Academic Art of Riding - Bettina Biolik

09/04/2025

Thank you for the beautiful write up Anke Hawke Balanced Dressage and the kind words 🥰 It was a fantastic week and I was so proud to see everyone’s progress!! Thank you for making this happen ❤️🙏

07/04/2025

Found myself nodding with every sentence! Lots of nuggets in this one:

Discover how your horse's brain and nervous system shape learning, behavior & training success. A must-watch talk with Dr. Steve Peters & Nancy Heiber.How do...

29/03/2025

There is this magical place between rider and horse. When the cues are given with softness, when the horse truly understands what is being asked, when horse and rider find balance - there is a certain stillness. The horse’s thoughts and the rider’s thoughts occupy the same space, their bodies move as one, whether on the ground or in the saddle.
When I teach, I strive for showing horse and rider this space. Where thoughts are calm and movement is balanced.
It’s not always possible - not all humans are open for this. But if I can, I will give it a try. Once riders feel this, it becomes a guiding light to their learning and working with horses.
Today marks my 10th anniversary in the academic art of riding. Ten years ago today, I packed my horse and drove to Denmark, to be a working student for Bent Branderup. Thought the academic art, I found that calm space between humans and horses, and I feel very privileged to be able to pass that on today.

24/03/2025

Our clinic in Melbourne ❤️❤️❤️
I will still do a little write up about it later :)

21/03/2025

Happily sharing Andrew‘s post about our first clinic 🥰❤️🙏 Thanks so much Andrew Turnbull for hosting this course and making this an amazing two days!
What a lovely group of people and horses.
I decided to talk about a bit more „academic“ stuff in the theory after sharing my thoughts on connection and motivation on the last clinics. So we spoke about the journey from half-halt to school halt in the theory and tried to give students an experience of the halt, at least in standstill, during the lessons.
But as usual, we worked on everyone’s individual topics as well.

Now at the airport waiting for my flight to Melbourne. Thanks again Andrew and Char, and good luck with the new property!

12/03/2025

Boundaries are important. I often see that the human is not aware of boundaries and also afraid to use enough energy to communicate about boundaries effectively. It will not harm the relationship with the horse in any way, on the contrary, it will improve!
All that’s needed is clarity and consistency, and meeting the horse at its energy level.

You know, I had a horse teach me a really good lesson the other day, stereotypical as it seems.

I have a mare who’s really difficult to keep with other horses. She randomly double barrels them and is really dangerous.

It’s like she doesn’t know how to communicate in normal escalating horse language like ear pinning, posturing, etc.

She has lots of room, lots of food, but she will go from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye.

She bullies everyone. Everyone’s terrified of her, and she has no friends, it’s actually kind of sad.

Enter a horse who was having none of it. Met her butt to butt and backed up the entirety of the corral threatening to double barrel her.

Never laid a foot on her, took blows themselves, but wouldn’t back down.

My mare ran off, confused, stopped and stared at them, and hasn’t bullied anyone since.

Now, this isn’t the whole story, though.

The rest of the story is, now, for the first time since I’ve had her, she’s hanging out with the other horses, being social, and experimenting with grooming and touches.

See, I could’ve made a lot of excuses for her, and said, maybe she wasn’t socialized well while growing up (she was), maybe she’s had other horses be aggressive to her, or had to resource guard (she hasn’t ), etc.

But like any relationship, none of those excuses matter in the moment.

What matters is, every relationship has to be built on safety and boundaries first, then you get the love and acceptance.

I’m not saying we need to get physical with our horses and use the old ‘horses kick each other harder than that’ trope, but I am saying, we need to offer them clarity about what is and isn’t safe around us, as well as what is and isn’t a positive way of interacting.

And that’s not just for us, that’s for their well-being, just like that mare showed me.

Probably the most important thing to be taken away from this is, we don’t have to be afraid of boundaries.

That horse who said no, you’re not allowed to do that to me, became my mare’s best friend within 5 minutes, like nothing had ever happened.

This was a very energetically intense interaction. That horse met my mare at her intensity, but my mare came away with no fear, because it wasn’t a punishment, it wasn’t a random attack, it was just a very clear boundary-setting that stopped as soon as my mare released the pressure herself.

Boundaries will NEVER harm the relationship, they’ll always improve it. I promise.

That goes for any relationship.

12/03/2025

When it comes to the school halt, don’t focus on shifting the weight back. This phase of the school halt is often overdone and it actually leads to stiff haunches. Instead, find ways of how to improve the bending of the haunches in movement and then transfer that to the standstill.

Exercises that can help with that:
- Halt - trot transitions
- Halt - canter transitions
- Developing school walk
- Renvers on the circle

Minor learned the school halt through halt/ slight weight shift > trot transitions. Weto learned it through halt - canter transitions.

If you have questions about the school halt, let me know below!

Feeling stuck with the school halt? I’m happy to help you in an 1:1 online lesson, Or have at look at my classroom, which has a whole video series about the work in standstill and the school halt (Link in the bio).

08/03/2025

What an amazing spring day today 🌷☀️ Minor and I are practicing our homework from and it’s going well.

Yesterday evening during one of our bi-monthly meetings for my personal students, I spoke about the challenges I had when starting to ride Minor, all the advice I received (invited and uninvited, horse friendly and abusive), and the solutions we found.

It’s wonderful to be able to share my own personal journey with my students. In all the years I’m on social media, it became more and more difficult to share these kinds of things. The motto seems to be: “why are you sharing when you’re not interested in feedback?”

Personally, I’m sharing my journey because it helps me reflect, understand and learn. And it might help others who are in a similar situation.

Big thanks to Marius for the support and helping me realize, that I was on a good path and that some things just need more practice with some horses.

07/03/2025

Work in standstill -
Quite the oxymoron, right? 😆
Don’t let yourself be fooled - practicing at standstill is very effective and has so many benefits that I can’t list them all there - and is far from boring!
Just to name a few important benefits:
▪️Time to feel for both human and horse
▪️Improving balance
▪️Improving posture
▪️Improving the aids
Work in standstill is great as a warm up, for rehab, in sh*tty weather, and in small spaces.
I have a new, 14-part video series about the work in standstill in my video classroom, with a step by step explanation and lots of video examples for each step.

If you have already tried work in standstill, you’ve probably noticed that it’s not as easy as it sounds. But don’t worry, I’ve got your back and have broken down the process in easy to understand steps (that still require some practice, though ;) ).
These are the videos:
▪️Introduction to work in standstill (why do we do it and why is it useful?)
▪️Step 1: Sorting legs
▪️Step 2: Forward-down
▪️Examples Forward-down
▪️Ideas to help with forward-down
▪️Step 2: Stellning
▪️Examples Stellning
▪️Step 3: Bending
▪️Bending: Birds eye perspective
▪️Examples bending
▪️Step 4: Shifting the center of mass
▪️Examples Shifting the center of mass
▪️Step 5: Bending of the haunches
▪️Examples bending of the haunches

Subscribing to the classroom also gives you access to all the other 350+ videos, for example an 18 part series about developing the school halt, which supplements this series about the work in standstill. You can quit the membership any time again, no questions asked, and it’s great value for the money (if I may say so ;) ). You get a whole month in the classroom for less than one riding lesson.

Link to sign up for the classroom in the comments or in the bio 🌹

03/03/2025

Learning from an Olympic Champion

My first years of teaching clinics in Poland were very rewarding on the one hand, but also sometimes very frustrating. Frustrating not because of the people and horses, but because it was really hard to convince people to come and learn the academic art, which was relatively unknown in Poland then.
On these clinics, I taught students solid foundations of how to train their horse from the ground and from the saddle. They walked away with skills they retained or even refined until I saw them again next time.
On the other hand, I heard people talk about clinics of "big names" and that it was a great clinic, but when I asked what they learned when it came to their own horse and their own training, the answer was often "yeah, I wasn't really able to replicate that with my own horse."
On one of the clinics with Marius Schneider I arranged in Poland, two auditors came to me after the first lesson and wanted their money back. They said: "We've been on XX's (big name) clinic, it was a similar price but we got to see a lot more." When I asked what was the "more" they got to see, they said "piaffe work".
I suggested that they stayed for a few more lessons and if they still didn't like the clinic, I would refund their money. After one more lesson, they came back to me and said that this is really much too basic for them, they will leave immediately. I did refund the money in the evening.
Unfortunately, I see this very often. People seek the "big names" and prefer show to the tedious work on the basics. One of the most common questions I'm being asked is: "How long will it take to teach my horse this and that?" or "Are we finally making progress? How long do I still have to learn this basic stuff?"
So in my first years as a clinician, I got very frustrated by this. I felt that because I wasn't an Olympic champion, I didn't have a chance.
Today I know that this is just human nature and we all are attracted to the "fancy stuff". And that there are lots of people out there who are willing to take it step by step, you just have to find them :)
I'm not saying that famous clinicians don't have anything to offer. Of course they do, they became famous for a reason. Still, for a lot of them, learning the basics themselves was a long time ago and they might not be able to convey them to a total beginner. At least, this is what my teacher, Bent Branderup, told me when I asked him for a place as an intern. He said that I should rather do an internship with one of his trainers, because for him, learning the basics is such a long time ago, and he thinks his trainers do a better job in teaching those basics. And this statement came from one of the best teachers I encountered in my life!
In two weeks I'm starting this year's clinic season with a four week tour to Australia

26/02/2025

You know how you can be on a horse high...I think I'm on a student high this week 🤗
Everyone is just doing so nice work.

When I'm teaching, I really want my students to understand the principles and how to build up the training. Sometimes they show me one of their other horses, and usually they are able to teach that horse very well on their own, and I add bits and pieces. This always makes me so happy!

I think the biggest compliment to a teach is the students becoming independent of the teacher or even surpassing you. I already have a few students for which I rather feel like a guide, not really a teacher anymore, because they do so incredibly good work themselves.

So, as I said, student high ;)

In addition, I get to be a student myself this week for Marius Schneider, and I'm thoroughly enjoying that :)

17/02/2025

If we want to be kind to our horses, we have to start being kind to ourselves.
A lot of equestrians I meet put themselves under a lot of pressure. I know, because I was one of them, not too long ago.
I’m an ambitious person and I love making progress. When I met the academic art of riding, for the first time I had the feeling that even I, a just moderately talented horse person, could actually achieve something. And the results came fast. It felt very good. I put in the work, my horse and I developed.
At some point, my ambition met my horse’s physical limits. Intellectually, I accepted that. Nobody pushed me to do more, and yet, this slight disappointment grew. It is fairly normal to have a plateau in the training, I was told, it will pass. Well, it didn’t pass for a long time.
I didn’t know that I felt that pressure until I started to develop another horse and we started to work on more “fancy” exercises. Suddenly, the pressure was off. And that’s when I became really conscious of it. And felt deeply sorry.
It’s not that I was hitting my horse or doing anything harmful. But I was unfair in other ways. Such as stopping to develop him or trying different approaches, which must have been confusing. Just not being as happy about what he could give me. Not so much looking forward to our time together as I used to.
When we work with horses, we will meet sides of our character we managed to keep hidden or that we wished didn’t exist. Horsemanship has a way of bringing that to light. And that’s ok, and we have to forgive ourselves. If we cannot accept ourselves with our flaws, I believe we also cannot truly accept our horses.
So, don’t be so hard on yourself. Horsemanship is a great journey of character development. For all of us. We all have flaws, and we will all meet them at some point. If not, we just haven’t done it long enough or sincerely enough, and we haven’t felt that deep wish to truly understand horses.
“Look into the eyes of your horse, but don’t be frightened by the truth.” (Bent Branderup)