Finding The Deeper Meaning Of The Basics

Our easy, basic exercises are simultaneously the easiest thing you will do and the hardest thing you will do well. The reason being is that the basics are entry level riding and the foundations of every thing else you do with your horse. So if you’re like me and been riding for 26 years and teaching for 14 years you’ve run through the basics thousands of times (no exaggeration). And each new horse I work through it with, each new rider I work through it with, each time I get a horse to a certain level of education hit a plateau and say ok time to go back to the basics I am learning something new, a different perspective and a deeper understanding of something that is so simple that a person who has never ridden it before can do.

This is why in our course green to self carriage we have tiered it to comfortably and easily move up and down the training scale. We have included all prerequisites and progressions in each lesson plan so if the current lesson plan has gone to crap you know what building blocks to strip back to but also if its too easy you know which exercise to work on next.

There is a huge difference in the halt a person rides the first time they ride a horse and the halt they ride a year later. There is a huge difference in the halt a person rides compared to a person who has had lessons with a good instructor every week for a year. There is a huge difference between the halt a person rides after a year of riding, 5 years of riding, 10 years of riding and 20 years of riding. With experience comes understanding and refinement and the horses we work with in that time are generally keen to teach us a thing or 2 also.

So before you rush on to that next movement, exercise or challenge, before you say “oh that exercise is too easy for us now” or “that exercise is boring I learnt that when I was first riding”, check in with you and your horse. Can you find a deeper meaning to the exercise? Can you learn something about it that you didn’t know before? Can your horse teach you something in that exercise that you couldn’t learn the first time you did it because your own feel and ability wasn’t ready?

Because trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve been the rider that hates practising halting because you only have to do it 2 maybe 3 times in a test. I’ve been the person that has said why do I need to get better at my walk through canter changes before I learn my flying changes? I’ve been the person that has rushed a horse through the basic principles to try and get to the “good stuff” and it just never works out the way we imagine. I am still learning new things about the most basic things we can do with a horse because I like to try and be a student of life which means I let my horses teach me how they want me to work best with them and I let my students teach me their perspective and feel of their horse.