There are very few riders that could pull that off and if you’re one of them, I take my hat off to your skill.
There are very few riders, only the teeniest tiny proportion of riders who are capable of such a brilliant automatic response and a whole heap of them are in our community and some of them were beginner riders. That’s not bragging – I’m serious. Hop on the internet and slowmo every video where a horse is doing a big play up – even on the world stage with riders who train every day – and watch them grabbing with the reins or legs and making it worse. This “hands flowing forwards with the horse and deeeeep seat automatic response” for even beginner riders was possible because of a lesson that is now the second last lesson in our Fast Track program.
That lesson is where you get to re-program your own “oh shit” reactions – where you re-program your own brain’s neural pathways and muscle memory, so that your new reactions get you out of trouble instead of into it – exactly as Steve had done prior to that day when 18 hand Oliver launched into the air with such delight.
I invite you to read that again, because it’s so extraordinary.
You won’t find this anywhere else in the world – the ability to re-program your instinctive reactions so they get you out of trouble instead of into it. It’s advanced sports psychology meets cutting edge physical therapy meets alternative therapy – and it’s just one of the reasons we can call the enjoyment of Fast Track fast.
Way back when we learned to ride, we established neural pathways in the brain and muscle memory that created reactions that are not useful to our horse – reactions that actually made us more vulnerable to accidents and falling off.
Grabbing with our legs or our hands when something goes wrong is an instinctive reaction that causes us problems. The tension of it takes our seat bones out of the position where we can flow with our horse, makes us vulnerable and makes a fall more likely. Grabbing with hands or legs also escalates our horse’s fear or distress response or in Oliver’s case would have taken that playful giant buck from his delight and Steve’s laughter, to something crappy instead.
What we want is our seat bones deeeep and magnetized to our horse’s back and all our joints sliding sweetly on auto pilot if ever the crap hits the fan.
How can you too get that ability to laugh and flow with your horse effortlessly when the crap hits the fan?
I take people off their horse for the early riding lessons, where you can focus completely on yourself without worrying about what your horse is doing. Even though Steve was already a very advanced rider who rode on the world stage, I took him off his horse too. You’ll read in the Fast Track info about how he was blown away by the progress he got in such a short period of time, even though he’d been sixty years learning and had learned from some of the best in the world in his 4 star eventing career.
In just weeks, he’d found the ease of his childhood.
We get that progress really fast, because when you don’t have to keep any part of your mind on your horse, it’s so much easier to understand and release tensions or fears or anxieties, fix those stuck spots, brain glitches and uneven’nesses – even releasing old traumas – re-program your brain and muscle memory and give you a brilliant riding seat really fast.
Then we take that new riding seat out to your horse with more innovation that is so delicious and enjoyable for you and your horse both, that you’ll wonder why riding wasn’t always taught like this.
Are you going to be ready with your beautiful flowing hands, deeeep seat and sliding joints the next time you need to get out of trouble?
This was an excerpt from the information about our Fast Track to Brilliant Riding program. Is it time for you to stop practicing to be a better rider and to start BEing a better rider? Read about all the other beautiful threads of this powerful yet gentle life changing program and then make sure that you too will be able to flow joyfully with your horse no matter what’s happening.
So what do you think? Can you get this kind of speed of improvement from an ordinary riding lesson? ARE ordinary riding lessons really obsolete? Come into the comments and tell me. <3
Today’s photo: After that big joyful play up of Oliver’s, Steve was still laughing as he dryly said to me “If he’d done THAT in the first few days, I wouldn’t have come back.”
And p.s. That gloriously sentient being that is Oliver had kept the lid on his physical expressions of joy until Steve WAS able to flow with him and enjoy it too. That was no coincidence…
