The core issue: Activate Your Horse's Core Review

If there is one concept that comes up over and over again in dressage, it is the concept of the rider’s core. Use your core. Hold with your core. Sit the trot with your core. Do piaffe with your core. In fact, if you don’t know the answer to what you should be doing as a rider, the answer is probably “do something with your core.” It’s also quite helpful when you are trying to impress someone else. If they’re having trouble, you can just up to them, nod wisely, and say, “Try engaging your core.” And then walk off mysteriously.

However, one thing we as riders talk less about is our horse’s core. This is what Hilary Clayton has attempted to remedy in her book and accompanying DVD, Activate Your Horse's Core: Unmounted Exercises for Dynamic Mobility, Strength and Balance
. Although I have not seen the book, I did watch the DVD and found some great information in it.

The video is broken up into several sections.
Mobilization Exercises is the first part and is mostly luring the horse with a treat into particular positions that both stretch and strengthen his muscles, covering three positons:

1. Rounding positions
2. Lateral positions
3. Extension positions

The next part is Core Strengthening Exercises, using pressure on certain body points of the horse to get him to engage certain muscles. The subsections of that part are :

1. Sternal, Withers, and Thoracic Lifting
2. Lumbar and Lumbosacral Lifting
3. Lumbar Lifting and Lateral Bending
4. Advanced Comined Rounding Exercises

The final part of the DVD is on Balancing Exercises. Here you shift the horse’s weight and manipulate his body during those weight shifts to cause him to actively keep his balance.

The DVD itself was relatively low quality, but nevertheless easy to follow. The woman showing the exercises talked nearly the whole time and repeated the exercises multiple times, so for the length of video, there were not as many exercises as perhaps one would have thought. However, even so, there were a great many exercises and many that I had never seen or even considered, despite being very involved previously in such stationery exercises that would improve my horse’s flexibility and strength.

Overall, Activate Your Horse’s Core is a great resource, but unless you take extensive notes on the video, to remember all the exercises in a more efficient way, the book might be a better source. Could any of you who have seen the book let me know if that is the case?

Either way, Activate Your Horse’s Core is essentially Pilates for horses, and as we know, the rider’s core is the answer to every equitation problem, so it follows that improving your horse’s core might be the key to a dramatically improved performance by your horse. With this book and DVD, you can learn to do just that.

Don't be desensitized to life

“They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day… When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

~Acts 4:3, 13 (NIV)

A common technique among horse owners is to “sack out,” or “desensitize” their horse. Usually this means working with a horse and a scary object until the horse no longer shows signs of fear around it while it is rubbed over his body. One thing I really appreciate about J.P. Giacomini’s work, however, is that he takes it one step further – he has the horse move beyond the “ignoring” stage to the full “relaxation” stage, where the horse actually relaxes upon contact with the object, versus simply not reacting to it.

Tarps can be a great way to develop the relax response. (Image taken from http://www.horsesense-nc.com/articles/workout/workouts01.html)

That is a subtle difference, but is absolutely critical. It certainly is a critical difference in our lives, as well. In so many things I go through – so many stressful or challenging situations – I learn to “not react,” meaning, I don’t panic, I don’t start doubting God, I don’t-don’t-don’t do things. However, it is far less often that I truly “relax” into the situation, moving from not doing things (ignoring/desensitized to the situation) to doing things (actively “relaxing” and letting the frightening object be an instrument of active good). I might do this by fully embracing the situation for what it is: another opportunity to actively praise and trust God, truly thanking Him for the situation and dynamically engaging in it without bitterness or resignation (the latter, as a desensitized horse might).

This way, I do not see trials as something to get done with or that get done to me, but as something that I get to do.

Inspirational Horsemanship

I love watching Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling work, and here is a neat video of the progression a horse in his training program made. The horse transitioned into a much better posture without the use of reins or headgear.

Hempfling - Collecting a Stallion at Liberty - QUEIJO's First Dance - Biopostive Lunging

Here is Hempfling's website:

http://hempfling.com/