Riding with Charlotte

24/02/2024

07/01/2024

Charlotte Springall

10/07/2023

01/08/2022

17/06/2022

So delighted to announce Charlotte received a
🌟🌟🌟 star rating from Wiltshire Council for the riding school, with a long gap between inspections!

So we’ll deserved and great recognition for a wonderful yard

17/06/2022

23/03/2022

The Seat Explained

The seat has two meanings.
One is the specific area of contact that extends from the lumbar
back down to the knee, in other words, whatever moves from the lumbar area down to the
knee is the rider's seat.
But in a broader sense, the rider's seat is everything because its influence is entire, from the top of the head, which should be the highest point, of course, to the bottom of his heel.

The seat should be a cohesive unit that comes to the horse as a communication medium and as a transformation medium, one that is communicating cohesively and as a unit rather than in bits and pieces. I would like to say that even when a teacher gives specific directions to the rider to do something with his arms and with his legs, those directions
influence the rest of the rider. Because the rider is one person, he must communicate as one unit, one seat.

Riders should have balanced, deep, adhesive seats that allow them to make independent aids. Riders who remain adhesive to the saddle and their horses do so because they
understood and they learned that when the horse impacts on the ground the two points of
absorption are in the lumbar back and ankle. Riders who stiffen the ankle paralyse the toe
outward or downward, or push themselves away from the saddle to some degree. Riders
who cannot absorb the horse's movement in the lumbar back will, of course, pop loose of
the saddle and part from it.

Correct riding is done with the abdominal muscles, not with the back.
The rider's lumbar back should always remain relaxed. It should act as a hinge that allows
the pelvic structure to float forward with the horse's motion. The lumbar back allows the rider to remain isometrically toned - not tense -- in his torso while letting the buttocks and thighs remain adhesive to the saddle. The buttocks, the pelvic structure, should not slide on the surface of the saddle. Nor should the buttocks wipe or buff the saddle but rather "stick to it to allow the pelvic structure to surf the “wave" produced by the motion of the horse's back.

In contrast to the loose and supple use of the lumbar back, the torso above it should be
turned into one isometrically toned "cabinet." The rider's “cabinet" is a complex isometric unit.
For its formation, the rider should circle with the points of his shoulder back and down until
both shoulder blades are flat in the trapezius muscle of the back. This action will stabilise the posture of the torso. It will allow the front of the rider to lift the rib cage high, out of the abdominal cavity. It will broaden the chest, straighten the shoulders, stretch the front of the rider, and give him the feeling that the lowest ribs have been lifted, and the waist is more slender.
The rider's upper arms should then hang from his shoulders perpendicular to the
ground. This, importantly, stabilises the arms, hence the hands of the rider because in this
position the upper arms and elbows hang weightlessly. The earth's centre of gravity places
them. The direction of the upper arms and elbows will point to the rider's seat bones, and past them, to the ground. The stability provided by this upper-arm position is at the heart of riding - from the seat to the bridle, rather than wrongly, riding with the hands. For the vertical position of the upper arms is, indeed, responsible for the transferring of the seat's effects to the bridle.

Extract from Dressage Principles Illuminated by Charles de Knuffy p.140

Image:
To understand how to use your lower back to develop an adhesive seat, sit at the edge of a chair, and place
your feet on the floor in line with, and under your hips.
Thrust your pelvis forward so that you lift the back legs of
the chair off the ground. Then rock the chair forward and
backward to various different tilting angles and at different
rhythms without dropping the chair's back legs to the floor.
As you ride the walk, trot, and canter, this action simulates
the movement of an adhesive seat by emulating the pelvic
activity necessary to follow the horse's movement.



Credit Xenophon Equus Centre

10/10/2021

Persistence and perseverance❤️

10/10/2021

Jumping this beauty

30/08/2021

“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.
There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.

There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.

“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.
Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.
Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.

If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.

When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat.

When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.
You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option.
You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last.

You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.
You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.
You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and p**p. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care.
Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.
You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.

Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.
You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are.
Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.”

-Author Unknown

22/08/2021

I love the connection ❤️ I have with all of my horses, it’s a gift and I am grateful for this every day

19/08/2021

Confidence love dedication
Team work
And a very supporting family
Create our talented jockeys of the future
It’s not easy
It’s not about being rich
It’s about ingredients
The stuff where it all begins
Fliss Hobbins
Ellie hobbins
And dad
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

04/08/2021

24/07/2021

24/07/2021

A very successful day out in there first ever test for these two beauties ❤️