Love, love, love this!
A favorite of mine, courtesy of someone here on COTH whose identify I’ve forgotten 
: “One of you has to relax first. And it is not going to be the horse.”
Adding: From a clinic with Peter Wylde we audited. Can’t recall his exact wording, but it was to the effect of: “He’s being a little rude. We just need to gently reeducate & remind of the polite response we’re looking for.”
So true!
Posting these on my whiteboard
Thanks!
“Stick out your belly button.”
I’ve always been told to put my shoulders back but the belly button concept has changed my life.
When exactly can a horse move a hoof unless it’s in The Air?
“You need a new horse, and a new instructor.”
Seriously honest information from an internationally known clinician. The instructor had organized the clinic. The horse was limited to third level success maybe. It meant a lot.
@mvp
The leg is indeed redirected only while it is in flight.
My world shifted when I realized what leg I was actually addressing: when that leg-in-flight is changing course, there is a limb with ground contact that is pushing the leg-in-flight in the new direction.
You can find this, just walking yourself: notice the inertia of, say, your left leg in a consistent walking stride straight forward for ten or twenty steps. Then plan to redirect your LEFT leg to the left, but continue walking straight until you make the transition…then feel your RIGHT leg muscles engage, feel the change in the ground contact in your RIGHT foot, as you redirect your LEFT leg to the left.
And best advice? Might be when I was given instructions from our neighbor, bringing the cattle in from a huge pasture: whatever you do, don’t piss off the bulls. (In other words, don’t get greedy, and don’t bite off more than you can chew)
I really don’t know!
I had neighbors who were in their 80’s at the old house. One day, their cattle escaped while their adult son who also lived on the property wasn’t home & the husband was out alone among 50 head, trying to herd them from a golf cart. I went over to help. Seeing me growl & wave a stick at a particularly sassy young bull calf, the wife poked her head out the door & yelled, “That’s right honey! Never trust an intact male of any species!”
It was all I could do not to fall down laughing 
post like you are pushing the table away from you. meaning from your belly button
Never ride for just a ribbon, ride to better yourself, the horse, and the sport. Always ride what the horse gives you on the day, not what he gave you yesterday.
But most importantly ride what gives you joy, and then give that joy back to the horse.
I have two. One was a visualization given from my regular trainer, which was that if you have a big, fluffly, lush Mattes half pad pulled up into the gullet of your saddle, your hands should be placed so that your pinky fingers graze the fleece with every step.
The other was Arthus Kottas, who asked me why I was riding each stride differently. “If you liked the balance in the last stride, why did you change it?” Sure enough, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. The well-schooled horse should maintain the balance, energy, and direction until I ask for something else explicitly.
“A million times uberstreichen. And then again.” This sticks with me for every ride.
“if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.”
The late, great director of my university’s choir department used to regularly yell, “If you’re going to sin, sin big!!” Mostly in rehearsals for the advanced, 16-person chamber choir, where you were alone on your part when the music called for an additional split within sections, and you might be standing across an entire church nave from the only other person in your section. People had the habit of trying to casually sneak into the chord when they couldn’t hear the relative pitches from anywhere around them.
Applies just as well to riding, imo!
I hear this one go both ways, especially in the H/J world. Can’t get good at cantering without cantering! I think there’s some value to both thoughts. 
I think the first one refers to the horse. The second one refers to the rider.
LOL! As a former choir nerd I can totally relate to that. My jumper coach always used to tell me “you don’t always have to be right, but you ALWAYS have to be definite” about finding a distance. It certainly applies to riding!
Sin big - I like that. When I finally embraced the whole making mistakes thing, it revolutionized my life - violin, riding, sculpting, languages - everything. When I was teaching violin, I noticed that my least confident students were the ones who were most afraid of making a mistake. So, with these students, I used to do whole lessons where we would sight-read, play back and forth by ear, play through a piece without stopping, improvise - with the mantra being “make mistakes with wild abandon”. Yes, it was very situational and specific to these students - they needed to learn that making mistakes is part of the process of improvement. It is not a reflection of their person, nor is it a reflection of their value. It is a moment - a second - an infinitesimal part of their life - and the germ of change.
I am easier on my horses and gentler in my training and clearer in my aids since I accepted that nothing is perfect the first time and mistakes will be made. My horses are sure grateful, and so am I.
Teaching everything from the ground first. I never realized how much I could teach my horse from the ground! Even all of the lateral movements including half pass & pirouettes and the collected movements like piaffe and passage. Makes it so much easier to teach under saddle & it also provides a really easy way to get them doing a little work in funny weather.
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