Earlier Posts in Category 'Riding Tips'

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

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

A while back I was in this seven week program on creativity, and on day one they started off by presenting us with a challenge. It was a contract to sign, and the contract said that for the forty-nine day duration, we would commit to totally giving up the following:

Complaining, Criticizing, Gossiping, and Whining.

Whoa! Stop and think about that for a moment.

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by Lori Albrough

I remember way back in January 2005, Dressage Today magazine had an article called “Closing the Gap” with the tagline: When will “North-American bred” have the same cachet as “Imported from Europe”. The article was geared towards sporthorse breeding and training, and quoted Scott Hassler who said:

“Our good horses are not given the chance to compete against Europe’s good horses because of the training. It’s that simple. We need to get our young horses ridden better.”  In particular, Hassler says, “Our young horses are not ridden in a way that is safe, competent, or marketable. We see them in a very strung out frame. They don’t canter for the first time for six or eight months.”

That last sentence is the one I want to focus on. I believe that once your horse starts his formal under-saddle training, whether that is at three years or four years old, he needs to be taught to canter from the beginning.

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by Lori Albrough

Sometimes it’s hard not to bring your day (or your week!) with you into your interaction with your horse. You get to the barn and the irate customers, looming projects, unreasonable co-workers, and that cop who pulled you over for speeding on the way, well, they all show up with you! And maybe as your horse comes face to face with this vortex of mixed feelings, he starts giving you even more challenges to cope with!

So, I want to share with you a four-step process I have learned, that you can use before going into a situation with your horse. By following this simple process of setting intention, or mini-intention as I call it, you will change from being in a reactive position to instead creating the situation that you would prefer to have.

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by Lori Albrough

I love to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of people who inspire me!

I’m guessing you’re probably a lot like me, and want to get better at riding and communicating with your horse, play a bigger game, and stretch out of your comfort zone. So, when I see someone who rides with correctness and sensitivity, and puts the best interest of the horse first, having big success on the world stage I think it lifts us all up!

Successes like these give us a model we can all learn from. That’s why I am so excited to share today’s podcast with you. In it, I interview Canadian dressage rider Tina Irwin.

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by Lori Albrough

One of the most important things to learn about working with horses is what I call the ABC’s of training: Always Be Clear.

I think most of us feel that we are being kind when we cut our horse some slack when he doesn’t respond in the way we want. We may make some excuses for him, like, “I must not be asking him the right way,” or, “Sometimes it takes a while before he can concentrate”.

In reality, however, you are far more kind to your horse if you are always black and white. When you are black and white, your horse clearly knows when he is doing something right, and when he needs to keep trying.

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