Horse Training Basics

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"An Exercise For When You Can't Ride," Issue 1, part 3 of our FREE monthly newsletter

From our Horse Ground Training Series:

"Take your left hand and hold the lead rope as if it's the left rein. Pull the halter slowly toward yourself.

"Concentrate. Feel how much pressure it takes to bring that rope toward you. You should feel on your pinky how many ounces it takes. Throw it back out and do it again. This time close your eyes and really concentrate. If you get this lesson, horse training gets a whole lot easier. Really focus on what it feels like. How many ounces is it taking to bring that halter back to you? Think of a specific number. How many pounds? How many ounces? One or two? 5 pounds or 5 ounces?

"How would you like your horse to be that soft? A pound or two doesn't seem so bad, does it? Actually, it's terrible. Having to put a pound or two of pressure on the rein to get it to "come back to you" is just terrible. Take the halter off the lead rope now and throw the rope back out, snap end first.

"Do the same thing, drag the snap back to you. How does that feel? It feels pretty light, right? You feel a big difference. But that's still terrible. Now take the lead rope and throw the opposite end out, the end without the snap. That feels really light. It feels like nothing. It's still terrible.

"The reason it's terrible is because…"

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Lyons Training 101 Issue Number:  Ten Teach Your Horse For Good written by Josh Lyons & Keith Hosman

Issue Ten, Part 1 of 2

An Easy Way To Look At Training
Redirecting Pressure

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Your horse is like a garden hose. Pressure, or energy, flows through your horse from one end to the other like water through a hose. To stop the water you wouldn't simply crimp the hose in half – and to stop your horse you wouldn't simply pull back on both reins. You won't stop the water and you won't stop the horse. You'll get leaks.

Until you teach your horse to deal with the pressure.

Crimp the hose and you get leaks, pull back on both reins and your horse "gets leaks." He'll leak that energy. Body parts will shoot out to the left, to the right, up or down. He'll jig to the right or left, bolt, shoot backward, buck or rear.

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The solution is this: Use training exercises to let a little pressure leak here and there, redirecting that energy to your advantage. For example, in our Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder exercise we begin by walking forward, then pick up a rein and ask one shoulder to stop while the rear end keeps moving. We cause one shoulder to stop, so we make a connection between the rein and stopping the shoulder – but we allow the energy to continue flowing by allowing (or causing) the hips to keep moving. By not bottling the horse up, we've helped keep him calm, yet achieved a training objective. We've shown him how to channel that energy into a turn, a stop or whatever. And for the horse that wasn't stopping, it's become a simple thing to "turn the water off."

For instance: Is your horse getting jiggy with ya? Does he just kind of dance around, looking for trouble? Look for ways to redirect this energy in your every day riding to calm him down. Want to teach a particular movement? Begin thinking of "re-channeling" the movement of your horse through a combination of body parts. Allowing pressure to escape "out your horse's shoulder" back and to the left creates a spin to the left. Allowing half his energy to go out his shoulder to the left and the other half out his hindquarters to the left creates a sidepass. It's easy when you break it down and stick with it.

End of Issue Ten, Part 1
 
 

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Read previous article: Back Easily With Hip Shoulder Shoulder

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