Do you use visualization to improve your riding?

Barbara F · Grand Prix

Do you use visualization to improve your riding?

Barnmouser Ash · Grand Prix

I use visualization out of the saddle a lot. I don't jump or ride dressage, but in training I visualize how I'm asking for something, and then try to imagine how this will affect the horse. A bit different than described in the article, but visualizing the riding/training process nonetheless.

One of my favourite ways to figure out a maneuver or get to the root of lameness/etc is to actually pretend I'm the horse and mimic the maneuver aww no shame! Good thing my mother works all day long and nobody is here to see me cantering around the house!

Jackie Cochran · Advanced

Nowadays I find the visualization to be extremely exhausting, so I use it mostly to figure out aids.

But when I was much younger, after coming back to the USA, though I had had some trail riding experience I quickly realized I was not a good rider when I got into reading riding books. My parents would not let me ride (too expensive they said) so I tried to visualize based on my limited riding experience. After a few years of this we finally did a trail ride in Wyoming during a vacation. I had never kept contact in South America though I did learn how to post, all riding was on loose reins. I had visualized keeping contact so much that when the group I was in started to trot I was posting, and COMPLETELY UNCONSCIOUSLY I started keeping contact with the horse's mouth (with a grazing curb), the first time in my life. Amazingly the horse did not seem to mind at all, and I did not realize at first what I was doing! When I realized it I immediately loosened the reins.

Even now I am amazed that this wonderful horse did not protest.

None of my other visualizations worked for me though, I had to learn proper riding the hard way.

-- Edited by Jackie Cochran on Friday 22nd of April 2011 12:40:30 PM

coloradocowgirl · Well Schooled

When I was younger I had a pretty bad fall and for a while after that I would spend the whole car ride to my lessons picturing my every move and the lesson going perfectly.

At this point, and I guess you could call this visualizing, I try to picture everything from the horses point of view. This might sound crazy but I used to have my little sister put my saddle on me and ride me around the living room, I think it gave me a whole new perspective :)

midnightdream · Foal

I ride dressage both the night before the show and just before warmup I visualize myself having the perfect warmup followed by riding the perfect test which I find helps to relax me alot and improve my riding. The other visualization my coach has me use to remember my leg positioning is "tall and long legs"

Kathleen K · Well Schooled

I actually try not to visualize stuff. I ride greenies, so my plans are pretty spur of the moment!

I spent all of wednesday night dreaming of how the first time backing the Fjord was going to go. Woke up on Thursday, the weather was miserable and those plans were squashed! I guess I forgot to visualize the sunny weather, birds chirping, and nice dry fields to ride in!

Barnmouser Ash · Grand Prix

coloradocowgirl wrote:
When I was younger I had a pretty bad fall and for a while after that I would spend the whole car ride to my lessons picturing my every move and the lesson going perfectly.

At this point, and I guess you could call this visualizing, I try to picture everything from the horses point of view. This might sound crazy but I used to have my little sister put my saddle on me and ride me around the living room, I think it gave me a whole new perspective :)

I think you've been stalking me biggrin I set my saddle up on a sturdy, hip-height object and ride my imaginary horse with some mirrors around me so I can see and feel changes in my seat. -- Whenever someone asks me about a certain maneuver or way to ask a horse for something, I think of it from the horse's point of view and using their logic (and the "language of Equus" if you're a Monty Roberts fan... no, it's not a gimmick, just what he dubbed the natural language of horses in herds on the range), I try to figure out what would work best in the situation.

:) I guess that comes with being a kinesthetic person!

coloradocowgirl · Well Schooled

@Ashley- Maybe I have been stalking you... ha ha! Funny funny. I do like the Monty Roberts methods that I've seen, I'd love to learn more though. Still waiting on that library book...

Queenrider · Advanced

My coach, John Lassiter, uses visualization to teach. It sounded funny at first when he told me to think of holding my tray of hot tea to correct my hand postion but it works. My knees are like flashlights and point to the ground to show the way to correct leg position. This is all a mental game. As time when on he told me to think "trot" when I wanted my horse to trot. I lauged to myself the first time he told me to do this but it worked and now I routinely think trot, my body takes the trot position and my horse trots. But now I think leg yield for my youngster and he is learning to take his cues from my body.