Training tips - have you ever tried to teach 'the feel' to someone ?

viola

viola

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Right, I wonder whether anybody could add something interesting
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I teach this lady and school her horse. The lady is in her (late) fifties, very very ambitious when it comes to her riding (mostly dressage but low key) and very demanding from herself. I reckon we made a big progress since I started teaching her as she has much better understanding of how to ride her horse. However, I think I am coming to the sad conclusion that she just can't 'feel' as much as she needs to to make further progress...I have been doing many exercises with her, both 'normal' and 'complementry' (including those from M.Wanless, B.Steiner etc) and although I can see she tries her heart out and really puts a lot of effort I know she just doesn't feel when she 'got it'. She also gets extremaly frustrated with herself if she cannot do something. I try to work with her negative feelings and encourage her to turn her energy into positive thinking but although some days are good there are many bad ones too when she seemed to forget what she has learned already
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I always believed that there are no bad riders only bad teachers so I just keep looking for answers!
 
You are right Weezy she does try too hard and she also wants too hard to ride her horse too well! I made her ride without reins for a month in the very beginning as she just seemed to think a horse is operated by the reins alone. Like I said I think she made a big progress but I am a bit stuck right now
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Is her horse trying for her or is it a bit of a g*t??
I only ask as I had a flatwork lesson today, and at the last one a month ago my mare was powering rond his school at med trot, totally soft and working, lovely canter, really sittign and taking her weight back etc. Today I was lucky to get working trot with an outline, her med trot was no existent, and her canter was rushed.
I am sure the instructor thought I hadn't listened to a word he had said, and I was pretty frustrated myself. Perhaps your client has a horse who takes the p***, and it is so much easier to look good on a horse who is working well itself.
My excuse is that I had a gridwork session last night, so I imagine that she was tired today. My mistake!!!
FIona
 
Do you teach her mounted all the time, or do you ever have her on the ground, working her own horse?
Quite a few of the PC mums when they buy horses for themselves will do perfectly fine, but often they lack the elusive 'feel'. We struggled with thinking of ways to unblock if you will, and found that if we perhaps started with them on the ground, perhaps long reining or pessoaing (godly instrument!) they became alittle more intuitive when riding. They were perfectly capable of working their own horse, but they seemed to become more enlightened when they got on, of movement, the capability of them and their horse etc
Im sorry if Ive missed the point of your post, but the title looked like a familiar thought. There are some who, despite trying their utmost just do not click with this concept of feel!
 
The feel, i reckon is really hard to teach someone, you have to be so in tune with your horse at that precise moment. Perhaps it is something that can be learnt, but i think you'll have to tell her when she has got her horse going round and using itself and then she will know how it feels? and as soon as he stops engaging asking her can she tell the difference. My teacher was always asking me could i tell the difference between engaged and not and eventually i got it and now it seems so obvious!!
 
Ah, Now you sound like you could have been talking about me if this were 3 years a go.

I got so hell bent on being perfect I totally missed the point. I became a very rigid rider. I lost the ability to feel. My horse was getting fed up of me being uptight. One thing led to another and I just got totally fed up.

I have spent quite a lot of time with Lucinda McAlpine. She has turned me around as a rider through working with me and my horse and kind of being our "Marriage guidance councilor".

I am trying to think what she does with me, but she is very clever how she does it and she will purposely get me yapping about something completely off topic and then she will spot a slot where she can give me a pointer and she will say something "What happens if you do this"? or "Just blob about, chill" or "How did that feel"? or "Try this for a laugh"?

Basically she doesn't "Teach" me, she just chats and works with me on a mental level. I finish a lesson having achieved loads and am soooo chilled. My horse is a happy bunny too.

Lucinda works with a lot of people who have lost the plot with their riding and/or are very nervous etc. This seems to be her forte. She is very good at the psychological stuff.

This mentality has moved throughout my ridden work and now I can happily have a lesson with my usual wonderful instructor and I am really getting the benefits. Again my usual instructor is more of a "suggesting" teacher than a "telling" teacher. That is why I get on well with her.

I have to be very careful to not to take myself or my horse too seriously. When I start getting "Over focused" I become an awful rider.

This may not apply to you at all. I just thought my story may be of interest to you. Feel free to pm if you want to know more detail. I just don't want to ramble and bore you all.
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I don't think you can teach feel, but you can encourage someone to find it for themselves.
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Thank you everybody! Bonzabean - you sound like 'my lady'
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I am sorry I didn't ask the actual Question but I think I got what I wanted - some of your stories! To answer some questions above: I write training/session plans for this lady and they include both on the ground and ridden work. I am not a fan of pessoa as don't think it should be used by inexperienced people but we use chambon (the horse has a tendency to shorten his neck a lot and chambon sessions suits him very well). I encouraged her to observe his movements, how the muscles on his back move, how the muscles around his withers move, to observe the mechanics of trot and canter, what happens when etc. She loves it and can tell me a lot more details than when we first started.
yes, the horse doesn't help. It is a very sensitive Connemara X who although a sweet natured is not at all forgiving
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If she starts a session tense he will get tense immediately and the viscious circle begins. Having said that he is also an amazing teacher as when she does things correctly he responds with such a trust and takes the contact nicely.
When we have lessons I direct the exercises and tell her when she is right and when wrong and then they do well. The problem is when she rides on her own (she reports to me in a form of reflections, tells me what was good what could be better etc).
I have been told psychology is my forte
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She alone claims I am the only person who stayed around to teach her!
I do play 'feel' games and do a lot of things (together with quite bizarre imagination games, lungeing her with her eyes closed and telling me what is happening underneath her etc) to get her to enjoy the whole experience.
I also give her bareback sessions so she gets to feel the body of the horse more naturally.
On our first session, when I took her reins away and asked her to turn the horse she just looked at me bewildered. Some time later I took the bridle off the horse and rode various figures in the arena just using my seat and then asked her to do the same. She still couldn't believe it's possible! A month later she knew enough of how to use the muscles within her body to ride the horse without the reins too - it's very hard to convince someone that the weight of the rider and the muscle tone matters! It was quite a learning curve for me too.
I think you are right to say that less serious approach might be much better. This might be my fault a bit too as although I wouldn't say I was very serious while teaching but I am used to teaching competition focused riders (and maybe a bit more talented?) and this lady is quite a challenge
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The worst bits are when I ask 'Do you know where your right lower leg is now?' and she says (straight away without even thinking) - 'I don't know'. Then I count to 10 in my head
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and ask her again and she listens to her body and is more aware of i t, answers perfectly and we would have a lovely canter transition with the horse round and and calm (he can get over excited easily). I do however wonder whether I should encourage her to concentrate less?? The problem is she then becomes quite agitated and jerky with her movements...

Thank you all once again! I am going to PM some of you now, if that's ok
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Actually, I think there ARE bad riders out there, I see them all the time! They're the ones who think they know it all and blame the horse.
However, I'm sure your lady is not one of them and she is indeed trying too hard. She seems to have a bit of a defeatist attitude too; feel with come in time. Took me ages and ages to get it and I'm not sure I've got it 100%!
I think you're doing exactly the right things to help her though
 
I hope you are not giving up though! To be honest I think if more people were taught better from the beginning there wouldn't be so many dissapointed riders. I saw pictures of you in the Picture galery - you are doing well
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I am not a great rider myself and there are loads of things I would like to do better but I never remember struggling too much with feeling my horses. They seem to respond to me (most of the time
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) and I guess I am a sympathetic rider
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I love teaching but I encounter people who have problems I never had to deal with myself and I am looking for tools to get them out of this 'non feel' area!
 
This sounds exactly how I was a year ago. I knew it was my riding that was blocking my mare and we would go no further until someone could help me. I wanted it so very badly, it became the be all and end all of my existence! You will see in my avatar how stiff I was which resulted in tension and hollowness. My trainer at that time always insisted I used gadgets. Now I am gadget free and have stopped taking myself so seriously. Its all coming together and, with help, we can continue to move forward.
 
Glad to hear this
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I think her biggest disadvantage is her impatiance and frustration which she wastes a lot of time on. I don't approve of any gadgets in hands of inexperienced riders so she is only 'allowed' to use chambon for lunging
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And the latter only after I watched her doing everything (fitting it on etc) and seeing how she lunges the horse in it.
It's good to hear what you are saying - it reinforces my believe that almost anybody can do it when on the right track!
 
Try lessons on the lunge with her eyes closed. This helped me to switch off my overthinking brain (yep trying too hard) and let the feeling come through.

I know what I mean even if i havent described it very well!!
 
We do that (I wrote a little about what I do with her in one of my posts above - the long one
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) but thank you
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It works quite well when I lunge her but she just doesn't seem to be able to transfer it when riding on her own. Looks like she just must be patient and stop punish herself with negative feelings (she thinks everybody is doing well but not her!).
 
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