Academic Art of Riding - Bettina Biolik

25/11/2025

Some great info about fascia!

Fascia, Fascia, Fascia: The Updated Map of the Body’s Connective Network

There is a newer, more formal classification of the fascial system that is becoming increasingly recognized in equine anatomy.

Here’s the clear summary of the most current view:

The New Classification of the Fascial System

The Fascia Research Society (FRS) and the Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT) have outlined a modern, unified classification that moves far beyond the older “superficial vs. deep fascia” model.

The contemporary definition sees fascia as a body-wide, three-dimensional, continuous connective-tissue network, and the system is divided into four major categories:

1. Superficial Fascia
• Located just under the skin
• Highly hydrated, rich in nerves
• Houses adipose tissue
• Major role in sensory input, thermoregulation, glide, and fluid dynamics

2. Deep/Muscular Fascia
• Dense connective tissue around muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments
• Includes epimysium, perimysium, endomysium
• Responsible for force transmission (including epimuscular force transmission)
• Major role in proprioception and muscle coordination

3. Visceral Fascia (Splanchnic Fascia)
• Connective tissue surrounding and suspending organs
• Includes mesentery, pleura, pericardium, mediastinum
• Involved in visceral mobility, stability, motility, and visceral–somatic pain patterns

4. Neural Fascia (Meningeal Fascia)
• Envelops and supports the nervous system
• Includes dura mater, epineurium, perineurium, and endoneurium
• Critical for neural glide, tension regulation, and mechanosensory input

The Most Important Shift

The new classification is based on the concept of the “fascial continuum” — meaning:

Fascia is not a collection of separate sheets but a continuous organ system with regional specializations.

This reclassification also aligns with the concept of fascia as an organ of communication, integrating:
• mechanical sensing
• proprioception
• nociception
• autonomic regulation
• fluid dynamics
• force transmission
• inflammatory responses

Relevance to Equine Science, Massage & Bodywork

For horses, this classification is extremely helpful because:
• The visceral fascia explains referred pain patterns (as in ulcer-induced movement changes).
• The deep fascial system explains global force transmission and compensatory patterns.
• The neural fascia helps explain vagal tone, autonomic responses, and tension patterns.
• The superficial fascia relates heavily to sensation, bracing, coat changes, edema, and swelling.

This is why equine movement, posture, and pain can reflect problems far from the apparent site.

https://koperequine.com/there-are-4-categories-of-fascia/

24/11/2025

“When two spirits want to do what do bodies can”

Last weekend, Bent Branderup taught a clinic in the UK, at West Wilts Equestrian Center. The course had such a lovely atmosphere: The audience was just awesome and very supportive of the riders, the venue made us all feel welcome, and the riders did the most fantastic job in their lessons!

If I weren’t in love with the academic art already, I would fall in love again after this weekend

20/11/2025

*Staying Open Outside the Bubble*

That people do things differently than we do doesn’t have to trigger us.

Lately, I’ve consciously chosen some horsey social media accounts that are outside my usual “bubble.”

The algorithm works in a way that gives you more of what you like - or the opposite. So you either agree, or you have strong feelings of dislike. I think this has trained us to either fully approve or become much less tolerant of ideas that don’t match our preferences. We don’t seem to handle different opinions very well. (I’m not talking about trolls, by the way ;) )

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. So I started looking for some “different” stuff. My first reaction was often, “Oh, I like this,” or “Ughhh, I don’t like that.”

But sometimes there might be a lot you disagree with, and yet that one tip can change everything for you.

Sometimes I read posts by people I admire or follow, and there’s an idea or thought I don’t share. And still, I try to stay open to it. Because maybe there *is* something there. Why does it make me uncomfortable? Is there something I don’t want to see?

I also think we can disagree and still be respectful. A lot of people don’t know how to have an adult conversation anymore. There’s so much passive-aggressiveness, gaslighting, and downright rudeness. And I really think it’s because of the remoteness of social media conversations. Nobody has ever walked up to me at a clinic and said, “That poor horse! You should learn to ride!”

There are many different schools of horsemanship, for different people and different horses. Yes, sometimes we see cruelty, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about acknowledging that someone might do things differently and still be a good horse person, or an interesting discussion partner.

I dare you: for the next week, search for some keywords that interest you in the FB search bar and see what comes up. And keep an open mind. You might learn something ;)

Photo by Magda Senderowska

17/11/2025

Lovely soft trot work by Sarah of Whole Horse Harmony in our lesson today

16/11/2025

Stifles and hocks are not ball and socket joints and they have a very limited side to side range of motion. They can’t do rotational movement in the way the hip joint can.

Hindquarter disengagement produces a lot of sheer forces in these joints. These joints are made for forward and backward movement (hinge joints). This is actually the worst for the fetlocks, because they are furthest away from the body and the hoof often doesn’t step straight into the ground but with one side first.

The side movements when done correctly don’t produce sheer forces, because the legs are still stepping under the center of mass. Or in other words, we position the center of mass over the hind legs (for shoulder in over the inside hind and for quarter in over the outside hind). The joints of the hind legs are still straight towards each other and transmit the ground forces in a straight way.

In that sense, the side movements are straight!

In the leg yielding or disengaging, the hind legs steps outside the center of mass in a way the joints are not designed to do.

I don’t see a problem with using the leg yield for didactic purposes, such as when a horse and/ or rider don’t know at all how to ask for sideways with the lower leg. But I wouldn’t do it for longer and especially not on a circle and in the trot.

15/11/2025

So many riders spend their whole lives in the saddle and yet seem to stagnate on a very basic level.
That was me about eleven years ago, before I discovered the Academic Art of Riding.
I had been riding all my life and had taken thousands of lessons. In hindsight, I probably had the same lesson a thousand times.
I learned to ride walk, trot, and canter with a tight rein (they called it “contact”) and plenty of leg. Always more leg. Maybe some transitions, a few leg-yields, a turn on the forehand—but that was about it when it came to exercises.
When it came to the seat, I was mostly instructed to sit a certain way: heels down, hands together, elbows at the body, head up.
The one good thing I can say about how I was taught is that I definitely learned how to stay on. Through bucks, bolts, the yearly Christmas-tree-in-the-arena mayhem (not sure if this is just a German thing, but if you’ve lived it, you know!), that racing trot the horses offered instead of cantering...
But instead of learning how to work the horse’s body properly and understand biomechanics, I was taught to manipulate the head with the reins.
That all changed when I began studying the Academic Art of Riding.

I learned about

* correct bend and rotations
* how to ride shoulder-in and quarter-in
* how to ride half-pass and pirouettes
* how to feel what the hind legs are doing
* how to collect the horse through seat aids
* the proper use of the secondary aids
I will never forget the very first time I rode a quarter-in on my horse Nazir, during my first internship with Bent Branderup. I felt his shoulders lift and his back rise beneath me. I had never felt anything like it before. I actually stopped, almost overwhelmed by the sensation.
After the lesson, as so often during those early years, I thought: *This is so simple and yet so effective! Why had nobody explained this to me before? Why did I ride straight along the arena wall for years without achieving anything?*
Today, I try to teach my students exactly that: how to work the horse’s body and use the side movements to bend the haunches and balance the forehand.
I meet so many riders who have never ridden a proper shoulder-in—let alone a quarter-in. Many cannot feel whether the horse is stepping forward with the hind legs or stepping sideways. Many rely on the reins to fix problems instead of addressing the cause. And I understand them so well, because I’ve been there. I know the frustration of feeling stuck and thinking the higher-level exercises are only for professionals.
So my advice is: Stop riding straight along the arena wall. Learn the side movements.
Bent Branderup once said that there are three keys to the art of riding:
The first key is the bending of the inside hind leg.
The second key is the bending of the outside hind leg.
The third key is both hind legs bending at the same time.
And you can’t get there without the side movements.

Photo Céline Rieck Photography

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A good way to start learning the side movements is on the ground. My Classroom contains hundreds of videos about the art of riding and has a huge module about the side movements in groundwork. www.classroom.academicartofriding.pl

14/11/2025

Sometimes it feels like fighting windmills…
During my recent clinic tour in Australia, I talked a lot about horse welfare and posture. Here I was teaching correct bend, soft aids, partnership and correct dressage exercises. And then I opened my newsfeed and saw these dreadful images of the Melbourne Cup winner bleeding from the mouth.

It almost seems like whatever we “little people” do, whatever science says, whatever better system of training we come up with - it’s being ignored by the sport to a large degree. I’m well aware that there a lots of people who try to make money with horses and are still kind and ethical. But sometimes the discrepancy of what I try to teach, what I know many others are teaching as well, and these horrific videos and images of abuse just seem to make me numb and deeply, deeply sad.

In what universe is it ok to have a horse bleeding? Where there is blood, there is pain. Blood means damaged tissue.

Worst of all is the comment section. While most people are outraged, there are the voices who say “If you have never worked in the industry, you don’t get to have a say.” Or “well he just bit his tongue, no big deal, it happens.”

In 35 years or riding horses, I never got a horse to bleed. Anywhere. Not in the mouth, not from spurs. And I also haven’t always been the gentle horsewoman I am today.

If you find that these things are just part of the sport, then what does that say about your attitude towards horses? That anything goes as long as the outcome is what you wanted? How can you claim to love horses and that sport horses are treated like kings and queens, and at the same time not see the abuse happening? Clearly, horses would have a quite different understanding of what being treated in the best possible way means…

I also feel a bit angry because these recurring images of horses bleeding, having blue tongues, being beaten and rollkured have the potential to ruin the work with horses for all of us. Because if the official organisations won’t drive the change for better horse welfare, politics will do that. And then we all end up with rules that might make our jobs difficult to impossible. I seriously don’t understand why the sport can’t be better regulated and regulations really enforced! Sure, sometimes we see someone being “punished”, but not much seems to happen other than a one year ban. People who publicly beat the cr*p out of horses are still allowed to work with them!

When I meet horses these days, it doesn’t make me proud to be human and I almost feel like I have to apologise in the name of all humans. I’m so sorry that we just can’t seem to value connection and welfare over money and influence.

And yet, I will continue to teach and drive change, one horse and persona at a time. What else can I do.

Photo by Magda Senderowska

12/11/2025

In my opinion, the change is already here. It’s a change that’s facilitated by the private horse owner who perceives the horse as a family member.

There are parts of the equine industry that don’t want to accept this change and try to ignore it. I would argue that they often also didn’t go with the changes that the article suggests came about with the rise of natural horsemanship.

Will we ever see race horses being started at 4 years of age or older, elite dressage horses living in track systems 24/7, have pain signals lead to exclusion in competions, allow bitless and bridless riding as equal options to bitted in all disciplines?

The horse industry is overdue for change.
Not a new trend, but a shift in culture that reshapes how we think, talk, and connect with horses.

The last time we saw a movement that did that was in the 1980s and 1990s, when Natural Horsemanship began to rise. It did not solve everything, but it did something remarkable. It made people pause, pay attention, and see their horses differently.

Natural Horsemanship helped trigger one of the most significant cultural shifts in horsemanship, reminding us that change is possible.

It encouraged people to use timing instead of force, to listen to feedback, and to see partnership instead of dominance.

That shift was revolutionary.

At its core, Natural Horsemanship is a system built around pressure and release, where the horse learns by responding in ways that make pressure stop. In learning theory, that is called negative reinforcement, not because it is “bad”, but because something is removed when the horse offers the correct response.

There is not just one way to apply this, and that is what makes it so complex. It can be used with precision and feel, creating clearer communication and lower stress, or with too much pressure and poor timing, leading to tension and confusion. Those differences lead to vastly different welfare outcomes.

That is also what made Natural Horsemanship so influential. It was not just a set of techniques. It was a mindset shift toward communication, timing, and awareness. For many, the idea of release became the first clear, tangible way to understand how horses learn. It was influential in changing how people thought about training and communication, though welfare outcomes often depended on how it was applied.

Beyond the mechanics, and why I think it resonated so deeply, is because it changed mindset. It replaced the language of dominance with one of feel, timing, and partnership. It gave everyday riders a sense of agency and hope, the belief that they could understand their horses, not just manage them.

It arrived at the right time too.

Conversations about animal sentience and welfare were growing worldwide, and people were ready for a kinder, more connected approach to training.

We are standing in another moment like that now.

Welfare is finally at the centre of more horse conversations, and more people than ever are asking about emotional wellbeing, agency, pain faces, social needs, and evidence-based care.

At this point, it is going to be hard for everyone to agree on methods of training, and that is not what this conversation is about.

But I think, given what started the Natural Horsemanship movement and what welfare science is showing us today, we can all agree that welfare NEEDS to be the focus right now.

If Natural Horsemanship showed that culture could change once, this moment shows us that it can change again.

Through open discussion, shared learning, and a genuine commitment to welfare, we can write the next chapter together.

Natural Horsemanship changed how many people thought about control, communication, and connection. It showed that our culture can evolve, that awareness and empathy can reshape how we work with horses.

We have done it before.
We can do it again.

There is a growing movement calling for welfare to be at the centre of the sport.

Cultural shifts are never easy, but this time, for better and for worse, we’re more digitally connected than ever. Conversations that used to happen in small barns or clinics are now happening online for the whole world to see. If we use that reach with empathy and intention, with welfare science at its heart, it might just be what makes lasting change possible.

10/11/2025

At Perth airport, waiting for my flight to Doha.
7 clinics taught, 168 lessons, 10 flights, lots of good talks, laughter, good food and sweet horses.
I feel very grateful that I can travel to Australia to teach! It’s a true pleasure to meet so many like-minded people and learn from each clinic.
One of my students said to me on this tour: I have always liked your lessons, but it seems you’ve grown a lot since we met three years ago and you always seem to learn more and guide people even better. I think this was the biggest compliment I ever received! And I think my Australia tours are contributing to that big time, with the back to back clinics and meeting so many different horses and people.

Biggest thanks to Anke Hawke Balanced Dressage for arranging this whole tour and hosting two of the clinics! And thank you so much Anamir Equine, Marina Morton Dressage and Horsemanship, Susan Castel Equine Consultant/CoachAMT Equestrian Services and Lynn Scott for doing an amazing job hosting your clinics and making me feel welcome! It means the world to me 💜 You guys are the best and I feel very fortunate to know you!

Thanks to all the participants with horse and all the fence sitters! Without you, there would be no clinics and I would like to thank you for trusting me with your horses and learning!

My next Australia tour will be planned for October/ November 2026. I will take a bit of a break from traveling in spring and take care of some projects I have in the pipeline 🙏💕

Bye friends, I will see some of you online 🌸

10/11/2025

This photo shows one of the first rides I had on Minor.
When I look at it, I see the same that I see in the young horses of those my students, who do a lot of groundwork with their horses before riding in: A horse able to carry itself and a rider.

Yes, groundwork is great for building relationship. It also prepares the young horse to be ridden. What does that mean?

It means that the horse develops good posture and is able to carry itself, use the hind legs forward under the center of mass, and learns to shift its balance more to the right or left or more to the front and back, and to find center (aka learning the side movements). Thus, it also has a better chance of being able to carry a rider.

Many horses I see in ridden work cannot even carry themselves well. And when a rider sits on top, they tense the back and are on the forehand. One can often see a slight ditch before the wither, a sign that the rib cage is not lifted.

When we spend some time (months to a year) with meaningful groundwork before we ride the horse in, the horse will look nice and "round" around the withers and we set it up for a life-time of healthy riding. They are also much more confident in these first rides because they don't struggle as much with their balance. Which is something entirely different to the idea of starting them early so they are "not so strong" yet.

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There are lots of groundwork videos in my Classroom, from leading to collection in groundwork - www.classroom.academicartofriding.pl

06/11/2025

While I teach individual lessons, I always allow and even encourage to bring a support horse or another rider staying in the arena!

Many riders don’t recognize separation anxiety in their horses and don’t understand the desperation the horse feels.

This is great food for thought!