g.) Clinic # 7: The T'ai Chi Walk and Lateral Work
The old masters would say: prepare, prepare and let it happen. Through the previous courses you’ve been preparing your horse for lateral work. Now it’s time to use some deceptively simple lessons to have them “pop out”.
Clinic #7: The T'ai Chi Walk and Lateral Work
It’s time to pop out lateral flexions.
When I first learned about teaching lateral work, there was a lot of crashing and bashing on horses. The result was beautiful - the process for getting there not so much.
So nowadays when I see lateral flexions pop out of lessons such as the “Why Would You Leave Me?” Game, I can’t help but giggle. It can’t be this easy! But it is.
The old masters would say: prepare, prepare and let it happen. And that’s what we’ve done. Through the previous courses you’ve been preparing your horse. You’ve built the repertoire using loopy training. You’re ready for lateral flexions to pop out. In fact they probably already are, but it’s possible you didn’t recognize what was happening.
So in this course we’re going to use some deceptively simple lessons to bring them out into the spotlight.
You’ll be starting with the duct tape lesson and the “Why Would You Leave Me?” Game. That will provide the framework for building two powerhouse lessons: three-flip-three and hip-shoulder-shoulder. Together they will help you will pop out lateral work and prepare your horse for riding.
I know these somewhat whimsical names may not tell you very much right now. They are just names that help us differentiate one lesson from another. The first time you hear me refer to them, these names make as much sense as calling them Harriet, Peter, Mary, and Charles. But don’t worry. Once I describe the lessons, the names will make more sense.
In the “T’ai Chi Walk and Lateral Work” course, I’ll do more than describe the lessons. I’ve developed some Awareness Explorations that help you appreciate just how really neat these lessons are. We’ll be using reversibility, the teaching strategy I introduced in the Rope Handling course, to tease apart the critical weight shifts that lead to performance excellence.
We’ll be connecting some important dots and bringing in new training patterns. These are components that we’ll be using in Course #8: “Riding from the Ground Up”. So this “T’ai Chi Walk and Lateral Work” clinic is an important prep for riding.
3-Flip-3 lateral flexions help this beautiful draft cross to be as light as a feather in hand.