Hi Franziska,
Franziska wrote:
Can you perhaps say more precisely how you see me standing on the brakes? I know I do it, but I don't know how and so I'm not shure how to let it go? Do you have an idea?
The whole interaction between Filux and you seems to be very focused and controlled. One side of this is what you are actually doing and another side is the movement aspect, although they are closely connected. Compared to Andi your movements are slower, more controlled, more careful and have a bit of an expression of lacking looseness.
For a demonstration of different ways of moving maybe you want to experiment with a biological motion demo
http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.htmlYou can play with the parameters and in that way maybe get a good feel about what parameters affect the impression you get in what way. With the dots it is much more easy than with the complexity of watching a real person move, because you can pinpoint the differences between different movements. Which body part moves faster? Higher? With a more curved trajectory? With what accelaration? And so on…
Then, trying to see things from the perspective of the horse, you can try to imagine how you would move when your human moved in what way. Actually you can just play the demos and move along behind your computer screen. How does it feel when you are supposed to run while the light dots move in a way that is incompatible with that? Probably you will notice that there are mainly two chances of getting over that incompatibility: if you want to move in an energetic and relaxed way, you have to disconnect yourself from the dots and learn to ignore them, or you have to forget about being energetic and adapt your own movements to those of the dots.
But getting back to your video: in the action part maybe the key is intentionality (which is directly reflected in your movements, too). You seem to have a constant focus on the horse (you can watch Andi as a comparison, who has a forwards focus most of the time), that is whereas it seems that you try to get Filux to move, Andi just moves himself and Filux follows. Try to move with someone who consciously wants to get you to move in a certain way and then with someone who just moves himself. In the first case what will happen most likely is that you begin to listen to his cues closely, focus on yourself and become very body-conscious – which is a very good thing in itself, for example if you want to learn a new movement, it only doesn´t necessarily fit with playing and being loose and energetic.
In your video almost every move seems to be a request or at least a signal directed at the horse, without actually receiving as many of his signals on the other hand. The example I am giving now is about a certain action as it is easier to explain, but the same happens for movements (or the way of moving) too: I know that there are different opinions about stimulus control and having a horse who offers things by himself, but for example the jambette at 0:54 seems to go unnoticed – which is totally okay when you don´t want your horse to offer things by himself, but naturally horses become more “alive†when they feel that the communication is two-way and they can also actively shape your training sessions and make their human do things.
I think that no way of training is good or bad, they only have very different outcomes, so I like to examine the goals I have, then look at the effects of a certain method and see those two actually fit. And when they do not, I can modify one of them or both.
Warm Regards,
Romy
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It is always so interesting for me to watch other people doing groundwork with their horses, but even more interesting to see more than one person work with the same horse.
