Language, Learning and Lightbulb Moments - part two
Aug 29, 2024
In my last blog, I wrote about the difficulty we can have in navigating the true meaning of language when we are learning to ride or improving as riders.
Traditional horse riding language
Many of the words and phrases that are used in arenas represent something that is not a simple task.
One of the reasons for this is because breaking down an unconscious skill into learnable chunks is hard work and very time-consuming, and there is always the risk that as you break down the skill, you could even lose it yourself and have to re-learn it! And who wants to risk that?
So, good riding, the ability to naturally make a horse go well, becomes a skill that is elusive to many, because their tone, balance, strength, confidence, focus, etc., is so different to that of their talented teachers, that there is little chance of them bridging the gap, unless the gap can be well described to them in a way that is easily learnable.
Traditional horse training methods
Now, when I planned this blog, the dressage world was in relative peace. However, in the last 24 hours, we have experienced the controversy of a top British Dressage rider being exposed in a video, beating a client’s horse with a lunge whip, to improve the elevation of its canter.
I found it horrifying, and processing all the fallout has been very difficult. Check out my Facebook page later this week for my reaction, in my Behind the Scenes series.
I’m not going to write any more about that event now, however, I think this blog now becomes very relevant, because if you are being told to do something that you don’t understand, or doesn’t feel right, or witnessing the same, I would encourage you to speak up and question it, before you regret it. I know that’s hard, so I’d like you to know that I’ve got your back, and if you need any support, please do get in touch.
I have never been afraid to speak up. I may have inherited that from my father who was an early whistleblower in the Police Service in the 70’s and 80’s, himself speaking up against what he saw as poor practice and discrimination.
Also, I would like to reassure you that there is a way to ride horses and be successful without harming them. Just stay tuned!
What does sitting up tall mean in riding language?
Anyway, back to the subject of this blog, and those arena cliches!
Let’s look at ‘sitting up tall’, and what it really is!
A rider is at her tallest when her front and back are equal lengths and she is well balanced over her pelvis, with her seat bones pointing down.
If her back is excessively hollow, her back line will be short and her front line will be elongated. If her back is too rounded, her back line will be elongated and her front line will be scrunched and short. The ideal posture incorporates a term called ‘neutral spine’, where there are only very gentle curves in the spine, and it is at its most resilient and strongest alignment.
What really matters, is that to ‘sit up tall’ you must know your start point, and whether your tendency would be towards being hollow-backed or round-backed as what you believe to be your normal posture.
A good way to discover this is to sit side on to a tall mirror and have a look at how you naturally sit.
Only then, can you know how to respond to the command of sitting up, if you know what your start point is and where you need to get to, to find neutral spine. In future blogs, we will look at this.
For me, it means organising my pelvis so that my seat bones are pointing down, filling out the hollow in my lower back as if I had been punched in the guts at my belly button, engaging my core muscles to stabilise me, dropping my shoulder girdle down to connect with my ribcage, closing the back of my armpits, filling out my ‘lats’, and breathing!!!! Then I look my tallest, and my horse likes it too! It even makes me look ‘talented’, when I get it all together! This is my own personal recipe, tailored to my postural startpoint.
This is not the end though, because even if we can learn a new skill in appropriate bite-size chunks, tailored to our needs, explained in our own language, there is still a big challenge of overcoming the ‘weirdness’ in our bodies of how the new position feels, but that is another blog!
Learn about breathing for you and your horse with my free download, Five Powerful Breathing Exercises to Connect You and Your Horse. Get your free download here!
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Language, Learning and Lightbulb Moments - part one