Summer is the best time to get intense horsemanship instruction into kid’s, and since I love getting new riders started I was excited when a reader asked for tips for a one week, 1-2 hour a day class for beginners. I’ve included lots of links to other helpful blog posts at The Riding Instructor, including this […]
Respect her time One of the complaints I hear most frequently is that students don’t respect the instructor’s time. Let your instructor know you value that she/he has set a specific time period aside for your lesson. Do this by being on time. Be there. Sometimes, students cancel lessons at the last minute and then […]
Have you ever wondered why parents support kids so strongly in sports like volleyball, yet are willing to cancel their weekly riding lesson? Volleyball at Lower Grades Volleyball, like other team sports such as soccer, is introduced on the community level, often Parks and Rec, at a young age. Sometimes the kids don’t even know […]
A reader had an interesting situation to discuss this week involving a client with two horses in training and a plan for their daughter to show. Normally this would be ideal, except the parents enroll the daughter in after school activities that cause them to cancel lessons—a lot. The horses are in regular training and […]
A reader who has been a riding instructor for 10 years asked for my opinion on how to handle a difficult student. She agreed to wait for an answer while I put a post together to share. The student is a thirteen-year-old girl whom the reader has been teaching every other week for a year. […]
Dealing with people in any field can require compromise. When we set our standards as instructors or barn owners we should have a mental list of things on which we are absolutely steadfast, and others with which we are willing to compromise. Having a list allows you to be flexible while at the same time […]
We all have “go to” sources where we read about horses. It could be a book, website or periodical and each type of riding has it’s own selection. Research I love research, and when I write lesson plans or blog posts about theory or riding basics, I pull out multiple books and read the instructions […]
Good riding is as much the result of conditioning the rider’s thought processes and reflexes, as it is conditioning the body and learning skills. What a rider does or does not put into their mind will have direct bearing on what their body produces while riding. Automatic Reflexes Automatic Reflexes are the moves and reactions […]
A solid and correct base of support is one of the best gifts we can give to students because it’s the foundation of good riding and balance. Definition A quick Internet search for “base of support” produced the following from Physiopedia : The base of support (BOS) refers to the area beneath an object or […]
Writing about two-point was supposed to be easy. After all, two-point is the mainstay position for the hunter-jumper world. Definition I planned to start out with the definition of two-point used by the leading authorities. That seemed simple enough. Start with the definition and build from there. Right? Wrong. I looked through more than a […]