Hello!Time for more about riding the lazy horse....
As well as being tempted to kick every stride, most riders are also tempted to shove with their backside. The lazier the horse, the more riders tend to shove - and the terms 'use your seat' and 'drive him forward' imply that this is a good thing to do. But not so!
Think of riders from the Spanish Riding School, and how still they sit. It is the stillness of the world's best riders that sets them apart from the rest of us as we shove, wiggle, and generally flail around - especially on the lazy horse. The more you do this, the more you show the horse that you are a novice. Think of sitting more still - keeping your body firm, still and lined up, while delivering the message 'Me Tarzan, you horse!'
When you kick from the knee down nothing must move from the knee up. What happens to your thighs, seat bones and backside when you kick? Do you wobble, shove, or jerk? Keeping the same quiet contact with the saddle is not so easy as it sounds!
The movement of each seat bone just keeps it moulded on to the horse's back. It is a much smaller movement than many riders think, and must be controlled by the rider. It must be very reliable - no sudden surprises for the horse. When I look at a rider, I do not want to see movement in her breeches - her outsides (as it were) stay glued onto the same place on the saddle throughout the horse's stride, while her seat bones move over her flesh within her backside. This means that the movements are small and controlled - like those Spanish Riding School riders. Good luck!

Let's go back to speedy horses..... being able to slow down the speed of your seat bones and slow down the speed of the horse's legs is the key thing here. If the horse moves your seat bones at his speed, then 'he takes you', when you slow them down to the speed that you want and are in control of, then 'you take him'.
Another big factor is breathing. You may well find yourself holding your breath on a horse that speeds off with you - and of course, he may be holding his breath too! It works well to think of 'breathing for both of you' and 'breathing down into the pony'. This may sound like kids stuff, but I have helped one international Grand Prix Dressage rider make huge changes to her GP horse by breathing down into him! It totally changed his body quality, making him much softer and less brittle. Think of the breath as a colour that goes down through your body and into his.
Put your breathing into a rhythm with the horse's walk. Count his forelegs moving, and breathe in 2,3,4, out,2,3,4. Maybe you can do 6's. Make sure you think of the breath going down - many riders are upper chest breathers, who lift the front of their ribs with each inbreath. Try not to do this: your ribs can expand outward, but must not go upwards. That automatically brings the breath more down, and you can amplify this effect by imagining that the breath is drawn down into your pelvis.
Breathing hold the key to so much, and I will come back to it in future posts. If you are coming up to something scarey, deliberately breathe OUT - we tend to breathe in and then hold our breath. If you make yourself breathe out you can stop that from happening, and you automaticaly send a much more calming message to your horse.
All the best!
Mary

So some tips about riding the lazy horse....
The biggest trap is to kick repeatedly in a way that is usually described as nagging. Riders often lift their heel and turn their toe out as they do this, making more of a nudge than a kick. Sometimes when teaching I get riders to say the word 'kick' to me every time they kick - then I say the word 'kick' to them every time I see them kick - there is often a big discrepancy, which tells us both that they are using their leg on 'auto-pilot'. Many people learn to do this in their early days of riding lazy horses in the riding school, and never loose the habit. The rule is that if you use your leg, you have to mean it, and if you do not mean it, do not use it.
Think about getting out of bed in the morning, and think of telling yourself or someone else that they have to get out of bed. The conversation could just keep going 'You've got to', 'I don't want to', 'You've got to'.... in a never ending cycle of misery for both sides. Once you actually get out of bed, life is much better than it is when you are thinking about getting out of bed! So metaphorically, you might have to 'rip the bedclothes' off your horse. Once you have him out of bed, you might have to say 'Not with me you don't!' if he threatens to climb back in there - this is prevention rather than cure, and is far easier on you and him.
Sometimes I see people who are putting up a big show of trying to get their horse going forward, complete with backside shoving, legs nudging, and a lot of sweat. They are thrilled to be able to tell me that 'I am trying...' - but if they actually succeeded, they would probably be terrified! To try and to succeed are two different options, and for many riders succeeding is an act of courage, and so out of their 'comfort zone' that they make sure it never happens!
More on this next time!

Mary's training tips

I am finally a real person with friends on Facebook, so now is the time to connect them and you to my blog, and post a new riding/training tip each week. so here goes with my first offering......

If you are riding a speedy horse, your first job is to get control of the speed of his legs. The burning question is: does he move you, or do you move him? Whoever controls the speed and movement of your seat bones controls the speed and movement of his legs. We all like to think that we can slow down the horse's legs by pulling on the reins.. but no chance! The horse will probably get claustrophobic and move faster, not slower! Instead you need to slow down the speed of your seat bone movement, and often to make that movement smaller. Be sure you can feel your seat bones - if you are 'popping up' by tightenning the muscles betwen them and the saddle you will not be able to make this work.
Imagine the tip of a pencil attached to each seatbone. What lines/shapes would those pencils draw in each stride? Are they the same? Is one a deeper, darker more repeatable line, and one a random squiggle? Can you even them out? Can you slow them down, and make them smaller?
Exerpiment to find out the effects this has.
Good luck! we'll talk about lazy hores next time!
Mary

Finally... I am blogging again! I had to get my webmaster to re-show me how to do it. It seems that I have a brain like a sieve when it comes to computers. Oh well!
It is now April 09, and it seems a long way from July 08. I have made two teaching trip to the USA over the winter, mostly teaching people I know well, and both trips were great fun. They also catalysed a lot of insights, some of which are ideas I could have thought of years ago. It is amazing how just thinking of something in a slightly different way can have so much effect, and how it changes they way that your brain organises your muscles. I still marvel about this even though I have experienced and seen it so many times over so many years.
My own horses, Quite and Merlot, keep demanding that I get better organised. Merlot (who was given to me by some American friends who had had enough of his antics) has, in reality, provided the learning curve from hell. His asymmetry has (of course) played on mine, and I have had to figure out a lot more about both sides of my body. I have also had to become stronger per se. He is now becoming much easier to ride, and way more willing to stay with my agenda.
It has really helped learning about Andrew McLean's approach to groundwork (aebc.com.au), and been very exciting to see how he and Heather Blitz (the American Grand prix dressage rider I have coached for many years) have independently come up with a similar philosophy. Whilst Heather does not use this in groundwork, her ideas about how to 'get through to' the horse
in ridden work are essentially the same as Andrew's. It is very exciting that we now have good ways to address the horse's conscious mind as well as his instinctive responces to the pyhsics of our riding.
Overdale is buzzing, with Karin doing a great job at the helm. We have some new horses at livery and in training, and they are available for people to ride on courses. Our older stalwarts are all doing well, and teaching well. The leaves are coming out on the trees, and the sun is shining, so at least we are all breathing out after a long snowy winter.
I am back to the US very soon for another short trip - including the 'Naked Truth of Riding' symposium in St Paul MN. I am looking forward to this hugely, and plan to have it videod with a view to making a new set of DVDs. This could take a while, though, so don't hold your breath!

This is my new blog.... I hope! I have little faith in technology, and even less in my ability to work with it, so I will believe it when I see it up there on the website. My original server gave up the ghost some months ago, and this has added significantly to my inability to get my act together. So my true confession is that I have written nothing since November last year, and it is now August. I would love to say that I now have great hopes for my future blogging, but I am more of a realist than that!

The new 'Ride With Your Mind Clinic' book continued to haunt me through the autumn and into the new year, with pages winging their way between me, my illustrator and my editor. Then finally came the lull before it appeared in print. It arrived on my door step the day before I left for America in February, which was fabulous timing. I am sure that there are few greater thrills in life than seeing and holding the book you have laboured over - the book that was nothing but files on a computer until it is miraculously given substance. Imagine seeing it there in your hand in black, white, and beautiful colour...what joy!

Thus I have had advance copies to sell during my lecture-demonstrations etc, but it has only just been officially published, and reviews are starting to come out now. So I have my fingers crossed!

Whilst writing it, I kept thinking about how much more time there would be once it was finished, but the truth is that so much gets put aside to make time for writing that there is an existential 'catch-up' that has to happen afterwards. I am now emerging from that catch-up, and feel that my head is above water for the first time in a long time. I am now trying to put some finishing touches to my house - having lived for a year with much of the downstairs as a concrete floor I am longing for my floor tiles to be fitted! I also have a pressing need for some more shelves etc., and as the price of oil escalates, I hope to enter the winter with a few more heating options.

Meanwhile my horses are doing well, and I am now the proud owner of five of them. I bought Astro, one of our school horses from Sam Twyman last summer, and have now also bought Golly who was on loan to Karin Major. She took over from Sam as the manager of Overdale, and when Golly's owners wanted to sell rather than loan I could not let such a good horse slip through my fingers. My wonderful pony Ellie is still going strong, and whenever I ride her I learn a lot in the experience. She is a great teacher. Quite, my Lusitano (who is pictured on the cover of the
'Clinic' book) is progressing really well, with big improvements in my ability to access his various gears, and to match his power in 'big trot' and passage. He is also doing really well with piaffe, which gives me great pleasure as when I bought him the owners were convinced that he would never do it. He has started teaching a few lessons to my more experienced pupils, and is now tollerant enough to give some of them their first taste of flying changes, piaffe and passage. Last on the list is my new horse Merlot, a 7 year old warmblood who has been given to me by Page who hosts my clinics in Wellington Florida, (and who appears in the 'Clinic' book). He has only been here for 2 months, and he is not an easy kettle of fish. But there are lots of good things happening as he chills out and becomes more ridable. I shall update you later!
This has been the summer of conferences. In June I spoke at a conference entitled 'This Learning Life' held in the Postgraduate Department of Education at Bristol University, and organised by Professor Guy Claxton. I had so much fun, and revelled in meeting some of the foremost thinkers on learning in both this country and the world. It was exciting and vallidating that they found my 'learning conversation' so thought provoking.

I have just been to Dublin to speak at the Conference of the International Society for Equestrian Science (ISES). I have only just discovered them, and I hope they might be left thinking that they have just discovered me! They are a group of academics including vets, zoologists, animal behaviourists and trainers, who are researching many facets of horse behaviour, and how we can best manage and train them. There were some interesting papers given, for instance, about the stresses of starting horses and travelling them (interestingly, cortisol levels increased much more on a one hour journey than they did when horses were first saddled and ridden).

There were also a few practical sessions, of which mine was one. I had only 25 minutes to work with 2 riders, so it was a whirlwind trip, which I think came together remarkably well considering the time constraints. I hope I really was able to make the point that how the rider sits matters, that our sitting is our primary tool for doing the job of influencing the horse, and that we (and the horse) pay dearly when our centre of gravity/tone/symmetry do not allow us to be precise enough in our organisation.
One of the leading lights of the organisation is Andrew McLean - google him to find out about his approach to groundwork and operant conditioning (the trial and error learning that he believes is the foundation for all of the horse's later responses under saddle).

I am soon off to Denmark to teach a clinic there and to watch Heather Blitz for a few days. So I am really looking forward to that. Heather teaches a clinic at Overdale on 20 and 21 September, and anyone who wants to come and watch should telephone me. I really recommend seeing her in action.

All in all it's an action packed summer - but I hope to be back on this blog much sooner than previously!