Unlearning what you "know"...

[anguscat]

I've definitely had to unlearn the "make him do that" and "kick on" mentality

Very much the riding instructor approach when I was a kid - UK & Germany. I thought I'd got away from all that then the Appy came into my life with her muscle problems and I really had to take her corner from the "pressure / release" crowd. I feel ashamed that there were times when I didn't - but she'll forgive me for pony nuts.

Also rein contact. I was pretty balanced but working in Australia where they were used to being on the buckle at all paces really taught me the difference between thinking you had a secure seat and really having a secure seat. Fortunately I was never a yanky, yanky head down rider but I certainly wasn't the most tactful.

What sort of saddle were you riding in in Australia?

 

[Barton Bounty]

I learned from a very tough and brutal instructor who wouldnt even ask if you were ok at 12 when you had come off her 16.2 jumping 1m. ‘Get back on that was rubbish’ try not to fall off this time
She used to put a brush shaft behind your back , through your elbows to keep position, or baler twine all with no stirrups. How I never broke anything I will never know.
She was also very kind as I worked hard all weekend and she would send me out with s 2/3 hour hack round culzean at least once a weekend.
She treated the horses like workers in an ant factory. When I got my own, I vowed never ever to be like that, and I haven’t.

 

[ThreeFurs]

Started lessons aged around 6 or 7 with Margaret Clarke BHSI, an immigrant Pom in the Adelaide Hills, at whose riding school we kids did hours without stirrups, vaulting off pony and back on from both sides, 'round the world' at w/t/c, etc. She was 'old school'. We must've ended up with good seats. In the freezing winter months she seemed to constantly have a cauldron of boiling barley on the go. I can still smell it. Oh and we had webbed girths, heavy old NZ canvas rugs, no matchy matchy.

Now 15 years back 'in horses' after a long break, and having owned 3 wbs, with the eldest enjoying the retirement he deserves, I am having lessons on a loaned clydie x with a bio-mechanics focussed coach, and at nearly 60, I'm 'learning and unlearning' all the time. Examples? the power of groundwork! down to even how I sit, with coach having over time, 'deconstructed' my 'back on the seat pockets' dressage seat to one more neutral pelvis and far more balanced. When I first sat this way I told her I felt like a jumps jockey. She said, 'well, you don't look like one!'.

So the only way to stay in a lifelong pursuit, is to be open minded and to keep adapting. We do this in our careers, and so, with horses.

 

[Time for Tea]

This forum has been my main learning source for that. I can't think of any instruction I've paid for which has hugely challenged the way I keep and manage horses, and only small increments on how I ride. This forum, especially in the last few years, has turned my thinking on its head.
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I have also learnt a great deal from this forum which I have been reading for some long time, before joining you all