Edelweiss Equestrian

08/31/2022

08/27/2022

07/24/2022

Impulsion is the ingredient that makes dressage exciting and easy to ride, just beware of focusing on it too early in the training.

07/06/2022

A place I long to visit 😍

06/29/2022

Wednesday Wisdom: "First you go with the horse, then the horse goes with you, then you both go together."~ Tom Dorrance

06/25/2022

I am lucky Robert drilled the “circle of energy” into my head and riding for 2 years! 😂🔁

06/23/2022

SITTING TROT (Quick tip)

To practice your sitting trot: STAND UP! Yes that’s right! Standing up in the stirrups while trotting is one of the first steps to real balance.

It’s done in all the European military schools (e.g. Spanish School of Riding). Not jumping position leaning over, but STRAIGHT UP.

Are you wobbling around up there? When you learn to absorb through your joints - hip, knee and ankle joints, up there standing in trot, then your sitting trot stands a chance of being good too.

If you can’t stand with a tiny gap between your p***c bone and the saddle standing fully, your stirrups are too long to help your balance. And, your heels will be up. If the gap is Huge when you stand, your stirrups are too short.

Good luck with this exercise!

06/14/2022

My kiddos love their purina food and on a day like today, this would be the perfect addition!

Introducing: Purina® RepleniMash™ product, a palatable mash to nourish your horse and their digestive system!

See how it’s much more than a mash: http://spr.ly/6186zRGKo

06/13/2022

Very eye opening!

What riders actually need to know about anatomy….
The cervical vertebrae are the most flexible. The poll joint (between the skull and first vertebrae) is responsible for most of the flexion/extension (nod yes) and lateral bend here helps relax the whole spine. Between C1 and C2 is where the horse does most of his twisting action- like when the ears go left and the nose goes right. All the joints between the cervical vertebrae have some lateral bend, but those at the base of the neck are actually more flexible. As riders we are often working to stabilize the lateral movement at the base of the neck, while encouraging bend at the poll joint.
The Thoracic region is connected to the ribcage and therefore quite stable. The saddle must sit on this area and not bear weight on the lumbar area. The Thoracic area does not experience much lateral bend, but what does bend is typically around the 10th to 12th vertebras, and is accompanied by axial rotation. This means that when we say that we are "bending" the ribcage, we are really rotating the ribcage. This is why sitting to the inside of the bend is so effective- like sitting in a rowboat in the water, if you sit to the left of the row boat, the left side dips down and the right side will come up out of the water slightly. If you rowed in this position, the boat will undoubtedly turn left even though you may row evenly. The nice part about the bend and rotation happening around the 10th to 12th thoracic vertebras is that is conveniently about where our thigh sits while riding. The rider has great influence over the horse's balance- whether it is on purpose or not!
The lumber spine has some rotational ability but very little lateral bend ability. Even the flexion/extension is not as prevalent as you may think, even though we can clearly witness it when their horse tucks his pelvis. Where all that flexion/extension comes from in the lumbosacral joint. The dorsal processes of the lumbar area point forwards, and those of the sacral area point backwards, making a V at the Lumbosacral joint. This is where the horse can really flex the back up or down. When a horse sits behind and tucks his pelvis, it's the lumbosacral joint that does the work. This is not to be confused with the very close by Sacroiliac (SI) joint. The SI joint is where the pelvis connects to the spine and has hardly any mobility at all.
The sacrum is comprised of 5 sacral vertebrae and they have no movement considering they are fused together.

If you find value in our posts, please follow us at Rudy Horsemanship.

05/31/2022

“Everything you do with a horse is a dance.” -Buck Brannaman

05/30/2022

The with Usher (aka Sammy)! ⚓️

05/29/2022

05/26/2022

Nothing living is perfectly symmetrical.

My left foot is bigger than my right foot and no amount of bodywork will change that.

Cut my body in half and I could also wear two different bra sizes. My right eye lid sits a little lower.
I can do the raised Elvis lip on my right side but not my left.

Got it. No one is symmetrical.

But are you balanced? Probably not.

As a right handed person, I spend my life doing completely different things with the right side of my body.

Shooting a basketball, curling my hair, throwing a rope, playing my guitar, and washing dishes all look completely different from my right side’s perspective to the left.

In general, the left side is creating stability while the right side is doing the doing, where it needs mobility.

I’m not practicing my guitar or rope throwing with my left hand. Literally ever.

The fascia is tightly wound into these patterns. Muscle memory. Fascial orientation.

Rabbit trail for the hand therapist in me: people typically have arthritis in their non dominant hands first.

When you come home with a load of groceries, you put all of the bags in your left hand so you can put the key in the door and turn the k**b with your right hand.

The non-dominant side does the “heavy” work with the right side does the “pretty”work.

Point being: humans are unbalanced.

A lot of horse demands are unbalanced too.

They have a naturally easier side just like we do, but then we give them jobs.

Rope horses get roped off of the same side every time, headers pull left, barrel racers make the same pattern, racing horses run left, and not all endurance riders are ensuring equal time on each lead.

Add in that they are hauled in the trailer facing the same diagonal every single mile and you have a crooked horse.

Again. Facial patterns are created.

We can train them for more balance - and we absolutely should - but at the end of the day they’re still usually doing repetitive patterns and carrying imbalanced people on them.

A horse can be functionally balanced and not symmetrical.

I owe it to every single horse to treat them as the individual they are, to find their functional balance, and not treat them as the ideal pictures in textbooks and research articles.

05/21/2022

It's been a while, but here it is: Personal space invasion misconception #3!

You get more of what you reward, so make sure you provide clarity to your horse. (Without threats and violence of course)

Link for #1: http://ow.ly/TNEen
Link for #2: http://ow.ly/TNEcZ
Link for #4: http://ow.ly/TNEB0

Check out the other 10(!) reasons horse come into our personal space, and how to deal with them in this article:

http://horse-charming.com/2015/01/20/dominance-disrespect-and-the-real-reasons-why-horses-come-into-our-space/

05/21/2022

This is so important ❤️

The horse is not here to reward your ego, to compete with you, to punish you, to control you.

The horse responds to who you are, how you feel, what you think, what you do.

The horse is here to enable you to learn how to be a better YOU - and that is a blessing.

Joanna Verikios

05/21/2022

The goal of all dressage riding should be to bring the horse and rider together in harmony...a oneness of balance, purpose, and athletic expression.

-Walter Zettl

05/18/2022

Heaven on earth!

05/15/2022

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.

05/15/2022

Yoyo dropping it low! 🔥

05/13/2022

This is an extremely informative article!

3 TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR CANTER DEPARTS
We receive a lot of questions about how you can improve the canter or the canter depart. This is obviously a major issue for many riders. This topic is very suitable for explaining the biomechanical principles behind it.

But before I get into this in further detail, I should let you know that we have an entire course that takes you step-by-step through every phase of developing your horse in the canter: from preparing your horse for canter work in the walk and trot, all the way to counter canter and ready to begin the Flying Changes. If you would like to be first to know when we open the doors for the next round of the Canter Transformation Course, here is a link:- Sign-up for the waitlist https://courses.artisticdressage.com/2022-canter-course-wait-list?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=3tips-canter&utm_content=&utm_campaign=canter-waitlist

THE BIOMECHANICS OF THE CANTER

It is the outside hind leg that lifts horse and rider into the canter. The more it steps under the body and flexes its joints before the canter depart, the more uphill the canter will be.

The more the outside hind leg lags behind or the more it escapes to the side, the flatter, faster, and more downhill the canter will be.

Consequently, to improve the canter depart, the rider’s task consists of transferring the body weight onto the hind leg which will be the outside one in the canter.

This can be achieved by:
🐴 Crossing over with the inside hind leg
🐴 2 half halts when the outside hind leg is on the ground
🐴 Turns (especially corners, voltes, turns on the haunches)

You can combine these elements in any number of ways to increase their effectiveness.

Their effect can be further enhanced by bringing the hind leg that is going to be the outside one in the canter more under the body first. Shoulder-in, counter shoulder-in, and turns on the forehand in motion are especially suitable for this.

Here are some exercises you can try.

ENLARGING THE CIRCLE
An exercise that is as simple as it is effective is enlarging the circle. Ask your horse to enlarge the circle for 2 strides on the open side. This transfers the weight to the outside hind leg. The horse should move over one horse’s width.

Tips:
🐴 It is important that the front legs and hind legs move out the same amount. Otherwise, the horse gets crooked and falls onto the forehand.
🐴 Immediately after the enlarging, apply 2 half halts when the outside hind leg is on the ground (you can support the half halts with a stirrup pressure into the outside stirrup). This increases the weight shift to the outside hind leg.
🐴 The aids for enlarging the circle, the half halts, and the canter aid are all applied when the outside hind leg is on the ground and the inside hind leg is in the air. This makes it easy for the rider to get the timing of the aids right.

COUNTER SHOULDER-IN ON THE CIRCLE
Another highly effective exercise is the counter shoulder-in on the circle.

Ask the hindquarters to move one hoof’s width into the circle for a few strides, while the horse is slightly counter bending. This brings the original outside hind leg more underneath the body.

After a few strides let the hind legs return to the outside track and restore the normal bend to the inside. This transfers the weight to the outside hind leg.

Immediately afterwards, flex this hind leg with 2 half halts and ask for the canter, so that the canter depart is a consequence of the flexion of the outside hind leg and the horse sees it as a relief.

Tips:
🐴 The aids for sidestepping are always applied when the crossing hind leg is in the air.
🐴 Half halts are always applied when the targeted hind leg is on the ground since you want to flex it with the help of the body mass.
🐴 The canter aid is applied when the inside hind leg lifts off.

SHOULDER-IN, TURN ON THE HAUNCHES, CANTER
A third exercise that works very reliably consists of a shoulder-in, followed by a turn on the haunches and an immediate canter depart.

How does it work?
🐴 The shoulder-in brings the inside hind leg under the body.
🐴 The turn on the haunches transfers the body mass onto the inside hind leg and makes the old inside hind leg into the new outside hind leg.
🐴 The new outside hind leg can now lift the horse into the canter right after the turn on the haunches.

Tips:
🐴 If you were riding the shoulder-in at the trot, you have to transition down to walk or halt for the turn on the haunches.
🐴 This exercise is even more effective if you start a volte immediately upon completion of the turn on the haunches, and ask for the canter depart in the beginning of the volte.
🐴 The sooner the horse transitions into the canter after the turn on the haunches, the more the effects of the shoulder-in and turn on the haunches will still be present.

We would love to hear from you how these exercises work for you and your horse if you decide to try them out.

If you are ready to transform your horse's canter, please join us for the next round of the Canter Transformation Course. To get on the waitlist to be notified as soon as the doors open on the next round, click here:-
https://courses.artisticdressage.com/2022-canter-course-wait-list?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=3tips-canter&utm_content=&utm_campaign=canter-waitlist

05/10/2022

This girl was the inspiration for the name “Edelweiss Equestrian”. The haflinger comes from the high alpine mountains of Tyrol, Austria. Found there are many beautiful edelweiss flowers. It is also the haflinger brand.
This girl has been there for me when I didn’t think I could continue this dream. She is everything to me, she is my edelweiss flower. 💕🌺

05/10/2022

Just some pictures of some wonderful horses and what I do here at Edelweiss Equestrian.
I am a dressage rider with a classical training foundation. I take my dressage foundation into working with every horse, from a trail horse to a Grand Prix dressage horse. At the same time, I put a huge focus on ground work, natural horsemanship, liberty work, in hand work and tricks to keep it fun for the horse!
I am not your average “school in the arena every day” dressage rider. My goal is to make a PARTNERSHIP between horse and rider, whether that is in the dressage ring, on the trail or on the ground.
I have spent time training with and working for trainers such as Morten Thomsen, Catherine Haddad Staller, Robert Dover, Ulf Möller, Markus Gribbe and Sabine Schut Kery.
I am open to taking on training horses, sales horses, finding your next equine partner, lessons (video or in person), ground work lessons, liberty and trick lessons, clinics, horse show coaching and horse evaluations.
Message me on Facebook if you are interested or have any questions!

And remember, at its finest, a rider and horse are not joined by tack, but by trust. Each is totally reliant upon the other. Each is the selfless guardian of the other’s well-being.

05/09/2022

The limit is beyond the sky! ☀️☁️