I'm a big fan of sparring games and other exercises that help bring a skill from drilling into a more fluid and combative environment. The Five Things Exercise is a sparring game that allows you to focus on five different techniques or ideas with just this goal. Exercise Structure Set a timer for a period…
Horsemanship Level 4: Conditioning pt II At the end of April we covered work versus exercise in our Level 4 conditioning topic: 7. Work vs. exercise. Warm-up and cooling out, reasons why. Cooling out was covered in this Level 3 post, so this week we'll look at what constitutes an effective warm up. Just like…
Riding Level 3: Riding without Stirrups At all levels of riding we ask you to drop your stirrups periodically. There are two main reasons for this: You never know when you might lose your stirrups when riding. It's good to be able to keep your seat without them, and regain them on the fly. Riding…