fbpx

Latest Blogposts

Be a researcher in your lab

In Straightness Training we encourage STudents to be a researcher in your own lab.

That is a metaphor we use in ST and it’s about creating your own laboratory with your horses so you can experiment with the concepts, techniques and approaches you learn in ST.

It’s a lab to put the theory into practice, to use the concepts, frameworks and tools and to fill in the details and to find the hidden lessons. Because we can walk the path with you, but we cannot do it for you. And it’s better to not walk in the footsteps of the old grandmasters, but to search what they were searching for.

Read More..

Welcome To All Our Amazing New Mastery Students

Well, what a wonderful week it has been! Registration to the Mastery 2017 Class is closed now.

And we just started the Mastery 2017 Class and the classroom is buzzing with excitement as the amazing group of new Mastery Students is going through all the materials and is connecting in the exclusive Mastery members area with all the other people of the awesome ST Mastery community.

We are thrilled to have students from around the world, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and many students in Europe!

Read More..

3,2,1….. Happy New Year!

Thanks everybody for helping to make 2016 such a great and succesful year!!!

This year we’ve got so many new STudents on board of the Home Study Course and the Mastery Program! FantaSTic to see how you and your horses evolve, wherever you are in the world, from Austria to Australia, from Belgium to Brazil, from Czechia to Costa Rica!

And it was really great and inspiring to meet so many nice STudents and their lovely horses in real life during the Mastery Clinics in Germany and Sweden and during the ST Tour around the Atlantic in South Africa, Brazil, and the USA!

Also all ST Instructors did a great job in teaching ST all over the world and helping many riders and horses a step further on their personal ST journeys in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, USA, Canada, France, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Italy, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. You ST Instructors rock Rebecca Gilbert, Elaine Coxon , Zaneta Georgiades, Carolin Moldenhauer, Roz Richmond, Miriam Sherman, Anouk Wienia, Meg Brauch, Kim Steutel, Wendy Poore, Marianne Van De Sande Lee, Rosan Veer, Karin Wåhlin, Victor Gueiros Freire and Sandy Nye, way to go!!

It was also great to guide ST Instructors Elaine Coxon, Zaneta Georgiades, Carolin Moldenhauer, Roz Richmond, Miriam Sherman and Anouk Wienia to become an official ST Evaluator and and they do a great job in supporting Mastery students online by giving tips and advice on the students’ videos where they show their work with their horses. They and Rebecca Gilbert worked very hard to serve the growth of ST around the world and to take care of all our STudents.

Over 1500 videos for evaluation have been submitted so far and it was great to see that so many ST Mastery students graduated in 2016 on the  levels of Touchstones and Grades in the ST Evaluation program with their wonderful horses, proud of you all!!

Dora Hebrock and Christy Morley graduated on the level of Grade 2 and are now on board as new ST Trainee Instructors! Good luck with the ST Instructor Program in 2017!

Marc and Jan Westerink did a great job in building a brand new ST Evaluation Portal so all videos of the ST Mastery students can be submitted and evaluated much easier. And some wonderful refinements to the portal are to be expected in 2017!

Marc Marsman is also doing a great job in setting up brand new ST portals for all our online programs – which will be released in January 2017 – and Lianne Tijmes is creating a wonderful design for it.

We’ve also got powerful help behind the scenes with Rosan Veer and Hugo Bergwerff! Great to have you in Crew ST so we can serve our STudents the best we can!

And last but not least, my horses  Maestro, Prince Elmelund, Romanesque, Toronto and El Blanco: Maestro, Prince Elmelund, Romanesque, Toronto and El Blanco: they are a huge inspiration and this year they did really great in teaming up in training at liberty in group sessions! I really enjoyed this process of figuring out how to align 5 bodies and minds at the same time and I learned loads from these guys along the way!!

Marc and I are truly thankful for all of this!!! Thanks for a remarkable 2016!

Here’s wishing you a joyful, warm, healthy, passionate, vital, successful, peaceful, prosperous and horsey New Year!

Let’s live, love, laugh, learn and enjoy each moment in 2017!!

And we are very much looking forward to start working with all the new STudents in the Mastery 2017 Class that will start in ST Academy in January 2017!

4 Tips On How To Train Lateral Movements

To develop the horse symmetrically in body and limbs you can use gymnastic exercises.

The core of the gymnastic exercises consists of the circle, shoulder-in and haunches-in. All the other exercises are derived from these cornerstones.

🐴 The circle is used to develop the Lateral bending of the body, the Forward down tendency of the head and neck and the Stepping under the center of mass of the inside hind leg (LFS).

🐴 Once the inside hind leg can step under, this hind leg can also start to take weight. To do so we use the shoulder-in and counter-shoulder-in. These exercises are designed to school the hind leg in function of the inside hind leg. As a result of taking the weight, the horse will bend the inside hind leg more and free the outside shoulder.

🐴 Once the horse can bend the hind leg as an inside hind leg, we can also start to school the hind leg as an outside hind leg. To do so we use first the haunches-in (travers) and later on the renvers. In the renvers the horse can lean less against the wall/fence with his shoulder, so it’s a bit more difficult than the travers, but as a result he really supports himself with his hind legs.

Read More..

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »