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Liberty Challenge 10

Liberty Challenges
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Lots of fun can be had doing Agility with your horse. I find it helps with communication spook busting, finding a smooth connection,  transitions and having fun, which is the most important thing.

This month I put just a few simple things together for a 9 obstacle course and did it at liberty then with long reins and finally ridden, you can start this online if your starting out and there are many ways to keep these 9 obstacles interesting, here are some ideas:

~ Online ~ at Liberty ~ Long Rein ~ Ridden bitless ~ Ridden with neck rein/cordeo ~ done in walk, trot or canter ~ done in obstacle order or in reverse order ~ juggle the order about ~ Choose to do completely different things with each obstacle ~

Here are some video’s from LC10.

 

Long Reining w/Solly

 

Ridden bitless

 

Training Tip Video’s: “Subtle Ridden Conversations”

Training Tip Video's
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The video below shows Solly and I having a very subtle conversation about body dynamics, energy, core strength, foot falls and flexion.

If you look closely you can see how all I do affects all Solly does. It’s a close, almost invisible dance of finding our inner most riding connection. Slowly, using this more, we will flow and dance more. We find our balance together and then we find our go and whoa buttons to make sure they’re working through my breathing. Soon we are finding our hips and shoulder connection and then my hands to his nose. Being able to talk to every part of his body allows me to find the softness within the strength of muscles in places I have in my thoughts. Being able to read his muscles too allows me to hear what he is saying back to me so that our dance gets more and more harmonious.

It takes a TON of focus from me so I try to be on good form for him because if I’m tired then I am pretty sure Solly knows and feels that too. We are learning the dance towards harmony and fluidity. 

  • Shelley – HorseSavvy

 

 

 

Training Tip Video’s: “Inner Core Energy – On/Off”

Training Tip Video's
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Working on the concept that our ‘inner energy’ can connect with our horse, then testing it can be interesting.
 
To be able to use our inner energy to create movement but to then be able to take that away and only have our ‘outer energy’ or movement working and not have movement…how is this possible?
 
For the most part, if the ‘inner and outer energy’ isn’t separated and the horse/human connection isn’t refined and trusting enough, movement of anything to a horse can mean ‘go’. This is because firstly our horses work on learned behaviours and a predator with energy usually means go AND we also haven’t learned to go inside ourselves and learn how to separate our inner intent/focus/energy from our body movements. This can take time but horses understand it very well once they trust that we, as predators, can do it.
 
Being able to switch our ‘inner’ core energy on/off is so integral to being connected to our horse, when on the ground and more importantly when riding.
 
No matter what our body is doing can we ‘switch’ our energy off to create a halt and then bring it back on to create movement?
 

Hope you find this video intersting….can you see how much focus Stormy has on me? he’s watching my ‘inner focus energy’ to see when it comes and goes even though my body is moving the whole time!!

  • Shelley – HorseSavvy