What should a rider train?
of physical training, it is above all important to stay flexible and stable at the same time, a mixture of balance training and flexibilty is esential. If you are a stiff person, you will need more flexible training, if you are a hypermobile type you will need more stability training as a golden rule. Riders often forget themselves and get a little too stiff.
Feldenkrais is a fantastic mild and effective training method for learning to move gently in flow, whether you are riding, playing tennis or jumping on a trampoline. Feldenkrais is for everyone, and is a kind of neurological training system, that you can find as online exercises and in local training groups.
Thinking in pictures …
mental training is easy and effective, find the techniques that work for you or a teacher that can help you if you are a competition rider. But most importantly, it’s really that you start thinking in pictures, because your body and the horse understands the pictures much better than the whirlpool of thoughts that often fly through the heads of riders. Images create calm and precision in exercises. And it makes the right and left hemispheres of the brain work together.
to learn to communicate with one’s inner …
is always good, but especially when dealing with animals that do not have a spoken language with words that we humans have developed. Intuition, gut feeling it is called.
Here is an exercise:
feel yourself and everything you contain. Then feel everything that is outside you, the chair you are sitting on, the garden outside, the sky and the universe. Then feel yourself again and let the universe outside merge with you. Also do this exercise while sitting on your horse.