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Post by horseguy on Dec 14, 2016 15:59:31 GMT
This is how I learned to ride, as well as with "Follow Me" rides across terrain. The US Army developed this training method as the most efficient way to train a troop (32 cavalrymen) of soldiers to ride.
The video drill is called boot-to-boot. It begins with a walk with the barrels 15 feet apart. The point of the drill is (1) rhythm and straightness while rating your horse with another horses regardless of the two different horse's stride lengths and (2) close quarters work with other horses. The barrels are move closer and closer together until the horses must touch to pass through together. Once accomplished, the barrels are spread apart again and the same drill is done at the trot. These are competent riders on horses unfamiliar with drill team and of very different sizes. It required seven attempts for these riders and horses at the trot to pass through the narrow barrel space together as shown in the video.
The next step in the boot-to-boot drill is to do it not with two single riders, but with two pairs of riders, meaning four riders must pass together boot to boot through an increasingly narrow space between barrels at a walk, then trot and eventually canter. After that, two groups of three riders do the drill, and so on until the entire group can accomplish it together. This drill is a very basic element of a drill team. It is used in doing a wheel, transitions from a column of riders to a line of riders and many other precision formations that require a level of skill and unity with your horse. In drill team riders learn higher level movements in a group with their horse. It's fun. In the video you will hear the two riders cheer when they finally get through the barrels together after many struggling attempts.
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Post by jimmy on Dec 14, 2016 18:59:06 GMT
I like that. I'm going to incorporate that. Excellent way to get riders to be able to adjust the direction, the rhythm,, and the gait.
And also teamwork coordination. Of course, having matched pairs helps. Like a team in harness.
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Post by grayhorse on Dec 15, 2016 4:21:48 GMT
Great video, thanks for sharing. I like it. I've ridden what seems a million different drill exercises. They are fun and you learn a lot. You call it boot to boot we called it stirrup to stirrup (same thing, different term)...and yes it is one of the first things we would do with new members. Heck, come to think of it we would continue working on breaking down moves like this and perfecting them throughout the season even with the veteran riders. My coach never used barrels but she did use cones... I like the use of the barrels as it puts a bit of a squeeze on the horses and riders and makes it a little more challenging. Cones are easier to avoid and horses would routinely step on them at first or get real close and then step around or simply step over them. I like that you mentioned the riders must ride together regardless of the size and stride of horse...a lot of my fellow teammates would try to use this as an excuse as to why they could not rate with another horse and rider, but my coach never let that fly. You had to learn to rate your horse. Period, end of story. Eventually, you execute moves like this one below and it all starts at being able to ride tight and side by side. My coach would sometimes say if you all aren't going home with bruised shins, you aren't doing it right (she was kidding, well sort of kidding ha). Whenever we would practice this move (we called it a "Big Pivot") I would hear my coach call out STIRRUP TO STIRRUP. Even one person not riding correctly could screw up the entire look of the move. PS - don't mind the outfits we are in competition here and were required to have a "theme"  ~Carrie |
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Post by horseguy on Jan 6, 2017 16:10:12 GMT
I gave up on the drill team for now. I think people just don't get it around here. For me its a very unique learning environment, very self teaching. Drill team riders immediately see when they cannot execute their part of the drill. It goes right to the basics, can you rate your horse? Does your horse track straight? Can you establish cadence with your horse? Lots more too.
The people at the barn saw it more as a performance concept, I think. It was as if I asked the to be in a play. Even when I explained that it was the cavalry's primary teaching tool to some, no one seemed to get that it was about learning. The other factor was, I believe, people felt it was "beneath them" like child's play.
The contemporary idea of a "riding lesson" has become so narrow that present riders appear to be cutting themselves off from so many learning opportunities. When I was a boy there were two main tools for learning to ride, the group drill and the "follow me" ride. Both are now very obscure. I think that's a big loss.
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 6, 2017 18:49:31 GMT
I gave up on the drill team for now. I think people just don't get it around here. For me its a very unique learning environment, very self teaching. Drill team riders immediately see when they cannot execute their part of the drill. It goes right to the basics, can you rate your horse? Does your horse track straight? Can you establish cadence with your horse? Lots more too. The people at the barn saw it more as a performance concept, I think. It was as if I asked the to be in a play. Even when I explained that it was the cavalry's primary teaching tool to some, no one seemed to get that it was about learning. The other factor was, I believe, people felt it was "beneath them" like child's play. The contemporary idea of a "riding lesson" has become so narrow that present riders appear to be cutting themselves off from so many learning opportunities. When I was a boy there were two main tools for learning to ride, the group drill and the "follow me" ride. Both are now very obscure. I think that's a big loss. How did you present the drill team? As a learning experience or as a performance team? As an example, I am the Quality Assurance manager for a food company. I'm the smartest person in the room, quite frequently. Getting people to understand not just the what, but the why to do things and truly engage them in what we need to do to be successful in today's food safety world is difficult when the level of comprehension is barely able to understand. It might be time to re-evaluate how to engage today's learner / horseman and bring them to your level. That would be a huge undertaking and perhaps that's not really what you want to do. |
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Post by horseguy on Jan 6, 2017 19:43:16 GMT
Not as a performance at all. It was clearly presented a as way to improve your riding and your horse. Still people acted like they took it as performing. I explained the military teaching history, sent the video of the simple drill, and more.
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Post by rideanotherday on Jan 6, 2017 19:44:47 GMT
Not as a performance at all. It was clearly presented a as way to improve your riding and your horse. Still people acted like they took it as performing. I explained the military teaching history, sent the video of the simple drill, and more. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again. People suck. I would be interested in drill but lack a horse. <shrug> Eventually, I'll have another. |
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Post by horseguy on Jan 6, 2017 19:54:08 GMT
Part of it today is the intense specialization. There is a dressage rider who declined and a couple riders who do a western obstacle course thing. They seem to be happy with one activity with their horse. I was at the new barn a week and rode the whole place. A couple people saw me on the other side of the creek who'd been there awhile and said they had never been there. People just seem to want a very narrow focus where they feel they can succeed. That's my take. Plus, and this may seem harsh, people don't seem to want to have as much fun riding as was the case years ago. Riders seem to be very "serious" in a limited kind of way. Heck, decades ago I went to my first team penning with a TB and laughed so hard I nearly fell off my horse. The calves figured out right a way to go under us.
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Post by jimmy on Jan 7, 2017 15:47:34 GMT
Speaking over specialization. Every now and then I meet a well rounded horseman, even those who have a speciality they compete in.
I have been visiting across the road with Will Simpson lately, of show jumper fame.
But when I go visit, he is sometimes working the young warmbloods on the ground over jumps, with a lariat as a halter, and as the longe.
He rides them in a simple western snaffle with no cavesson and split reins. I think he is kind of a closet cowboy wannabe, which is fine with me.
He was a big fan of Buck Brannaman and attended his clinics at one point.
So it's cool to see a Olympic level rider utilizing some ideas outside the world of jumpers. Of course, he has the chops to get away with it in a world of crank nose bands and tie downs and horses on the muscle, and horses with a lot of holes in their foundation.
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Post by jimmy on Jan 7, 2017 15:55:18 GMT
I wouldn't give up on the drill team.
Ray Hunt had a horsemanship class, and was always the same. Sometimes there would be as many as 25 riders in an arena. "Like worms in a can" he would say. But pretty soon he had those worms smoothed out and operating as a unit.
After he had everyone on the rail,going one direction, he would ask half the class to face the opposite direction. If you're on the rail you go to the right, if your off he rail you go left. Once everyone figured that out, he asked each rider as they came to the rider passing them, to alternate passing left one rider, and to the right the next rider. He never really told anyone in advance what he was going to do. You had to follow direction. He didn't tell you how to do it either. He just set up the situation.
So at first it was like bumper cars. And it took some concentration on the part of the riders. After a while, there were no more crashes, as the horses weaved in and out passing each other. It was always fun to watch the progression.
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Post by horseguy on Jan 8, 2017 17:06:34 GMT
I wouldn't give up on the drill team. Ray Hunt had a horsemanship class, and was always the same. Sometimes there would be as many as 25 riders in an arena. "Like worms in a can" he would say. But pretty soon he had those worms smoothed out and operating as a unit. After he had everyone on the rail,going one direction, he would ask half the class to face the opposite direction. If you're on the rail you go to the right, if your off he rail you go left. Once everyone figured that out, he asked each rider as they came to the rider passing them, to alternate passing left one rider, and to the right the next rider. He never really told anyone in advance what he was going to do. You had to follow direction. He didn't tell you how to do it either. He just set up the situation. So at first it was like bumper cars. And it took some concentration on the part of the riders. After a while, there were no more crashes, as the horses weaved in and out passing each other. It was always fun to watch the progression.
"He didn't tell you how to do it either. He just set up the situation.
So at first it was like bumper cars. And it took some concentration on the part of the riders. After a while, there were no more crashes, as the horses weaved in and out passing each other." That requires dedicated riders who really want to learn. These would be riders who trust him and are not caught up in their self concept of who they are as a rider or horseman. The biggest obstacle today in teaching riding, I think, is the student's idea of their ability to ride or their understanding of horsemanship. Example, I was watching someone lunge a horse a while ago. This person had a lunge line with a long chain and the snap was attached to the halter. I mentioned in as unthreatening way that I could that attaching the lunge line chain in that way risked the horse getting hit in the eye with the chain should the horse act up. I explained that it is safer to attach the chain in a loop fashion back around to the base of the chain, thus shortening it and limiting the damage it could do. The person who was lunging pushed back on my suggestion saying that they had seen a horse get his foot caught in that chain loop and be seriously injured. I let it go, suggesting a lunge line with no chain at all. But here is the point I didn't make, so as to not confront their idea of their horsemanship (I felt I had not right to confront). One of the most basic things a person who wants to train horses learns is that everything we might do in training falls into two categories. (A) things the trainer can control and (B) things the trainer cannot control. And therefore a good and effective trainer works to ALWAYS do what we can control correctly and works to LIMIT everything we cannot control so as to prevent trouble and injury. In this case, an effective trainer keeps the lunge line off the ground at all times so as to prevent the horse from stepping in the looped chain - (A) something we can control. Doing this allows the horse to rear and twist at the end of the lunge line - (B) something we cannot control - without the risk of getting hit in the eye with the chain when they might rear and twist. These are the subtleties of training, the finer but very important distinctions. The very basic principle of being constantly aware of that line between what we can and cannot control is essential to a horse trainer, and if we push back against understanding that line with rigid axioms of "I know "x" to be true" we limit our ability to move deeper into the understanding of the subtleties. Ray Hunt's exercise that utilized chaos to teach is brilliant, but if the riders were not open to learning through chaos and failure he would not have been able to use it effectively. If the level of horsemanship is to increase in America, riders will have to become open to more and deeper understanding, which cannot come from google, only from experienced teachers like Ray Hunt and his lesser advocates. |
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