Your riding shapes your horse – more than you think
I help you understand how your riding influences your horse – so you can make the best decisions in your training.
We ask a lot of our horses.
We ask them to carry us, to work for us, to respond to small signals, and all of that often in very unnatural situations.
That comes with a responsibility.
Not just to ride – but to ride in a way that preserves the horse’s physical and mental health.
Many of the problems riders struggle with are not caused by the horse.
They are the result of how the horse is ridden and trained over time.
Not because the horse does not understand things, but because the rider does not yet see what is happening.
What you feel in the saddle is not random. It is the result of how you ride, how you react, and how willing you are to refine what you do.
That is where I work.
I help you understand what is happening between you and your horse – so you can make the best decisions in your riding and training.
The problem nobody talks about at the riding school
Horses are not built to be ridden.
That sounds radical, but it’s simply biomechanics. A horse already carries most of its weight on its front legs — the long neck and heavy head pull the balance forward. Then we add a rider, disturbing the horse’s natural center of gravity. Anyone who has ever shouldered a too-heavy backpack knows that feeling: your balance shifts, your body braces, and everything suddenly costs more effort.
So how can we help a horse to carry a rider without causing damage to its body?
The suspension bridge
Think of a horse’s back as a suspension bridge. When the horse is just walking around being a horse, the bridge is working fine.
Now we put a rider on top – and more weight on the bridge. The result is that the bridge will start sagging in the middle. The first times a young horse is ridden can be a perfect demonstration of that: the rider mounts, the back of the horse goes down, and the neck and head go up. Just because the horse isn’t strong enough (yet) to carry the rider.
Riding a horse in that shape is not only uncomfortable for the rider – it is also uncomfortable for the horse. And over time it will create irreversible damage. So therefore we want to, as we call it in riding ‘get the back up’. We want the horse to stretch its neck down and thereby pulling the sagging ‘bridge’ up again.
How to get the back up again
If a suspension bridge is sagging, it’s not enough to just pull on one side. Because if the bridge is not sufficiently anchored on the other side, it might make the whole bridge lean. And the same is valid in horse riding.
To get a horse’s back up, we want the neck to stretch down. But that is not enough. A horse grazing in the field all day is stretching its neck beautifully – but it doesn’t really help strengthen its back muscles. Just stretching the one side might put even more weight on the front of the horse, and unbalance the horse even more.
The suspension bridge needs to be anchored on both ends to be both load-bearing and flexible.
In the horse, that anchor is the backside of the horse. Or, to put it more precisely: the hind legs stepping actively under in such a way that the horse’s natural balance is restored, and the ‘bridge’ (the horse’s back) is pulled into the best weight-bearing position.
The relaxation factor
This is the goal that good riding works towards in every single session: restore the horse’s natural horizontal balance, encourage free forward stretch, and develop the hindquarters to carry more of the load that the rider adds to the front. Not through force. Through patient, systematic training.
To be successful with that training also requires a horse that is mentally relaxed enough to want to stretch. And here, how we keep horses matters enormously.
In my experience, that relaxation comes far more easily to a horse living outside with companions – moving freely, eating throughout the day as horses are designed to do – than to a horse kept alone in a box, body and mind both coiled tight.
The living conditions of the horse are not a separate topic. They are part of the training equation.
Where our riding knowledge comes from
Much of what we know about systematic horse training comes from a perhaps surprising source: the military.
Armies needed horses that stayed sound and cooperative over years of hard use. That made good horsemanship a practical necessity, not an aesthetic ideal. The German military in particular developed a highly structured training system – one that is still the foundation of most serious riding instruction today.
What they discovered, over generations of working with horses, was something that sounds very modern: a happy, not-overtaxed horse stays healthy and usable the longest. The training manuals they produced nearly a hundred years ago are still valid today, because they were built on observation of what actually works in the horse’s body and mind.
Take your time
The essence of their approach: take time, work with the horse’s nature rather than against it, and develop the hindquarters progressively to protect the horse’s body from the burden of the rider. Pushing a young horse into hard work before its body is ready – horses are not fully physically mature until seven or eight years old – is no different from sending a child to work in the mines. The damage may not be immediately visible, but it comes.
Of course, those old cavalry manuals were written under the demands of military life, where the horse served the mission. We are in a different position today. We know more about what horses need – about living conditions, saddle fit, the relationship between management and training, the signs of physical discomfort that earlier generations may have missed or ignored. The old framework is sound. How we apply it keeps evolving, and that is how it should be.
What we have lost
For most of the twentieth century, riding schools were run by people trained in that military tradition. Strict, technical, insisting on things being done the right way – sometimes frustratingly so. But the focus was on building correct foundations in both horse and rider, however long that took.
Much of that technical knowledge has since been lost. Modern sport horses offer enormous power and athleticism. The pressure for quick results and impressive appearances has never been greater. And much of the foundational work – the slow, ‘boring’, unsexy business of actually teaching a horse to carry a rider correctly – gets skipped.
The result is visible everywhere: horses with kissing spines, back issues, chronic lameness, and with behavioral problems that get labeled as ‘being difficult” when they are actually simply a sign that the horse is in pain. Most, if not all, of these problems could have been prevented by more careful training and better management – and by better riding.
Riding is simple. It is not easy.
People sometimes assume that riding is a passive activity: sitting on a horse while the horse does the work. The reality is almost the opposite. Riding demands a lot of control of your own body and mind, and the ability to give precise, consistent signals on a moving animal with lightning-quick reflexes and a mind of its own. Finding your own balance while helping a horse find its balance is a genuine athletic and intellectual challenge.
And yet: it can be learned. By every rider, on every type of horse. Not just sport horses with expensive breeding and professional trainers. Your backyard horse deserves to be ridden in a way that keeps it sound, healthy and willing just as much as any competition horse does. Good systems exist precisely for this — they give you building blocks that work regardless of what horse you’re sitting on.
Horses are stronger than humans
Which brings us back to willingness. Even the smallest pony is stronger than almost any human.
The fact that horses cooperate with us at all is, when you think about it, remarkable. We cannot force a horse to work with us – not really, not sustainably. That cooperation has to be earned, and kept, through training and handling that the horse experiences as fair.
This is also why it is necessary for a horse to be able to do its work with a relaxed state of mind.
You cannot whip an athlete into peak performance. A tense, anxious horse cannot use its body correctly, cannot stretch through its back, cannot engage its hindquarters – no matter how much pressure you apply. The relaxation has to come first. Everything else follows from it.
My teaching is a bridge
A good riding teacher doesn’t just teach movements, or endless jumps. Every lesson involves reading the whole situation — the rider’s body and confidence, the horse’s physical possibilities and state of mind, the circumstances, the history, the goal. And adapting to all of that, without losing the thread of where you’re going together. That kind of teaching requires seeing horse and rider as one system. Any combination of horse and rider is only as capable as its least skilled part. Developing both, together, is the real work.
My own teaching sits at that intersection — drawing on a tradition that is many centuries old, and applying it to the horses and riders of today. I think of myself as a bridge between that accumulated knowledge and the people (and horses!) who can still benefit from it.
Start at A
Riding is difficult. But if you approach it systematically, building a solid foundation before reaching for more advanced work, something remarkable happens: both horse and rider develop together, each making the other more capable.
Learning to ride well is like learning to write. Before you can create poetry, you need to know the alphabet. You have to learn the ABC before beautiful things become possible. Strong foundations build beautiful riders and happy and healthy horses. That is what my teaching is built on.
Are you ready to start?
Does this way of thinking resonate with you? Maybe you would like to know more about how my teaching looks in practice?
You can begin by downloading my free guide: 10 Tips to Ride Better Today
It offers practical steps you can apply immediately – regardless if you have your own horse, or ride at a riding school.
It will also give you a clearer sense of how I approach training.
Do you feel that my perspective addresses the issues you are facing? you are welcome to contact me about lessons or a consultation.
And, please remember: Good riding does not just depend on talent. It depends on understanding. I can help with that.
Understanding your horse is where everything starts.
