The Professionals

Connection At HorseBack, we support veterans by helping them develop a toolbox of techniques to keep them mentally healthy and horses are the catalyst and the feedback mechanism. We’ve witnessed so many people make breakthroughs when they connect with a horse. They feel intensely moved, or calmed, or even consoled. They build a sense of love and responsibility to the horse, and this sets up a beautiful virtuous circle. The human’s mind settles, so the horse’s mind settles too, and then they go on together. Removing isolation And perhaps most importantly, as this connection is made, the veterans know that they are not alone. They’ve got a precious partnership with this kind, strong, sentient creature. They are in it together. One of the most debilitating symptoms of mental health struggles is an acute feeling of isolation. When we put our veterans with our horses, those veterans are no longer isolated; they have a partner and they have a purpose, and this makes all the difference. Working with horses can bring so many benefits - even just a short session with a horse and a trained facilitator can create significant breakthroughs. And regular contact can help support people through their mental health recovery and help keep them healthy - even when life delivers something unexpected or challenging.

www.horseback.org.uk

About the author...

Emma Hutchison is cofounder of HorseBack UK, a multi-award-winning Scottish charity based near Aboyne, in the Scottish Highlands. HorseBack UK works to improve health and wellbeing by inspiring recovery, positive change and renewed purpose amongst those who need it most and improving education and employment prospects for those who are disadvantaged or marginalised. Using horsemanship, equine assisted learning, rural skills and the outdoors the charity delivers award-winning projects and personal development programmes that encourage participants to acquire new coping strategies, life skills and lasting resilience whilst gaining nationally recognised awards and qualifications.

By Jessica Gale

6 Ways

TO MAKE YOUR SESSIONS MORE FUN!

Incorporating a bit of dressage or flatwork into your sessions can be hugely beneficial for any horse and rider, no matter whether you spend the majority of your time hacking in the countryside or your focus is more on jumping.

Dressage can help to make your horse more supple and athletic, it builds your control over your horse’s body, it can help to improve your horse’s obedience and reactions to your aids and it can help improve your balance and strength as a rider. But even though dressage has all these benefits it is still very common for me to have riders saying ‘dressage is boring’ or ‘my horse hates flatwork’. For me I think making your dressage sessions varied, different and fun is the key so I have put together a list of six ideas for you to try to mix up your dressage sessions and make them more enjoyable for you and your horse. 1. Setting goals

Working out what you want to work on and setting goals will help give your dressage and flatwork sessions more direction.

These goals could be centred around things you want to improve about your own riding or a certain aspect of your horse’s way of going that you want to improve. If you’ve done any dressage tests before you could look at the Judge’s comments to give you some ideas for a goal or ask your instructor. A few examples could be to get your horse taking you more forward or reacting to your leg more quickly; or to work on your horse staying round in the trot canter transitions or to work on having quieter, more still hands. Once you have a goal have a think about some exercises or things you could try in your sessions to help you achieve your goal. You could have a lesson with an instructor and ask them to give you some things to try at home or you could have a look

online for some exercises to try. Getting that buzz when you finally achieve that goal you’ve been working on and you feel the improvement in your horse and your riding will give you that excitement and motivation to want to do it all again. 2. Mix things up in your training

Don’t be afraid to mix things up in your dressage sessions either. You don’t have to do the same circles and changes of rein every day. Changing things up will also help to keep your horse enjoying the session too.

You could try riding a different transition every ten steps to test your control and your horse’s reactions to your aids or try riding some new and different shapes of different sizes to test your control over your horse’s body and help you improve your accuracy. You could try teaching your horse a new movement like a leg yield or simple changes or try a new exercise every session. There is now so much easy-toaccess information out there on different exercises and things to try with your horse so don’t be afraid to push the boat out and give some new exercises a go. If you ever get stuck I’d always advise going and having a lesson with someone who can give you exercises that would be most beneficial for you and your horse. 3. Go for a lesson

For me, having a lesson really boosts my motivation.

A lot of the time dressage can be very frustrating and confusing and it’s so easy to get caught up in that frustration when your dressage training isn’t going how you want it to. Having a lesson can often clear up exactly what is going wrong and what you need to do to get you and your horse where you want to be. Finding an instructor that gives you that buzz and makes you feel motivated and excited to go home and try everything you’ve learnt can make a huge difference to how much you enjoy your training at home. 5. Take your sessions out of the arena

I think there’s a big misconception that you’re only doing dressage if you’re in a

4. Ride with friends

If you have other riders on your yard, you could suggest doing

your dressage sessions together. You can then share ideas and try exercises together; you may also be able to help each other with issues or problems you come across during your sessions. If you don’t have other riders on your yard joining a local riding club or pony club is a great way to meet new people and most tend to have regular dressage clinics with local instructors that can help you improve your riding whilst meeting new people. Some clubs even run overnight camps where you can pack in even more social time alongside your dressage lessons. A lot of camps have off-the-horse sessions too like assessing your position; nutrition, vet or physio talks; strength and conditioning sessions; BBQs and time to just relax with friends and horses.

rectangular arena when in fact so much of your dressage training could be done whilst you are hacking or out in an open field somewhere.

Especially with my young horses, a lot of my training I do on hills and out in the open where there’s more space, they see the world and get used to different footings. Pretty much any exercise you do in an arena you can do out hacking; you could try leg yielding your horse to each side of the road and think about which way feels easier or ride a few transitions to teach your horse to listen and react to your aids more quickly, or a great one that is really beneficial is to practice your medium walk to free walk and back to medium walk again. 6. Polework

Adding poles into your sessions is a great way to do something different with your flatwork sessions.

A great exercise is to set out two poles down the long side and canter over them both counting how many strides your horse does between the two poles; then your aim is to get one more stride in between those poles by shortening your horse’s canter. From there the challenge is to see how short you can get your horse’s canter and how many strides you can fit in between those two poles. And you can go the other way too, and see how few strides you can fit in by lengthening your horse’s paces too. This is a great exercise because it teaches your horse to lengthen and shorten their strides but gives you that goal JESSICA GALE IS A BDCC AND UKCC LEVEL 2 COACH WHO HAS COMPETED UP TO SMALL TOUR. JESS COACHES RIDERS UP TO SMALL TOUR AND RUNS ‘DECOMPLICATING DRESSAGE’, A SITE DEDICATED TO ACCESSIBLE DRESSAGE TRAINING AND INFORMATION. THE SITE INCLUDES PODCASTS, TRAINING ARTICLES, VIDEO INSTRUCTION AND CHALLENGES.

and challenge which always makes things more fun. Hopefully this has given you a few ideas to try. And if you start to feel like you are finding dressage more boring again, don’t be afraid to mix things up and try something new!

www.decomplicating dressage.com

THE PERFECT WARM-UP

To discover more about Shane, visit breenequestrian.com

The key to a good warmup is knowing how much you need to do with your horse – while being careful to avoid overdoing things. The aim is to get your horse settled, get their body moving, and to do enough practice fences for him to feel relaxed and confident before going into the ring.

In showjumping, some classes will have a drawn order – where you can make a good estimate of what time you’ll be jumping – while others will require you to give your number to a steward to put on a board. “When it’s a drawn order, I will work backwards to figure out my timings, and also make sure the rest of my horses’ rounds fit in between them so I can give each horse the attention they need,” says Shane. “If it’s blackboard order, it’s up to you to put yourself on the board to then make a plan, so you need to make sure you have enough time to warm-up properly.” Make sure you allow enough time to work in in walk, trot and canter on both reins, before you jump your first practice fence. “I’ll usually do a bit of flatwork for around twenty minutes before starting to do any jumping,” he says. As to how many jumps you should do in the warm-up, that depends on your horse’s temperament and level of experience. “In general, I would aim to do 4-5 small verticals and then go to the oxer and do 4-5 of those, depending on how the horse is jumping. I like to finish by jumping two verticals, the final one being the same height as the class I’m about to jump. In total, I usually do twelve warm up jumps before heading to the ring for the first round,” he explains. With younger horses, Shane will make sure they are confident over smaller practice fences before putting the height up. “I’ll give them a few extra smaller jumps, so they’re focused on their job and you have their full attention, before jumping anything bigger. A more experienced horse might only need a few jumps. They know the job so they don’t need to do much before they go into the ring. It’s more important that their body is warmed up and they are comfortable in themselves.” If you have a sharp horse, it can be tempting to do quite a lot in the warm-up arena, but Shane advises against this. “With the sharper ones, I don’t jump them much in the warm-up so they don’t get stressed,” he adds. IRISH INTERNATIONAL SHOWJUMPER SHANE BREEN IS A RENOWNED TRAINER, BREEDER AND PRODUCER OF HORSES. HERE HE SHARES HIS ADVICE ON HOW HE CHOOSES TO WARM-UP BEFORE A CLASS.

SHANE’S TOP TIPS

4 Stay calm – even though warm-up arenas can be stressful places at times! 4 Pass left to left, and try to go in the same direction as the other horses as much as possible 4 Don’t hog the practice fence 4 Don’t put out ground poles – this sort of training exercise should be done at home 4 Plan your timings as best as possible

Shane Breen is one of the leading contenders for the Al Shira’aa Derby at Hickstead on Sunday 26th June. Tickets are available now from www.hickstead.co.uk

RIDING FITNESS DURING

My own experiences as a rider underpin everything I do with ‘Ready To Ride’. I have learnt so much along the way – and continue to do so – and have benefitted enormously from my professional knowledge and experience. This makes me incredibly lucky, and also in the unique position to share this mix of professional and personal learning and progress.

A time that can be extremely challenging for riders is pregnancy. On the one hand, this is a time of great excitement and anticipation, yet for many riders not only does it mean a spell out of the saddle and a break from training and competing, but also the onslaught of endless debate about whether or not they should be riding. I am not going to cover this here, although I will say that I feel blessed to have had a midwife and consultant who were totally happy with me riding right through my second, high-risk pregnancy. I think they knew that from a mental health perspective it was the best thing for me! One of the biggest challenges of all for any female athlete – and yes, riders are most definitely athletes – who becomes pregnant, is dealing with the immense physical changes in their body, and the very lengthy return to anything resembling pre-pregnancy fitness after baby has arrived. The post-baby body is an incredible thing and deserves eternal respect, but those of us who still want to do a good job in our sport want our body to help us out! Until recently, the guidelines for returning to any form of exercise have been scant, although this is changing thankfully. For riders the task of maintaining fitness during pregnancy, and then regaining it afterwards, is perhaps made harder by the fact that the key areas for us to be strong yet mobile, are the low back, pelvis and hips. This is of course, the area of our bodies that is most affected by pregnancy; obviously with the mechanical impact of the bump, but also due to the longer term effects of ligament laxity, and

PREGNANCY CHARTERED PHYSIOTHERAPIST the workload placed on the LOUISE TOWL IS abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. FOUNDER OF If we can continue to work ‘READY TO RIDE during pregnancy, on maintaining strength around the PHYSIOTHERAPY low back, pelvis and hips, in a AND PILATES’ manner that is specific to the requirements of riding, this will AND HAS CREATED make the return to full fitness ONLINE COURSES significantly easier post-natally. This is in part because the THAT OFFER baseline level of strength or HELPFUL ADVICE fitness will be maintained at a higher level, but also because by FOR FEMALE AND continuing to work on key principles such as symmetry and PREGNANT RIDERS. controlled movement, we are of the second and third much less likely to fall into Trimesters, along with lots of unhelpful movement patterns advice. The content is a mix of which then have to be Physio and Pilates, you can do unpicked…. full sessions each time, or pick Once again, I know I am lucky. I the parts that you feel benefit knew what to do during my you the most and keep repeating pregnancies when it came to safe them. exercise that would help with My focus throughout is helping riding-specific fitness. Most other to maintain dynamic stability for women aren’t in that position, an independent seat, and which is why I have created the strength in the upper body for a Pregnancy Fitness For Riders consistent contact, all in a way course. It is a three hour, self- that is easy to manage during study programme, comprising of pregnancy. three exercise sessions for each www.readytoride.online