Practicing riding actually screws you up.

It’s not practice that makes a really good rider – you can PRACTICE forever – it’s BEing a really good rider that makes us a good rider.

Have you ever had a really big derrr moment?  I had a lovely lady this week (thanks Jane!) ask me for the list of lessons on the new Fast Track program.  As I was pulling the heart of the program together to do that syllabus, I saw the pattern in the lessons and had a monumental derrr… moment. 

People think that learning and being really good at something takes practice – they think that being a really good rider takes practice. But practicing riding actually screws you up.

Practicing actually screws you up.

“What the heck?” I hear some of you say.

I saw it in those Fast Track lessons that we systematically lead people to experience BEing really good riders who are BEing really good with horses.  And then with a Blinding Flash of the Bleeding Obvious I saw how normal riding – normal practicing – actually does the opposite and screws you up.

And here’s why.

When you’re practicing your riding with any tension, you’re just reinforcing that tension. You’re cementing it into muscle memory.

It’s the same for our horse – when you practice your riding with a horse who has any tension, then you’re just reinforcing your horse’s tension too.

And tension = struggle.

And struggle means either taking “forever” to get there or not getting what you’re looking for at all.

Can you see it?  Can you see what I mean? We can’t PRACTICE tension away – it’s impossible to completely eliminate it no matter how good we get and how long we practice for when tension is hte foundation.

And that’s why what we do here is so incredibly special, because we teach you how to eliminate the tension from your horses from the very beginning and as you’re doing that, you learn how to eliminate the tension in yourself too.

What we have to do to BE a good rider is to get rid of that tension.

All this struggling with all this tension that I see everywhere in the horse world, is because either they or their horse or both, don’t feel safe.

It’s THAT freaking simple.

Feeling unsafe = tension.

It’s effortless to get rid of that tension here, when you ditch the practice and instead, BE a really good rider.

Here’s that syllabus of lessons that I was working on when I had that blinding flash of the bleeding obvious.  I bet you’ll see the pattern of BEing a brilliant rider who’s BEing brilliant with horses in those lessons too.  Click on the picture will take you there.

Fast Track – the syllabus

Today’s photo: Is Julia – on her way back from playing in the brook.   As a child she’d been so confident, galloping bareback all over the place and she’d lost it.  Getting her bareback happiness back had been her dream and she found that on Fast Track.