Rider Muscle Groups-inside leg to outside hand, contact, etc

Thanks Jimmy. I suspect that we agree because we both have been at this horse training stuff for a while and have at times tried to find a quicker way, but have learned that training horses and riders is somewhat like laying a brick wall, you can't leave our any bricks.

All other countries that have some form of Equestrian Federation or Society that regulates its national sport have set a national curriculum for teaching riding. Having such a standard has many advantages. One obvious advantage is that when riding students move from one part of their country to another, they can find a riding instructor that knows what they have learned and what they need to learn when they get to their new home, because all instructors follow the same national curriculum. In America every time an instructor gets a new student, the instructor must spend weeks or months trying to figure out what he student has learned and how. The time spent sorting out what to teach a new student is wasted time and lesson money.  Our National Equestrian federation has ignored this responsibility in favor of a more commercial agenda of advancing the business of horses and riding, rather than the quality.

Another reason to have a national curriculum is that students are taught skills in a more methodical sequence that relates to their physical development as an athlete, i.e. the effective use of muscle groups. In the chaos of American riding instruction, students and parents, in a effort to make sense of a process that does not make sense,  often make requests of instructors based on research, reading or from other riders or their parents. Such requests might be that the instructor teach their child a certain skill like getting a horse "on the bit". This particular skill is a common request from students because it is easily identifiable as an image of a horse with their head vertical. What students or parents do not understand is that the image of a horse on the bit is a effect of a whole lot more. But often, unqualified or unknowing instructors teach the image without the "whole lot more" that make it happen, like collection, engagement and self carriage.



This horse could be said to be "on the bit".

But it also might be a horse with a head set that is isolated from the entire body. In order for a viewer to know if the horse is correctly or authentically on the bit or just presenting a form limited only to its head and neck, meaning head set, we would have to see the movement of the entire horse. We would have to see the reach of the hind legs under the belly, the flex of the loins in the push off from the reach of the hind legs, and the horse's back moving fluidly as the engagement of the hind is expressed. In other words, the last place we look to see if a horse is truly on the bit is the head.

But without an educated consumer of riding education, head set can pass for getting a horse on the bit, and sadly more often than not, that is what happens in American riding instruction. This is why we need a national curriculum, so that instructors can no longer teach skills as if they are a bunch of isolated tools like in a carpenter's tool box. Riding skills, taught correctly are one thing, unity, not a collection of separate skills or results like head set. Unity is the rider being in equilibrium with the horse in movement. Every time we move toward achieving a single idea or image with our horse, like on the bit without unity, we move away from unity.

To achieve unity, the rider must be unified into one dynamic of mass and energy within themselves, as should the horse. When these to unified beings, horse and rider, move within one range of motion together, real riding begins. Becoming aware of and getting control of the rider's body muscle groups is where it starts.