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Friday, September 05, 2008 2:56 PM

The Exercise System

by gmorris

Everything in my teaching system is an exercise. I see a rider with a poor leg on a horse—it’s loose—and I hear the teacher say, “Oh your leg, you’ve got a loose leg, tighten it.” That’s not the way to correct a poor leg. What you have to do is say, “You do not have a leg on a horse. Now I’ll give you an exercise to give you a leg.” We put the leg in position, get him standing in his stirrups for about three minutes a day, and in two or three days, he’s developing a leg. Maybe in ten days he’s got it.

If you want to work on a rider’s base of support in his seat, don’t give him a seat. The exercise of taking away his stirrups gives him an educated seat.

The exercise system holds true with horses as well as with riders. In the case of a horse that’s stiff on the left side of his mouth, his left shoulder and his whole left side are rigid to the left rein and leg. Well, you don’t soften him up; the left should-in softens him up. In the case of a horse who is a rusher and a lugger, exercises are to set him on his tail, stop him, back him, set him on his tail. The exercises soften that horse up.

Whatever you do, the sequence is the same: Isolate the problem, select an exercise, and get a result.

Reprinted with permission from George H. Morris Teaches Beginners to Ride by George H. Morris, published by The Lyons Press

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