30/12/2024
Before George Morris established the current profitable business model of teaching lessons only in a fenced arena with instructors dismounted, a higher quality kind of riding lesson was the norm. Those better lessons followed the US Cavalry model of instruction and included a "Follow me!" ride.
A military type riding lesson began in the arena with about 15 minutes of instruction on a specific skill combined with an equipment check. One day the skill might be about a specific use of the reins. On another day it might be about tapping your feet in the stirrups to change your food position. Every lesson began with a short demonstration of the day's skill by the mounted instructor and the students trying to do the new skill. After that the lesson group left the arena for a Follow me! ride out over terrain.
This is how I learned to ride, and it is how I taught during my career. If someone ever tells you they learned to ride from a US Cavalryman, ask them about "Follow me" rides. We cantered across open fields maintaining a well formed column of riders, always with the instructor leading and giving military hand signals for changes of pace or direction. We slid down slopes, crossed water and did quiet halts or checks. Students learned to step over a downed tree log, or to pop it from a dead stop, or to stride it, or to jump it. Every lesson had new content.
We learned how much water to let your horse drink at a stream. We learned to put our head and shoulders down low beside our horse's necks to avoid branches in our face in the woods, and to not raise our heads to look when the branches were gone. Instead, we were taught to keep our eye level at our horse's eye level to protect ourselves because horses will protect their eyes and head.
Every student groomed and tacked up their own horse. In the arena, before going out, we rode in a circle as the instructor watched for loose girths and other potential problems. But sometimes girths came loose in the field, and we had to stop wherever we were. The student with the loose girth then had to resaddle their horse out in the open alone while everyone watched in required silence. That was the most uncomfortable punishment, making everyone wait, staring at you, while you fixed your mistake.
It was not easy, but it was so much fun. When I visit a lesson barn today and see lessons with the trainer standing on the ground, yelling "Heels down", while riding students do same repetitive tasks just like they did last week, my heart sinks.
One of the reasons I got fired from my brief stint as an instructor at a Hunter Jumper barn after my divorce was, I took my students out of the arena for simple "Follow me" rides around the property. There was a small drainage ditch along the driveway we would cross by stepping over or by striding it. There was a big pile of gravel behind the barn we'd try to climb with our horses. We'd open and close gates while mounted. I used every possible different footing, change of terrain, and obstacle on the place to test and teach the horses and riders.
That farm never had a lesson group of boys until I began teaching there, but I had five young men in a group who came for the fun and instruction. They all left after I was gone.
I read posts from young instructors who are trying to build a clientele. Comments from other young instructors suggest everything from theme parties at the barn to face painting horses. Such ideas totally ignore the one thing that students want and need, a great riding experience. Yes, today superficial students want entertainment but that is not real instruction. Either is yelling "Heels down."
Real riding instruction is exploring the vast landscape of the abilities of the horse. If you want to build a clientele, offer what serious students want because no one else is these days. I never advertised and always had more students that I needed. We had fun and we learned. That is what good students want.
