Offical Riding Instructor!!!
well the last week has been quite busy for me as i was going full time to a clinic to become a certified riding instructor. The information below is what the program is about and what it means. it is a fantastic program and i'm excited to begin teaching with the set of skills and exercises that the program promotes. i'm really excited to be done and ready to go on our trip! we leave wednesday! :) more pics will follow....
Secure Seat© is a means to a deep, balanced seat on a horse that results in a rider who is less likely to fall. It has been used by the American Association for Horsemanship Safety for about ten years.
"It all started with a champion bull rider friend named Pat who came out to go horseback riding with me one day. He got on a horse, and I was stunned by the grace of his position, considering he rode bulls more often than he rode horses. He reminded me of the best riders I had ever known. I knew that I wanted my seat to be as good as his, but I also knew I didn't want to learn the way he did. Bull riding was not on my agenda."
"I had read that riding and sitting are two separate skills, but it had never sunk in before. Later, as I watched rider after rider, the light began to dawn: really good riders have a seat that is part of the horse - they are not just perched prettily on the horse."
"Now, with that vision of a good seat, I wanted to know how to do it and how to teach it. I eliminated many methods, most of which are found in the language of the traditional riding instructor, that did not work. Attempting to sit so I could look a certain way didn't work - it prevented rather than gained harmony with the horse's movements. If sitting a certain way made it impossible to get done on the horse what I needed to do, then I had to say that the seat didn't work. The seat mst have a positive effect on the horse and invite the horse to do what the rider wishes. I seldom see this in modern teaching."
The riding goal is a balanced seat, one in which the hands and legs are free to communicate with the horse. The sitting goal is to have a position that keeps the rider secure and in balance while he communicates his desires to the horse in a way that the horse can understand.
Why Riders Need Secure Seat©: The Nature of the Horse
To often we overlook the necessity to understand our partner, the horse, in our efforts to learn to ride him. We forget that our success often is directly related to how well we uderstand him. More accurately we could say that our failures and disappointments are directly related to how little we understand the horse. We constantly make assumptions about our horses and attribute to them characteristics and abilities they do not have. Each horse is an individual but there are certain characteristics that link them all forever together, and, at the same time, keep them apart. The explanation is fairly simple.
Most of us have at least some minimal understanding of genetics from high school biology. We understand that the first horse, Eohippus, was a little creature about the size of a medium-sized dog. He had toes, not hooves, and he lived on the plains of North America. This is where the inherent psychology of today's horse was formed.
Those little ancestors of today's horse were not high on the food chain. They were vegetarians, which means they were dinner for the meat-eaters. They were herd animals; it is difficult to find a grazing animal that is not a herd animal. All herd animals know that, if they stay together, maybe the meat eater or predator will eat someone else. The animal that did not have a strong aversion to being alone did not leave any descendants because he was eaten. Those with an aversion to being alone left descendants averse to the same thing. We do not understand whether information passed from generation to generation through genetics or environmental factors. "How" doesn't matter now because the aversion to being alone is ingrained in the horse's psyche.
What about the individual that was repelled by the scent of a predator or meat-eater? Our vegetarian friends will tell us that they can smell a meat-eater as easily as most of us can identify a smoker. The same is true for the early horses that would run right into a dark cave (trailer?) to seek shelter without adequately investigating it. The horse that did not worry about footing, boggy ground or getting his foot caught probably became someone's dinner.
We can trace most of the horse's idiosyncracies back to some survival skill. The horses that lacked the survival skills left no descendants.
We must look at these characteristics - the horse's survival instincts - the same we view the information on the hard drives of our computers. Our training is the software. The software will never completely override the hard drive. When the software fails, we are back to the instints. Riders and handlers who do not understand that will always have trouble and may even get hurt.
We cannot train the instincts completly out of a horse. Some horses are more in touch with their instints than others. We also cannot teach one horse to be another horse. And we certainly cannot teach a horse not to be a horse. With all that in mind, we should get along fine. All we need to know is what the horse's rulebook says, and we won't do stupid things in horse terms and we won't expect the unreasonable or the impossible.
Horses will shy. Horses will buck. Horses will shake. Horses will stumble. Secure Seat© riders maintain their position by balance alone and have their hands and legs available to communicate with the horse through a shy, a buck, a shake or a stumble.
Whether you are a beginning rider or a rider who wishes to improive your seat, Secure Seat© will help you sit closer, jump higher and go faster - while staying in balance with your horse.
Secure Seat© is a means to a deep, balanced seat on a horse that results in a rider who is less likely to fall. It has been used by the American Association for Horsemanship Safety for about ten years.
"It all started with a champion bull rider friend named Pat who came out to go horseback riding with me one day. He got on a horse, and I was stunned by the grace of his position, considering he rode bulls more often than he rode horses. He reminded me of the best riders I had ever known. I knew that I wanted my seat to be as good as his, but I also knew I didn't want to learn the way he did. Bull riding was not on my agenda."
"I had read that riding and sitting are two separate skills, but it had never sunk in before. Later, as I watched rider after rider, the light began to dawn: really good riders have a seat that is part of the horse - they are not just perched prettily on the horse."
"Now, with that vision of a good seat, I wanted to know how to do it and how to teach it. I eliminated many methods, most of which are found in the language of the traditional riding instructor, that did not work. Attempting to sit so I could look a certain way didn't work - it prevented rather than gained harmony with the horse's movements. If sitting a certain way made it impossible to get done on the horse what I needed to do, then I had to say that the seat didn't work. The seat mst have a positive effect on the horse and invite the horse to do what the rider wishes. I seldom see this in modern teaching."
The riding goal is a balanced seat, one in which the hands and legs are free to communicate with the horse. The sitting goal is to have a position that keeps the rider secure and in balance while he communicates his desires to the horse in a way that the horse can understand.
Why Riders Need Secure Seat©: The Nature of the Horse
To often we overlook the necessity to understand our partner, the horse, in our efforts to learn to ride him. We forget that our success often is directly related to how well we uderstand him. More accurately we could say that our failures and disappointments are directly related to how little we understand the horse. We constantly make assumptions about our horses and attribute to them characteristics and abilities they do not have. Each horse is an individual but there are certain characteristics that link them all forever together, and, at the same time, keep them apart. The explanation is fairly simple.
Most of us have at least some minimal understanding of genetics from high school biology. We understand that the first horse, Eohippus, was a little creature about the size of a medium-sized dog. He had toes, not hooves, and he lived on the plains of North America. This is where the inherent psychology of today's horse was formed.
Those little ancestors of today's horse were not high on the food chain. They were vegetarians, which means they were dinner for the meat-eaters. They were herd animals; it is difficult to find a grazing animal that is not a herd animal. All herd animals know that, if they stay together, maybe the meat eater or predator will eat someone else. The animal that did not have a strong aversion to being alone did not leave any descendants because he was eaten. Those with an aversion to being alone left descendants averse to the same thing. We do not understand whether information passed from generation to generation through genetics or environmental factors. "How" doesn't matter now because the aversion to being alone is ingrained in the horse's psyche.
What about the individual that was repelled by the scent of a predator or meat-eater? Our vegetarian friends will tell us that they can smell a meat-eater as easily as most of us can identify a smoker. The same is true for the early horses that would run right into a dark cave (trailer?) to seek shelter without adequately investigating it. The horse that did not worry about footing, boggy ground or getting his foot caught probably became someone's dinner.
We can trace most of the horse's idiosyncracies back to some survival skill. The horses that lacked the survival skills left no descendants.
We must look at these characteristics - the horse's survival instincts - the same we view the information on the hard drives of our computers. Our training is the software. The software will never completely override the hard drive. When the software fails, we are back to the instints. Riders and handlers who do not understand that will always have trouble and may even get hurt.
We cannot train the instincts completly out of a horse. Some horses are more in touch with their instints than others. We also cannot teach one horse to be another horse. And we certainly cannot teach a horse not to be a horse. With all that in mind, we should get along fine. All we need to know is what the horse's rulebook says, and we won't do stupid things in horse terms and we won't expect the unreasonable or the impossible.
Horses will shy. Horses will buck. Horses will shake. Horses will stumble. Secure Seat© riders maintain their position by balance alone and have their hands and legs available to communicate with the horse through a shy, a buck, a shake or a stumble.
Whether you are a beginning rider or a rider who wishes to improive your seat, Secure Seat© will help you sit closer, jump higher and go faster - while staying in balance with your horse.
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