Eddo Hoekstra Clinic Notes...Day 1...Horse 4 and 5...

I didn't take a lot of notes for horse 4...mainly because I was too busy drooling over the amazingly gorgeous black Trakehner mare in the ring. The epitome of dream horse for me. The big thing they did to start was stretchy circles, give with rt hand, drive with rt leg, give with left hand, drive with left leg, and so on, slowly feeding the reins to the horse one side and a little bit at a time.


When doing walk to halt transitions stop your body and wait for the horse to lessen forward movement; if it doesn't in a few steps then use your hands to ask too.


Practice using your seat bones to ask for the walk.


After doing walk-trot-walk transitions ride while thinking of rebalancing for the walk but don't actually walk. This helps to improve the trot tremendously! You can also shift your inside hip forward and ask for the canter during one of these rebalancings.


The next horse they worked on managing the go of the horse without trying to stop it. While they did shallow loops they added in walk/trot transitions on one long side. Then the next long side they would just trot with lengthened strides. After around 3 laps they would change directions.


There will never be spring without swing!


Walk-trot transitions on a circle, ride the horse "slightly in" when walking (without steering though, steering is blocking) after this reverse directions on a new circle through the canter like previous horse.


After the horse has become good at the shallow loops (or maybe more accurately, once the rider is proficient at guiding the horse through shallow loops) then you can do shoulder in, guide back to the wall, haunches in, back to the wall, etc. Very small SI/HI, so the horse doesn't realize it's doing it.