Equest Connect Two-Day Clinic - Levels 1 and 2. Rider and Horse Aware

Be prepared to be blown away! This clinic is amazing and you will leave with a new appreciation of just what is possible for you to achieve as a rider much easier than you ever thought!

On the Saturday afternoon you will complete the first part of the Equest Connect Program – Rider Aware and then on the Sunday morning move on to the second part – Horse Aware.

The first step to moving at one with a horse is to be able to follow the horse’s movement without altering or interfering with its natural way of going. We need to be quiet and still without being fixed or rigid in our position. Riders with this body and mind control will be better able to move just one part of their body in a particular way as an aid for their horse to alter its body in a particular way.

The Rider Aware clinic will enable riders to identify stiffness, gripping and unnecessary muscular tension, and help correct weaknesses and asymmetry. Through this, riders will develop the ability to absorb the forces of their horses’ movement, so they can start to move in complete harmony with their horse. 

The Rider Aware clinic begins with unmounted standing and sitting exercises and concludes with ridden sessions. It includes: 

– Neuro exercises to demonstrate the strength of mind-body connection and how we can use it to our advantage

– Techniques to explore and understand proprioception and its fundamental role in opening new neural pathways for achieving rapid change

– Exercises for developing body awareness, flexibility, and stability, particularly through the pelvis

– Ridden exercises using Franklin Balls

​and powerful imagery techniques. 

The Horse Aware clinic is super fun and uses many different teaching methods to draw on all of the rider’s senses giving them a solid understanding of horse biomechanics, not just from a theoretical point of view but from a ridden perspective. This allows riders to know what they should be feeling if their horse is moving correctly throughout its body and to identify when and where their horse may be blocking its movement. This requires more than just a basic knowledge of the footfalls of each gait, although this is an important starting point. Riders should also know how, and which parts of the horse’s body is responsible for what they feel, while at the same time begin to appreciate how parts of their own bodies can hinder or positively influence/lead these movements. This paves the way to the ultimate goal of riding with seemingly invisible aids and changing from riding with very coarse, for want of a better word, peripheral aids to more subtle, central/body/weight/ pelvic/core aids.

The Horse Aware clinic begins with theory, before moving onto in-hand demonstrations and lastly ridden sessions. It includes: 

– A lecture and fun exercises designed to help riders really understand horse movement mechanics 

– An in-hand demonstration so riders can see

a) how much movement there is in various body parts of the horse and in which planes, 

b) where horses commonly tense, stiffen and block, 

c) what they, as riders, are trying to absorb and 

d) how their bodies can alter their horses’ movement patterns

​-Ridden exercises to develop the all-important feel of the rider, linking what they have learnt in the demonstrations to how they will use this knowledge for their training in the future.