconsistently and ignoring a non response while not rewarding any tries. His view was the horse had no idea what she was asking him to do. So he said don't move the leg at all until he called out 'now', 'now' and even then only to apply a light aid. The aim is not to push the horse over with the leg but to signal with the leg. Mark said 'now' just as the inside hind was coming off the ground and the rider applied her inside leg. Nothing happened initially but after a short while, horse began to yield quarters over. Mark then said she needed to 'take the whole horse with her'. In other words focus on the front of the horse moving over as well as the back. She did not use a rein to achieve this, it was all done with focus/intent. Plus patience as there were a few minutes where horse was not understanding but rider just kept presenting the same information over and over as Mark said 'now', 'now'. etc. There was no need to increase the pressure as this was a problem of understanding. And shouting is no clearer to the horse than repeating the request quietly. There was a lovely moment when the horse faltered in walk and then took a step across as if saying 'oh SIDEWAYS!'. After that, the movement just became more fluent each time as the horse figured out how to organise his legs. Again the advice was to get more energy with the whip on a boot if more energy was needed, as it was very important for this rider's legs to be very, very quiet as she had confused the horse by riding with the leg meaning too many different things and being applied too often and too inconsistently. So the horse had largely learned to tune the leg out as it had become a fairly meaningless aid. It was interesting as I see a lot of people who ride with as much leg as that - not kicking but just applying the aid over and over. I'm sure I do this myself with Zak so this is definitely something for me to focus on when I get home. In fact I can hear my RI in my head calling 'leg on, leg on, and again, keep him in canter'! Maybe all that 'leg on' business means Zak now thinks he should stop cantering every time I take the leg off which is not what I want to teach him at all!!
More later folks......