Bluebird Lane Blog – Earlier Posts

by Lori Albrough

Last week we started talking about The Three Pillars of Your Riding Foundation. I explained how the foundation which you are building to support your success as a rider rests firmly upon what I call three pillars. These are: the Pillar of Focus, the Pillar of Fundamentals, and the Pillar of Fitness.

The Pillar of Focus is all about your mind-set and applying the power of your attention on a daily basis towards bringing your riding goals to life. Focus also encompasses your ability to keep your attention oriented firmly on what you want, not on what you DON’T want, every moment that you are riding.

Today we are moving on to the second support for our riding foundation, the Pillar of Fundamentals.

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by Lori Albrough

Your success as a rider rests upon the foundation you build for yourself through your physical and mental training efforts.

Each building block that you add as you move up the levels of riding is laid upon your foundation, which needs to be stable and secure to continuously support your advancement as far up as you want to go.

I characterize a rider’s foundation as resting upon three pillars: Focus, Fundamentals, and Fitness.

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by Lori Albrough

I find the subject of happiness endlessly fascinating.

I love to reflect on what makes people happy, why we think some things will make us happy, but then they don’t, and some of the apparent paradoxes of happiness, such as how taking on a new challenge can cause a lot of discomfort — both mental and physical — in the short- and medium-term and then subsequently a lot of happiness once you’ve met the challenge, risen above, and mastered it.

In fact, over fifteen years ago, we named our Fjordhorse farm after the bird which is the symbol of happiness in poetry and song, the Eastern Bluebird. Bluebird Lane, and the Fjords which live here, have been a very big source of happiness and purpose in my life.

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by Lori Albrough

Prisco was a very influential horse in my life. I bought him in the summer of 2000 when he was five years old, from my friend Julia (Julie) Will.

Julie imported Prisco from Holland in 1996 as a yearling, when she was over there looking at horses with Vivian Creigh. Julie had been looking for a junior stallion prospect who had the ability to sire grey offspring. At the time her senior stallion was the grey, MVF Erlend. Julie was hoping to find a high quality colt that they could breed Erlend daughters to.

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by Lori Albrough

How do you build a strong foundation for your position so that you aren’t moved one little bit if your horse spooks or stumbles or even TRIES to pull you out of the tack? Where do you start with strengthening your body so that you can be that unshakeable in the saddle while offering your horse a soft, steady, sympathetic connection with your hands, without gripping, pulling, or tightening up?

The answer lies in core strengthening! But it’s not just about getting six pack abs like Brad Pitt flaunted in Fight Club. For a rider, or any athlete in a functional sport, training the core involves working ALL the muscles around the torso. Weak lower back muscles are often paired with weak abs, so this back extension exercise is a great place to start your core conditioning.

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by Lori Albrough

Do you ever wonder if you are getting in your own way? You know, wonder if you’re actually making things harder than they need to be?

Could you unconsciously be pushing your own success away, by expecting things to be hard (so they are)? Or maybe by needing to be in control of every little detail every step of the way before you allow things to happen (so they never do)?

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by Lori Albrough

No matter what discipline you ride in or what level you ride at, your horse needs to go forward willingly from light leg aids. If you need to use strong leg aids to get your horse to go, or to keep him going, eventually you are going to be working harder than he is! When that happens, riding becomes more like work, and less like fun.

We call this phenomenon, when the horse does not respond immediately to a light driving aid, “behind the leg”. When your horse is behind the leg, you don’t have true influence over him, because he is deciding for himself whether or not he is going to respond, when, and how much.

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by Lori Albrough

The foundation of a horse’s training are rhythm and relaxation, sometimes expressed as rhythm and suppleness. These elements form the base upon which all the more advanced work is built. Similarly, for riders our foundation is suppleness, or flexibility.

For riding we are also going to need core strength, cardiovascular stamina, muscle tone and balance, but without that base of suppleness then tightness in our body will have us constantly working against ourselves. The tension or tightness will block the horse’s motion and have us essentially fighting against our own bodies in order to sit properly and use our aids correctly.

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