When doing lateral work, every time your horse steps nicely under his body with his inside hind leg, you should feel him stepping up into the connection of your outside rein. Be sure to make good use of that opportunity to soften your inside rein. Every single time.
"Most of the riders ride with their upper body very stiff – especially their shoulders. If the stomach is in balance and in the position it should be, the shoulders are allowed to relax, and should relax. You need to be loose in your shoulders." ~ Ernst Hoyos
"I hope a lot of the American riders start to realize that cross country is not all about counting strides and keeping the stride pattern that you’ve counted; it’s about getting in there and riding what you feel and making sure the horse sees the fence." ~ Lucinda Green
"The best stretch can be achieved on a circle when you feel the horse is balanced laterally and longitudinally. Slowly allow the reins to lengthen and see if your horse will lengthen his neck forward and downward. This will feel like a clear release and you will be able to see how the neck fills out and gets wide when you look down." ~ Felicitas von Neumann-Cosel
"Since the criteria of a correct seat are the same as the criteria of good posture in general, being constantly attentive to one’s bearing when standing or walking is excellent training. A correct vertical posture of the head and the trunk on horseback is not a special posture applicable only to riding." ~ Kurt Albrecht
Facebook fan Mo Jackson on teaching riders to maintain a consistent rein connection ~ "I try to teach this with pretending rider and horse are on the telephone. You are talking, oops no connection, talking again, oops no connection. This causes chaos in the horse's mind as he is trying to communicate, to be part of the conversation."
Always think of keeping your shoulders aligned with your horse's shoulders (or where you want them to be), and your hips aligned with your horse's hips (or where you want them to be.)
As you complete a halt, lighten your seat slightly to invite your horse to keep his back up underneath you. This will allow you to move off after the halt without the horse hollowing and dropping his back.
"To become a rider it is not enough to be able to sit elegantly on a horse. Even a good seat and balance does not make you a ‘rider’. To be able to ride you must be able to influence your horse and to extract the best performance from him." ~ Christian Thiess
"No complicated riding before the horses are going truly forward. In dressage, the difficulties are often created by a lack of good basic work (which is the foundation of the house.)" ~ Nuno Oliveira
Be extra careful when conditioning both young horses and older horses. Young horses have tendon/ligaments/bones that have not yet been strengthened. And the older horse’s ligaments and tendons tend to become less elastic and resilient over time.
The muscles in the horse's loin area (behind the saddle) are loosened and suppled with each good lateral step behind. Just one reason of many why lateral steps are a very important part of training horses.
"Suppleness means that the muscles contract and de-contract, and this has to go through the entire horse, it cannot be blocked in the middle of the back, and it also has to go through the rider." ~ Susanne Miesner
Using a volte (a 6, 8, or 10 meter circle) before a lateral exercise like a shoulder in, haunches in, or half pass allows you to establish the bend for those movements even before you begin them.
"A steady hand with a soft, following elbow invites a steady, soft contact from the horse. Working the bit or being busy with your fingers invites a false frame." ~ Alexis Soutter
Make sure your inside leg is quietly on the horse before you begin a turn. Even though your outside aids actually turn your horse, your inside leg is the post that he needs to bend around. Many riders are caught out with their inside leg completely off, and only put it on when they find their horse is falling in through the turn. By that time, it is much harder to correct.
"Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all."
Always use both reins together to steer, especially when jumping. Using one rein only turns the horse's nose - but using both reins turn the horse at the shoulders, which means his body will more accurately follow your chosen line.
"Through the energy of impulsion mobilized from within himself, the horse is now prepared, in his physique and emotional attentiveness, to respond instantly to the slightest indications to change his tempo, posture, direction or gait." ~ Waldemar Seunig
Think of your leg, seat, and rein aids as ways to communicate with your horse. You don't physically push or pull him anywhere, you give him subtle signals. And if he doesn't initially respond to your subtle signals, you need to teach him to - EVERY horse can learn to respond to light cues, if taught properly.
When things are not going especially well in training, you must go out of your way to find things to reward. This will help to keep your horse's level of confidence in you as high as possible, and will motivate him to keep trying for you.
"Nothing is as impressive or as valuable for the training as being able to control the impulsion and the desire to go forward to such an extent that the rider is able to bring his horse to a standstill from an extended trot or canter without the slightest effort or disturbance. Conversely, departing immediately from the halt into an extended gait is an equal proof of the absolute desire to go forward." ~ Alois Podhajsky
"A horse with good foot work will rarely fall. A horse who is not given the chance to practice that footwork because he is always brought to the right spot will come big time unstuck when the s*** hits the fan and the fallible human on top gets it wrong." ~ Lucinda Green
From Facebook fan Gabby Ballin ~ "Just because something went bad once doesn't mean it'll go bad again. If you anticipate a problem, your horse will too."
"What we want to start creating in these horses is an engine that is always running, where we don’t shift gears until we want to. It’s like revving your RPMs and waiting a moment before you shift up into that higher gear. But if you don’t have that energy in the lower gear, you might stall when you go to send them forward." ~ Laura Graves
"No complicated riding before the horses are going truly forward. In dressage, the difficulties are often created by a lack of good basic work (which is the foundation of the house)." ~ Nuno Oliveira
“When you don't have a confident position, it’s saying to people you don’t believe in yourself. So sit up, shoulders back, chin high, and ride your best test.” ~ Robert Dover
"Working over a single pole on the ground, notice if the young horse prefers to chip in a short stride or stretch for a long stride. Then remember this is the default that they will return to when things go wrong." ~ Eric Smiley
You can't straighten a crooked stick just by bending it until it's straight. You have to bend it in the opposite direction to truly straighten it. The same is true with horses. Moments of exaggerating the bend in the direction your horse doesn't like to bend will cause him to become straighter.
