El siguiente texto es un extracto del libro Learning to ride as an adult (ISBN: 9781646999736) Conocerlo, entenderlo, interpretarlo y ayudarlo, escrito por Erika Prockl, publicado por de Vecchi /DVE ediciones.
Introduction
I was already almost twenty-five years old when I decided I wanted to learn to ride. As I was relatively athletic, I did not think that my age would be a problem – how wrong I was! To begin with, the not uncommon riding school practice of screaming instructors unnerved me quite badly, and I found to my disappointment that I was making no prog ress at all. I never really felt „at home‰ on a horse and came very close to giving up riding altogether.
The majority of riders learn to ride as children or during adolescence, and therefore have never encountered the glass wall of insecurity and fear which can encircle the adult riding student and which turns a normal person into an awkward clumsy fool, un able to hear instructions. Accordingly, most riders have little understanding of the adult novice’s problems. I, on the other hand, can well remember how helpless and unsupported I felt.
Fluid, confident riding can only be achieved through practice. But more than that, the adult learner must first unlearn habits of bad posture and gain an insight into balance and coordination of the body. Only after learning not to fight a constant battle against one’s own clumsy body, can the rider learn to understand and work with the horse. This book is intended to offer you the opportunity to practice riding movements in your own time and in familiar surroundings, without stress or hindrance. These movements can then be joined together into more complex coordinated movements and fi nally be put into practice on the horse. Erika Prockl.
Battling with the urge to cling on
Anybody who wants to learn to ride as an adult will have to be prepared to do battle with failure. Even from those very first hours on a horse, when any notion of a feeling of unity with the horse will seem eons away, when the motion, strongly reminiscent of an earthquake, tips the beginner off-balance, every part of the body tenses up and, to increase the misery, the riding instructor keeps on insisting that the rider should loosen up and start relaxing.
Of course, the rider would gladly comply, but his/her body isn’t cooperating. As soon as the rider sits in the saddle and everything below him begins to move violently, the rider becomes a clinging monkey – an uninspiring occurrence.
The muscle groups on the inside of the upper thigh, the upper and lower leg, the knees, the buttocks and, of course, the hands, close in reflex – everything is needed to hold on and stay on.
This is an involuntary act as well as an unwanted one, because it is impossible to simply switch off reflexes and the instinct to survive.
At the walk, our beginner is able to follow the instructions of the riding teacher up to a point. At the trot and canter, everything simply falls apart. In order to keep his students, the riding instructor will remain polite, but it is easy to see that his enthusiasm for this kind of student is limited.
Other riders seem to be floating effortlessly on their horses. Children and adolescents provocatively demonstrate how simple and enjoyable riding can be. Are these people all naturally talented?
They are not, and our beginner is not as untalented as it seems at first glance. Adult learners, however, no longer have all the prerequisites that are imperative for riding:
- A highly developed sense of balance.
- Good body control, including of muscles and joints that are rarely used from day to day, as well as the ability to have equal agility on both sides of the body.
- Nonchalance or courage, whatever one may call it.
- Love and understanding of animals, combined with a practically unlimited trust in one’s partner, the horse.
Children who are physically active are ideal riding students. They still have all the prerequisites and can learn complicated movement sequences in play by means of imitation. Due to the fact that they imitate quite uncritically, it can, however, happen that they imitate every bit of nonsense.
Therefore, children always only ride as well as they are taught. “Couch potatoes,” who spend their leisure time without much physical activity, watching television and playing on computers, are noticeably clumsy and, as a result, fearful.
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