Hollis-tics Therapy

24/11/2021

Riding is a function of your mind not your body.
- Charles de Kunffy

18/11/2021

A few weeks ago we went to our 1st ever competition. Cricklands dressage champs, riding 5 Intro tests over 3 days. Well my mare is a star in the making. Increased her score with each test.
💕🦄💕

18/11/2021

Learn to listen to your horse and how they can help you heal 🦄💕

01/08/2021

Hope you like the hat silk 😂, sure my mare was like what are you wearing🤦

22/03/2021

The Half Halt

The Half Halt is one of those terms that everybody seems to USE (sometimes for no other reason than that it makes the user sound knowledgeable) but nobody seems to EXPLAIN. That’s why it is shrouded in mystery for many riders. But it doesn’t need to be. The theory behind it is actually quite straightforward.

Purpose
The purpose of the half halt is to flex the grounded hind leg more under the weight and to keep it on the ground longer, so that it supports a larger share of the body mass of horse and rider.

Timing
The aids can only work with the natural movements of the horse and accentuate or diminish those movements. Each hind leg reaches forward through the air, touches down in front of the vertical, receives the weight, flexes its joints, then passes the vertical, as the body moves forward in space, and extends its joints again when it starts to push the body mass forward.

The job of the half halt is to increase the flexion of the joints of the hind leg, and sometimes to prolong the weight bearing phase by keeping the hind leg on the ground longer and slowing the tempo down.

From the job description it is obvious that the only moment in the footfall sequence that is suitable for the half halt is the weight bearing phase, i.e. when the hind leg is on the ground and in front of the vertical.

If you apply the half halt when the hind leg is in the air, it is unable to respond to it.

If you apply the half halt when the hind leg is on the ground behind the vertical, it is already extending its joints again and pushing the body forward. The half halt would then be diametrically opposed to the natural movement of the hind leg: the horse would fight against the aid because it would be physically impossible to comply with it. And in the long run the hind leg would be at risk of developing wind puffs and spavin.

Aids
There are several possible aids that you can use to apply half halts.

- With your seat (pelvic floor or your seat bones) you can use your own body weight to load the hind leg and keep it grounded longer.
- A stirrup pressure on the same side and at the same time that the targeted hind leg is on the ground will also send the rider’s weight through the horse’s hind leg into the ground. So, if you want to half halt into the outside hind leg, you could apply a little pressure against your outside stirrup when the outside hind leg is on the ground.
- A rein pressure from either rein will take the weight and the leverage of the horse’s head and neck and transfer it to the grounded hind leg. You can use either the rein on the same side, or the diagonal rein for this half halt. The diagonal rein frames the diagonal shoulder, if it would otherwise escape sideways. Rein aids can therefore act as weight aids.


All these aids will only be successful if the rider supports with a stable seat.

Depending on the horse’s conformation, temperament, training level, and the rider’s weight and height you can use one of these aids, or a combination of two (seat + stirrup, rein + stirrup, seat + rein), or even all three. You need to experiment with which aid produces the best result. Some horses have sensitive or weak backs and will invert right away, if you try to sit deeper or heavier in the saddle. They will respond better to stirrup and rein pressure.

Horses with a very strong back and strong, straight hind legs may need a much stronger aid from the pelvic floor and the seat bones, especially if the rider is small and lightweight. The intensity and composition of the ideal half halt will also change through the horse’s career because the horse’s needs and abilities change.

How Do I Feel The Right Moment?
The moment for the half halt is relatively easy to feel. When the hind leg touches down, the hip rises slightly, so that the rider feels a little bump in her seat bone on the same side. If you don’t feel it, check if you are sitting straight. If you are leaning forward or hollowing your back, your seat bones will be too far away from the horse so that you can’t feel the movements of the hind legs with them. Another reason why you may not feel the touchdown of the hind leg is if the horse is not moving with enough energy.

You can also feel a slight “pulse” in the rein on the same side. When the hind leg travels forward through the air, it fills the rein on the same side. This culminates at the moment when the hind leg touches down. This feels a little like the pulse of an artery. If you can’t feel it, check if your reins are too long or too short. If the reins are too long, there will be no connection and consequently no communication between the reins and the hind legs. If the reins are too short, the horse will not be able to move his body freely enough, so that the movement of the hind legs is stifled.

If you still can’t feel it well enough, you can glance down at the horse’s shoulder blade. When the shoulder blade moves forward, the front leg is in the air, and in the walk and trot the hind leg on the same side is on the ground. In the trot it’s easiest to see because the horse’s legs move in diagonal pairs. When the outside shoulder blade moves back, the outside front leg and the inside hind leg are grounded. Glancing down at the horse’s shoulder can be a good way to develop one’s feel for where the horse’s feet are.

In the canter the outside hind leg is on the ground during the highest point of the canter stride. The inside hind leg (+ the outside front leg) is on the ground when the rider’s seat gets pulled forward in the saddle.

This is a brief overview over the purpose, timing, and aids of the half halt. I hope you find these explanations useful. You can try these things out the next time you ride your horse.

- Dr. Thomas Ritter
artisticdressage.com

p.s. Have you signed up for our free 7-Day Thinking Rider's Challenge?

Dressage is not just about riding movements for the sake of riding movements.

It’s actually about gymnasticization of the horse using exercises which are designed to develop the horse’s balance, straightness, suppleness, coordination, and understanding.

We call this the Thinking Rider’s approach to training and we will be going into much more detail about how this works and how you can use it in your own riding in our totally FREE 7-day challenge.This is an entire mini course with 7 days of video trainings (one each day), daily Live Q&A sessions, and a Facebook Group for support, feedback, and ongoing discussion.

It all starts on Monday, March 22, 2021 and you are invited.

Grab your spot: https://courses.artisticdressage.com/thinking-rider-challenge

20/11/2020

14 Days to go, please donate if your able.
Thank you to those that have already donated it is very much appreciated xx

I’m Braving the Shave for Macmillan and I need your support. Check out my profile page where you can make a donation.

03/08/2020

I’m Braving the Shave for Macmillan and I need your support. Check out my profile page where you can make a donation.

05/06/2020

A few pictures of the gang from the past few months. We have been quiet as we have been adjusting to loosing Millie tragical in December. We have grieved alone and together, amber withdrew into her self and George took time to process, Sam was cuddly and with George made sure I became present with them. We have all come far over the few weeks and Amber is ready to work. Love my gang 💕🦄🐴💕

02/04/2020

28/03/2020

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03/09/2019

Amber trying out her and the gangs new wheels 🐴

26/08/2019

26/08/2019

To help your half halts become more forward so they open your horse’s throatlatch...

"Imagine that those half halts open the underside of your horse’s neck to make it more in the shape of a U instead of a V." —Carl Hester

(Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz)

19/08/2019

In some cases, what bodyworkers, vets (and horses) are dealing with: The effects of "dressage gone wrong".
I will post a few images during coming days to illustrate what is helpful and harmful to our horses. Source: True classical German horsemanship, the original Wellness Training.

28/07/2019

Fun fact 😊

16/07/2019

💖💖 Top tip Tuesday 💖💖

05/07/2019

05/07/2019

THE SNAFFLE MISUNDERSTOOD By Manuel Trigo Many people are often very surprised when learning more about the snaffle. Their beliefs are unfortunatel...

30/06/2019

I’m going to share a few moments I experienced with a new student during our first lesson. I asked if she would mind my writing about it and very generously, she granted permission.

I knew we were in for a lively time when we first spoke.

“I’m a dressage rider but I’m not looking for you to teach me dressage,” she began. Oh. What makes you think I can help you? I wondered aloud.

“I want you to teach me how to get off my horse’s face!” We talked further and agreed to meet. Both the woman and her horse were lovely. I explained that they should just go ahead with their usual warm-up and I would observe. When I had a feel for their partnership, I would speak.

The warmblood gelding was a tremendous mover. Powerful and athletic, with every stride, you could see his rider trying to absorb his thrust. With every step, you could see her head wobbling atop her neck. I made note of her fit-but-petite physique in comparison to his and the fact that within moments of being in the saddle, she had him onto a strong contact with the bit.

Despite the fact that I was meant to be watching her hands, my eyes kept straying to her seat. More specifically, I was drawn to her saddle.

I have learned by now to trust my eye. If I am repeatedly feeling my gaze going to a spot on a horse, I now know that this is the spot that is sore, or the root of the trouble. I used to ignore my ‘wandering eye’, to talk myself out of where it wanted to go, but now I pay attention. I watched for a few more minutes, then called her to the centre of the ring.

Dressage saddles have changed drastically in the thirty-plus years since I have ridden one. This, I think, is because our horses have changed from the Thoroughbreds and cross-breds that we once rode and competed on, to today’s super-horses with their powerful movement. I explained that my student’s horse was so beautiful, so impressive, that I was certain that I would be unable to stick his trot. I honestly felt that she’d got into the understandable habit of ‘hanging on to her horse’s face’, to use her words, in order to stay with him.

The thigh blocks on my student’s saddle were meant to place her knee as low and far back as possible, in a secure position. Unfortunately, this saddle placed the rider completely vertical. She was practically standing on her horse. Worse, she often leaned back to gain purchase, much like a water skier. There was no angulation to her hip, her knee, or her ankle… it was all about that long, long leg. When I explained that a slight bit of angulation might mean that her joints would be better able to absorb the thrust of her horse, she shook her head.

“That’d be impossible,” she said. The thigh blocks on her saddle prevented her from adjusting her stirrups shorter, to getting any angle in her knee. Her legs were literally put in this one position. I’m not a dressage trainer but I have found that when my body is held in any one place, tension grows. It’s as though I am trapped. I wanted to try an experiment.

She dismounted and unsaddled her big horse while I ran to find and blow the dust off my very outdated Kieffer. I'll tell you how old this saddle is: it's BROWN. I’d last ridden it in the early 1980s.

We kitted out the horse with my plain, old saddle. The plan was for her to ride her horse around on a long rein at the walk. She would ride, without stirrups, stretching her legs down and back, then vigorously scissor them to and fro from the hips, while he relaxed. I instructed her to also do the ‘clockwork’ exercise with her ankles, rotating them very slowly outwards like the hands of a clock, clockwise with the right ankle, counter-clockwise with the left. Then, to reverse their direction. She was to stretch and do these exercises until her legs were just beginning to tire.

With her legs in a natural position, her seat in the deepest part of the saddle, she would take up her irons and we would adjust them to support that position. She settled on a length with a slight flex in her hips and knees. Her ankles were soft but the heels were neither raised nor forced down… they were just comfortable. She then asked the horse to trot.

“Just rise with him,” I explained. “Don’t worry about anything but keeping your helmet still, as though it’s on rails.” As her body was able to absorb the horse’s stride, her head no longer wobbled. I asked her to bend slightly forward, to forget for a while about pushing her hips ahead. Now, to slowly, slowly float her arms ahead from her shoulders and softly-bent elbows… creeping up, up, up toward his crest. The gelding rounded his top line as he stretched, with newfound freedom, in an arch. He was still on a contact with the bit. As he stretched, his strides lost their jarring force and became elastic. He was truly magnificent.

“He’s on wheels!” she called to me and I knew just what she meant. “But why is he moving so slow?” was her only question. I explained that he felt as though he was pedaling slower because finally, he was using his full range of movement. He was allowing his feet to touch the ground, to flex his joints fully and absorb energy, before pushing off again. What had been feeling like impulsion before, was simply, speed.

I also explained that when she allowed him to stretch fully at walk, trot and canter, he was honestly lengthening. To put it simply, her horse and indeed, any horse, is incapable of stepping beyond its nose. By hanging on to him so fiercely, mainly to stay with him, she was shortening his stride from its full glory. If ever there was incentive to trust and allow forwardness, this was it!

“What about my hands?” she finally asked. Well, what about them? In releasing tension, in flexing her major joints, she had solved the issue. She had, without even thinking about it, ‘got off her horse’s face’. A rider's seat—its deepness, elasticity, lack of forced movement or stillness—holds the answer to almost everything, whether we want to believe this or not. The new goal would be to find the balance point where her horse was ridden ahead of her but where she could stay with him, rather than leaning back or relying on her hands to hold on.

My only other suggestion was to use less patting and more riding 'on the buckle' for praise. Man or beast, we all understand comfort and the building of trust.

After the lesson, we compared stirrup leathers on the two saddles. Her chosen place was found in riding two holes shorter than what she had worked so hard to achieve! Yes, the long leg is a mark of good horsemanship, training and fitness in dressage. But it can come at a price. It can put us on a ‘crotch seat’, if we’re not careful, whereby we sacrifice our stability. It can take our shock-absorbing joints and replace them with braciness, requiring us to make our spines do all the work. My student remarked that her usual lower back pain and headache were both markedly absent. I suspect that she, while riding, has often been mildly concussed.

So, the fix for the miserly hands will be in continuing to stretch and soften her hips, knees and ankles… then, her shoulders and elbows. To ride with more forwards/giving, rather than backwards/taking, intent. She may have to find a saddler who can move (or remove) her thigh blocks to allow more angulation to her upper thigh… or else, look for a more ‘open’ saddle with more room. In finding a saddle that holds us in place, we risk losing our natural ability to give, to move ever-so-slightly in the saddle's seat and to absorb.

Oh, I know, I know. To ride like Charlotte, like Isabell! I understand.

For generations, when we’ve needed to increase our athleticism and security in the saddle, we’ve increased our leg angles. In contradiction, we’ve asked today’s riders to sit absolutely vertically, while riding the most athletic horses known to man! Those of us not so blessed with super-human ability and singlemindedness might just need a little help, is all. I do not wish to fly in the face of those who are knowledgeable in competitive dressage. I merely watched, percolated and served up some cowboy logic.

In the end, both she and her horse grew in harmony, relaxed and happy in their work. That, alone, should see their scores much improved.

Our illustration, of course, shows the incomparable Richard Waetjen (1891-1966), from his book Dressage Riding. I grew up watching home movies of this man and his horses. They were made by his student, who, decades later, became my teacher. And so it goes.

01/06/2019

Back working Millie 💕🦄

01/06/2019

Matthew back in the saddle 🙌