riding instructor – Horse Listening

7 Great Tips For Beginner Horse Riders

Horse riding is becoming an increasingly popular activity. The attraction is simple - the horses... the physical challenge... the fact that anyone can begin to learn, young and old(er). If you are new to riding, you might be overwhelmed by all the opinions that are out there. Here are a few ideas to help you navigate your way through your first steps (walk, trot and canter).

Find a great instructor.

In some areas, you might have trouble finding multiple instructors to choose from. But work on it. Watch your prospective instructor teach a few lessons. Take a look at the condition of the school horses and other barn animals. Get a tour and see what the atmosphere of the barn is like. Finding an ideal barn and instructor is like finding a great friend or job. It takes time and you have to try it out for a while to know if it's a good fit for you.

Safety first!

Learn what you need to do to keep yourself safe, especially for the first few months. Although most horses are well trained to not do anything unexpected, horses are flight animals and really can't be completely trusted at any time. Be aware of your personal space when you work around the horses. Keep your feet clear of hooves, maintain an appropriate distance (don't let the horses rub on you or nibble on you), and make sure the horses hear you and know where you are as you approach them or work around them.

Focus on your seat development.

The seat is the source of all great riding. The seat is also the hardest area of the body to coordinate. You'll find that using your hands and legs will be much much easier than learning to follow the horse and influence him with your seat. But there is no better way. If you are lucky enough to find someone who will lunge you, there is no better way to start riding. If not, find an instructor who puts a lot of emphasis on seat development early in your riding career.

Develop excellent ground skills.

If you have a chance to learn to work the horse from the ground, grab it! They say that you only ride as well as you handle a horse from the ground, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. Take lessons, watch others and practice as much as you can. There are so many ways you can learn ground work: showmanship, round penning, lunge work (for the horse), in-hand showing... there must be others. The more you can do from the ground, the better you will be prepared to ride. Your horse will also know you as a communicator/herd leader.

Volunteer or work at a barn.

More time spent with horses means more experience. They often say that if you want to know something really well, you have to learn it from the "ground up." Nothing can be truer in riding. If you can get a paid job working at a barn, even for one day a week, you will learn invaluable skills that will propel you in the right direction. If not, consider volunteering. Working alongside experienced staff will give you the opportunity to learn and get feedback - reducing your learning curve by a lot.

Check and double-check your tack.

In many riding schools, you will be required to groom and tack your own horse. There is nothing better than spending some time with the horse you're going to ride, so get in there and get dirty! When you tack up, make sure you know how everything is secured. Check your tack before you go into the ring, and then check it again before you mount. If you are unsure of anything, be sure to ask your instructor before you get on. Your tack will keep you safe - but only if it is on properly!

Ride more than once a week.

It might be difficult to ride multiple times in a week in a riding school, but take the opportunity if it comes your way. Take two lessons a week, or see if you can eventually part-board a horse. Maybe you can rent a horse for a "practice ride." No matter how you do it, your skills will improve exponentially if you can increase your time in the saddle.

Breathe in rhythm with the horse's movement.

Even if you are otherwise athletic and have a lot of experience in other sports, your initial riding experiences might be different than what you are used to. One of the things that go first when you begin to trot and canter is remembering to breathe. A good trick is to force yourself to breathe in conjunction with your horse's movement. If you are posting, breathe on every other post. In canter, breathe every other up stride. Force your breath if you have to initially, until your body takes over. Otherwise, you will likely hold your breath and soon end up panting and losing coordination.

Do as you're told!

Your instructor will (should) always have your best interests in mind. So if she tells you to drop your hands, drop them. If she shows you how far to open your rein, or to soften your knees on the saddle, do your best to follow her directions. Sometimes, what you need to do may feel awkward or even wrong to your muscle memory. That might be because your body has normalized the wrong feeling. Just give it a good try.

Ask questions.

BUT... do ask questions when things seem unclear. If you want to be an independent thinker, you do need to know why you are doing things at certain times. There is no other way. However, there is a protocol to asking questions. While you are riding, just keep riding. Save the talking for in between the riding spurts, or for the end of the lesson. Don't be gabbing while she's giving instructions, because when you are on the horse, there is little time for conversation. That is the time you should be "do"-ing.

Be patient.

If you feel like you're all thumbs, don't worry! Pretty much everything to do with horses, including the riding part, is going to be different than anything you've ever done. Just figuring out how to put a bridle on might take you weeks to really do easily, simply because of the straps and buckles that we don't normally manipulate otherwise.

Have fun!

Well, this is the most important part, even while you are learning and stepping out of your comfort zone. Pet your horse, enjoy the feeling of being in the saddle, and enjoy the companionship of like-minded people.

Do you have any tips for people who are beginning to ride horses? Please leave them in the comments below.

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Riding Lessons

You've booked your lessons and can't wait to get started. You're all set and just waiting to see what your instructor has to tell you. That's all you need, right?

Well, yes and no. It is great to be prepared with horse and equipment ready. But there is so much more you can do to maximize the potential for learning from each and every lesson. Here are some ideas on what you can do to really benefit from your instructor's time and energy.

Be in the ring and ready to go.

Some instructors want to do the warm-up with you in order to guide you in a way that is most suitable for your horse. In that manner, they can start you off with exercises that help your horse with his specific difficulties. They also give you ideas on what can be done when you're riding on your own.

As you become a more advanced rider, and you and your instructor know each other better, there might come a time when you might be told to be warmed up and ready to go. This gives you both more time for the learning part of the lesson, when you can try new things or reinforce something you are still working on.

The bottom line is be ready. Get in the ring before the lesson is scheduled to start. Have all your tack adjusted and secure so you can start right away. Be on the horse and walking by the time your instructor is ready for you.

Interpret instructions into physical movements.

There is an art to being a good student. Your instructor tells you what to do but it is you who has to know how to make it happen. Learning how to be the translator of verbal instructions is a difficult skill to develop, especially when you are first introduced to a new skill or concept. However, it is one of the most important keys to having great lessons and reaping rewards from what is taught.

Try even if you think you can't do it.

This happens all the time! Your instructor might tell you to do something and all you can think is, I can't do that! Or maybe you think, I've never done that, we're not ready!

In any case, give it your best shot. You'll realize that your instructor is likely not going to push you so far out of your comfort zone that the skill will be impossible for you. There is no other way to expand your horizons, so just go with it. Most skills take a long time (years maybe) to really develop, so just get started and work on what you get.

We all go through self-doubt, especially when faced with new learning.

Maintain a steady lesson routine.

Nothing can be learned in bits and spurts. You need to develop a routine, for both you and your horse, in order to make any kind of significant change in your riding and/or your horse's training. Most instructors offer lesson packages or monthly schedules. Take advantage and slot yourself in for regular lessons.

Lesson more often if possible.

Many of us take lessons once a week, but if you really want to make an impact, you should aim for two or three lessons a week. The secret to making a substantial change in your physical ability is to do it repeatedly, under supervision, as much as possible.

Watch other riders.

Many of us are visual learners. If your instructor has other students, try to stick around and watch them if at all possible. Even if they are more or less advanced than you, there is always something to be heard or seen that can clarify a concept in your mind. When you sit by the side, you can have more time to really listen to your instructor and watch what the outcome is with another horse and rider. All this information is helpful in your own learning process.

Ride together.

If you tend to have private lessons, you'll enjoy riding with others to break up the routine. You'll be motivated by what the others do. Your horse will be motivated by the other horses in the ring. When others ride at the same time, you'll have a chance to see and then do. It's great for the kinesthetic learners who need to do to learn.

Audit or ride in a clinic.

There is nothing better than adding a clinic to your regular lesson routine. If you can participate in a clinic, you get the chance to get an outside perspective on you and your horse. Often, you'll be surprised at how the clinician picks up on the exact same points that your instructor tells you routinely. Other times, you might hear something told to you in a different way that makes you connect the dots that you already knew about, but come together just because they were presented in a different manner.

If you can't ride, you can always go watch. Even if you don't know the riders or the horses, you'll see what other people do, how they learn and what exercises to use for particular skills. You can listen to the clinician's explanations. There are always things to learn by watching.

Read.

I always say that you can't learn to ride by reading. I still agree with that statement. However, reading is an excellent addition to your practical lessons. There isn't always enough time in a lesson to go into detailed explanations - and that is where books (and blogs!) can fit into your learning program. You might be able to pick something up theoretically that you can later use during your ride. If you are prepared with some knowledge, you might be able to pick up the meaning of your instructor's directions quicker than if you have no background whatsoever.

Watch videos.

And I don't mean the 13-second carefully edited ones on TikTok!

There are so many instructional videos put up on YouTube and other platforms these days that there is likely someone you can watch and follow in exactly your level and interest area/discipline. Many of us are visual learners and even though we can't actually feel what the rider feels in the video, it still helps to watch the process and the result.

Well, I hope some of these strategies are helpful for you, and wishing you the best lessons ever!

Are there any other strategies you use to get the most our of your lessons? Let us know in the comments below.

Blueprinting – the good, the bad and the ugly

Since the horse's reactions are many times faster than man's, it is only through conditioning with consistent work, and through our ability to prepare both ourselves and the horse with timely aiding, that an element of predictability - the nucleus of a smooth performance - is established.

- Erik Herbermann, Dressage Formula (1980), p.7

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Riding is a whole-body endeavour that involves every part of the rider. From controlling the tips of the fingers to the ends of the toes to everything in between, the body must be engaged in large and small movements over space in time. Aids must be precise, gentle and timed in relation to the horse's movement. At any given moment, the rider must be engaged in some expression of movement in order to follow and guide the horse's next steps.

Blueprinting, in the riding sense, refers to the muscle memory that is developed in both the horse are rider. The whole concept of riding could seem to be a very daunting task if it weren't for the fact that muscles develop a movement 'blueprint' - once the neural pathways are engaged and connected, similar movements in similar circumstances become easier and easier until that particular movement occurs with little conscious thought. In effect, with sufficient practice, the rider can stop having to think about what the body is doing - you can essentially send the body on auto-pilot and think very little other than to get down to the business of 'feeling'.

The Good

Long ago, my instructor explained it to me this way: blueprinting is an advantage in the sense that once you achieve 'autopilot' you can rely on your central nervous system (CNS) to do most of the 'thinking' in response to the many tiny movements required to respond to the horse's movements.

The time it takes to send messages to brain and then instructions back to the body is too long to be able to keep up fluidly with the horse's movements. Letting the CNS take over allows you to release your muscles and joints so they can easily flow with the horse. When you reach this state of non-thinking, you can begin to ride more in the right brain, and start riding with "feel".

Then the magic happens - you no longer feel earthbound - your horse floats along with ease and the rules of gravity seem to no longer apply. Similarly, your horse resonates with bliss - with snorts, soft floppy ears, and effortless flow of the back. For all intents and purposes, it appears as if you and your horse are moving 'as one', thinking the same thought, dancing the dance.

The Bad

The bad news about blueprinting is that the same learning process occurs with all body movements - even the ones you'd rather NOT duplicate! We usually consider these movements to be bad habits, things we know we are doing but we shouldn't be doing!

The trouble with blueprinting in the negative sense is that the undesired movement becomes the 'autopilot' movement and so a vicious cycle begins to reproduce itself. And the biggest obstacle comes when you try to undo the physical movement and try to replace it with something more suitable. Now, you have to THINK about each aspect of the new movement - and tell each part of your body to make that movement one step at a time... which in general, ends up being too slow to correspond to the horse's movement. The reeducation process takes much time and effort - in fact, much more effort to undo than if it was correctly learned in the first place.

The Ugly

Worse still, is when you are so permanently blueprinted that you don't even recognize that you are producing a movement. It becomes unconscious, and your body effectively begins to lie to you - you think you're doing one thing when in fact, you're doing something else. In this case, it becomes difficult to even identify what is causing the situation, never mind try to find a solution.

What to do?

It seems that the situation is pretty daunting. What is a rider to do, especially because everything we do in the saddle influences the horse, either positively or negatively? The obvious answer is to get the right blueprinting in the first place. Your first riding experiences can set the stage either way - for the good or the bad.

The key, as always, is to find a good riding instructor. Also, find a good "school master" - a horse that is well trained, good minded and reliable, so he can teach you. Progress on to younger/less educated/more sensitive horses only after you have developed sufficient skills and then, keep getting guidance from a good instructor.

For those of us who are already not-perfectly-blueprinted: be ready to buckle up the seat belt and stay for the long haul. It will take time, patience and perseverance. Be forgiving of both yourself and your horse. Ride with a kind sense of humour.

Be satisfied with small steps in the right direction. Know when to quit, and when to try again. Stay determined, but stay gentle and calm. Enjoy the path, and don't be too quickly discouraged. And above all else, listen to your horse, for if you can hear, you will get all the answers you need to succeed.

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Buy the book for many more riding tips! Horse Listening – The Book: Stepping Forward to Effective Riding

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Read more here:

The Pinnacle of Horseback Riding: Riding toward the ultimate release – this is the stuff riders dream of.

Finding Your Comfortable Un-Comfort in Riding: Being uncomfortable is often a good place to be in riding.

23 Ways to Solve the Riding Problem: Of course, we rarely speak of the one “true” way…

Rarely Considered, Often Neglected: Lunging to Develop the Riding Seat: The secret to developing an effective seat.

Interpreting the Half-Halt: This topic is a tricky one but here is a shot at it.

Horses. Riding. Life.

Tag: riding instructor

7 Great Tips For Beginner Horse Riders

Finally! The Ultimate Rider-Centered Program!

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How To Get The Most Out Of Your Riding Lessons

Finally! The Ultimate Rider-Centered Program!

New! Horse Listening – Book 2: Forward and Round to Training Success

Blueprinting – the good, the bad and the ugly

Finally! The Ultimate Rider-Centered Program!

Buy the book for many more riding tips! Horse Listening – The Book: Stepping Forward to Effective Riding