#straightness training

[foxy-filly]

Tesoro and I have been working towards our first ST Touchstone, and it has already helped him with body awareness and balance. Check out his fancy new move, haunches in! 🤩

[theclassicalhorse]

Also regarding groundwork...

I want to add that one of my fave things about the straightness training program is that you learn how to utilize groundwork, work in hand, longing, and liberty to supplement your riding so the actual riding is really only 1/5 of the whole training process! 

[theclassicalhorse]

Another visual explanation of lateral movements

(X)

[theclassicalhorse]

Heres a little video on my trainer and my barn :)

[a-framed-dog]

Straightness Training for Horses

Anyone have any thoughts, tips, comments? I’m thinking of doing this for both Albie and Brandon, as they are both lacking in everything! However, I can’t find any info on how to actually teach them the moves... Any clues?

@mango-pup, @themotherfuckingclickerkid?

[foxy-filly]

Dressage lesson with my Squish today. Doesn't he look pleased with himself? It was an all-walking lesson (YES! Important and valuable work happens at the walk!) to fine tune his bending, cues, laterals, etc.

Basically, he has a tendency to really overbend. We focused a lot on me using my inside-leg to outside-rein connection, and not relying on the inside rein so much to half halt, in order to counteract this. Tricky, since his first reaction to an outside rein is to overbend that way, triggering my reflexive inside-rein habit, and will you see how that spiral downward.

But with enough leg, hip twist, lots of subtle cues and good timing, we managed to get our cues synced up and land in some beautiful shoulder-in, haunches in, and finished with leg yields. Maybe not a cardio burner, but I think he broke a solid brain-sweat and my thighs are killing me!

[sense-equus]

@micandragon thank goodness this particular trainer I saw today didn't talk at all about dominance theory despite the Parelli background. Just told one horse to "get out of her space" by asking it to back up quietly once, and by saying she "wasn't going to join the game" when that same horse danced around because it was very nervous and tense (so instead just stood still and quietly and waited for the horse to calm). So that was really okay.

[sense-equus]

The Straightness Training clinic this morning was great. We did an hour of theory, basically an introduction to it all. And then I saw 3 horses have a lesson, all hadn't done ST before but all had different issues and got to different points which was very interesting. I think I'll put a couple of pics of each horse up and give a run down of what they did etc. Just don't want them to get reblogged and I'll crop the people out. But it was so interesting and I can see how easy it would be to train it with +R, which many people do! I could see the background of this particular instructor coming out though.. She used to be big into Parelli, and kept talking about the horses thinking and processing when they chewed or licked.. But really it was all good and so very gentle and quiet and purposeful, lots of patience and repetition until the horses got it. And I really think they did find comfort in the movements they were encouraged to do- not just avoiding the pressure of not being there, but finding that it felt good and freed their bodies. It certainly looked that way anyhow... The changes in the horses was really great. I'll right up some of my notes and things as well when I get a chance! I really enjoyed it and look forward to tomorrow :)