On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 07:01:47AM -0400, Karen Thomas wrote: > I'm curious - how do most people on the list pick riding instructors or > trainers? Do you train with someone you've never seen ride?
i do. i sign up for a lesson or two, and either at the end i feel like i'm having fun and learning stuff, or i move on. come to think of it, the instructor i had the most lightning-a-ha! moments with i *still* have never seen ride, except for a few minutes on stjarni (this is roo grubis of southmowing farm in vermont). i'm a bit of an oddity in that for some students i say "here, get off for a moment, let me show you something". i've never had an instructor except for ebba do that for me. but i'm a quicker study visually sometimes, and i've had good results from doing it sometimes, so it's something i keep in my toolbox. but most of my instructors have never done that, any riding i saw them doing was purely incidental. > riding ability, but I'd want to see how they treat the horses themselves, do you take lessons? if so, how did you get started with your instructor? > from the ground AND from the saddle - how much respect they have for the > horses, and what end-goal they strive for, etc. i think the students should be allowed to set their own end-goals, and that the instructor has to keep different goals in mind for their different students. i have one student now whose current goal is to mount under her own power and dismount without panic. i have another (a much better rider than myself) whose goals are to learn a soft following hand and to stay in aligned balance at the canter. *my* goals (which to be honest are primarily "stop being scared of stuff") are not theirs, nor should they invade my lessons -- i have several fearless students and no desire to impart my anxiety disorder to them, nor do i think it would help them whole bunches to understand them very well. > remember taking lessons with seeing someone ride was with the Centered > Riding clinic I took. But then, the Centered Riding program is pretty well > defined, and I'd had the books and videos for years prior. incidentally, after my last clinic, roo (who is a centered riding instructor) suggested i pursue that line of training, and i intend to -- i learned a ton from the clinic and my few cr lessons, and i have gotten a lot out of incorporating bits of it into my instruction. but i am waiting until next spring, when lucile bump will be teaching instructor classes again -- not because i've seen her ride, but because i've seen her teach, and i want to teach more like she does. (i don't know if i want to ride more like she does or not; i did sneak in to see her school her own horse at one point, a huge dressage horse and very green, and while she was amazing to watch i never want to get on that kind of horse myself :) > And, maybe this sounds cold, but I wasn't going to be riding my own horse. i teach on either stjarni or the student's own horse. in one case most of my goal is to get the student to not be scared of her own horse, which we do mostly with groundwork. (she *can* ride her horse and does so outside of our lessons, but it's not the *goal* of our lessons right now. we work on massage, reading the horse's expressions, and defusing scary situations. i hope to move on with her to lessons in the saddle this summer, but i want her to feel comfortable and in control on the ground first. i'll probably start her saddle lessons on stjarni.) > I guess maybe I'd take one trial lesson with someone whose riding I'd never > seen, but only if I were familiar with the discipline (or breed) and I could > judge the horses and riders she'd worked with, but I think it would be hard > for me to take regular lessons with someone I couldn't see ride. i always offer a free trial lesson to those i haven't taught before (i taught a large # of total strangers when i was at the lesson barn). i do not offer to ride for them, since i want them to know me as a teacher, not as a rider, and stjarni does behave differently with beginners than he does with me. though at this point most of my students are old friends or people at my barn, and i can only think of one (who's still in her first half-dozen lessons) who may not yet have seen me on horseback. (the fact that i often end lessons with a "what did you learn, what do you want to work on?" verbal interview and lesson-planning bit with the student, followed by taking stjarni out for a nice relaxing trail ride, probably supports this -- at least they get to see me get on, go around the ring a couple times, open the gate and head for the woods :) one instructor's tuppence. --vicka
