How to Improve

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How to Improve

Welcome to your next issue of "Horse Class," your how-to source for equine tips, tricks and solid foundational training brought to you by horsemanship101.com and John Lyons Certified Trainer Keith Hosman. Note that articles (as credited) in certain premier issues were co-written by Josh Lyons (John's son) - and much credit is due to Josh's amazing insights.

Have you hit a training plateau? Do you just seem to be riding your horse around (maybe every day) without seeing improvement? Well, this issue offers three short articles, each crafted to offer you "the keys to change." And while they are short articles, sometimes it's the simple changes that have the most profound effect on your training.

Here you'll find the following easy, step-by-step horse training articles:

- Do Everything Better with "How Far How Fast How Little"
- Keys To Improvement: Every Time You Ride
- Thought vs Action: Think Different, Be Different

The first two step-by-step horse training articles are sampled below. To read each in its entirety, simply follow the links provided or visit Horsemanship101.com/Articles.

And remember, our earlier issues can be found 24/7 at Horsemanship101.com/Articles.

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"How Far How Fast..."

The following example is appropriate for horses of any discipline. Let's say we have a reining horse – and we want to make his spin better. We have a recipe to improve his performance and there are three ingredients in this recipe. They are "further," "faster," and "less."

To begin, I don't worry about anything except "further." I do whatever it takes to make something go further. (In this case, the spin "action.") So I look at his front feet and I see that the step they take covers a distance of, let's say, two feet. I make it my goal to go further, maybe to two and a half feet. I'll then spin my horse; I'll kiss or kick with both legs or do whatever it takes to make that step bigger – and that's all I'll concentrate on. I'll only work on that for about thirty seconds, just till that one step is "further." (Maybe it sweeps and covers three feet.)

The next part is "faster." So now I keep the "further" – and I make it "faster." As soon as he gets faster, that is, as soon as he covers that same three feet in less time, I quit. Again, I do whatever it takes to make it faster – and for only about thirty seconds. Pretty soon, the step is further and it's faster....

keep reading "How Far How Fast How Little"

Keys To Improvement

How many times do you think you've ridden your horse? A thousand? Five hundred? Just guess. What if every time you got on, you improved something, no matter how small? If you could just see some little improvement for each of those thousand times you've been on that horse, that's a thousand percent improvement. After all, you can't get the horse trained all at once; the key is to make some small improvement every time you get in that saddle.

Your mind set, when you get in that saddle, is that something is going to get better. Now, it might not be what you'd planned on working on because it's not a matter of what you want to work on that day – your horse decides for you. You may want to work on your right lead, but the horse says "No, I'm just going to run away." So you may not work on leads at all; you may just work on loping....

read the rest of "Keys To Improvement "

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Training Horses How-To

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Wanna calm down a nervous horse?

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Here's a sample from Day Two:
"Snaffle Bits: Their Use in Controlling Your Speed "

"The snaffle bit is the tool you'll use to do this training most effectively. The reason is simple: The very nature of a shanked or leverage bit causes the horse to stiffen his body from nose to tail. Think of a baseball bat. Rigid and unyielding, right? Shank bits cause our horse to stiffen their bodies in the same way — making training as we've described very difficult because it causes the horse to line up all the bones in his body, one behind the other. He then uses his entire "skeletal structure" to brace against our requests. Why not make this training business a thousand times simpler by using a bit that encourages our horse to stay soft? Snaffle bits enable us to soften one part of the horse at a time; they get your horse to "unlock up" and to move more fluidly.... etc."

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