Mark Rashid clinic - day one, afternoon

The afternoon session had four horses in it.

Horse 4 was an older horse (18) who had been off work for a while. (There was no PA at this point so I couldn't hear everything - I think the horse had been off with cushings ?). The mare was now back in work and being aimed at dressage, eventing etc.

The rider asked to work on the stop. The horse was stopping with a lot of tension, bumping into the bit. They worked on feel - Mark suggested the rider *think* about the hand going forward in the halt, but not actually move the hand.

They then worked on the canter transition (up and down). After about half a lap the horse started to really get going. Mark advised asking for trot just before that.

Horse 5 was a youngster being ridden western. He was started last year and was being ridden in a Rockin S snaffle. The rider reported that work out on a hack was fine but it was much harder to, for example, collect the canter in the school. Mark observed that the trot was drifting about quite a lot rather than being straight. He set out four cones to ride a circle around and the trot and focus both improved.

Horse 6 was a big chestnut 8 year old. The rider wants to do dressage with him. She has done a test with him but felt she wasn't getting the same in the warm up arena vs the test.

Mark observed that the rider had quite a lot of movement in her hands. He commented that a to and fro with the rider's hands means that the horse never gets a release and that can result in tension. The more active a rider is with their hands, the more the horse has to compensate. He asked the rider to do less.

Horse 7 was an arab mare. Again it was hard to catch the back story but I believe the horse was being rehabilitated by the current owner. She commented on getting weight back on and getting chiropractic treatments. The rider asked for the mare to be checked before riding to ensure there were no underlying physical issues (own vets have cleared the horse to be ridden). She was worked in the round pen and, although tense, showed no physical issues to prevent her being ridden.

Mark did an interesting ground exercise with a spectator during this session. He asked them to stand still and resist him making them move.

If they had their head and eyes up, they were stable and could resist a "push"
If they had their head and eyes down, they were unstable.
Then head up but eyes down - unstable
Head down, eyes up - stable
and finally (and this is the really interesting one)
Head down, eyes down but think up - the person was stable and resisted a push
Head up, eyes up but think down - and the person was unstable when pushed.

It makes a massive difference if the rider drops head, eye line or isn't thinking ahead/up !

In summary:

I asked my clinic companion what he thought - he said "the key lesson is that you really need to have a pretty good view of what you want to do or the horse will fill in the blanks"

I think another key message was "less is more" (less with the hands, less leaning back, less movement etc)