In last week’s blog we started to discuss conformation and how to design flowing Liberty training dances that support suppleness, tempo, balance, and a Natural posture and frame.
This weekend’s live online demo was on body language and Energetic Inflection for the Natural Outline class. Though we are still fine tuning the technical side of these live demos, They are fun and interactive in a way that no other webinars are. You get to watch me demonstrate in real time with real horses and then ask questions in real time. It is truly virtual spectating! You can see recordings of the live demos on the website if you missed them. Click her to see a clip from the video Video clip
First, I’d like to define what is “natural” to me and what falls into manufactured cues. The body language I use, I define as Natural because I can literally go up to any horse I’ve never worked with ever and consistently get the same responses from this language. In other words, I don’t have to train it or teach it. It’s already innate to the horse. Horses can learn anything in astounding ways. That is why they are able to learn so many different training approaches and “languages”. Manufactured cues and language are signals or body language which the horse learns to recognize through repetition and or some type of reinforcement. It is like us learning a new language or word. Think about any training which embodies manufactured cues to see examples.
I try as much as possible to work with language that is truly innate to my horse and build on that. Therefore there is no training, just agreement on my part to speak more horse then human.
Now for the Conformation pictures. I have several here for you to look at with some highlights of what I look at. I will go through a brief explanation of the lines and how I see. These are very general guides but give you a quick overview of each horse. The orange lines are showing actual conformation and the light blue lines are showing where I would like the muscles to develop more on the topline. This will go hand in hand with the over all development of the whole body. Neck attachment, Shoulder slope, and Hindquarter angle will dictate more fine tuning or where the horse will want to carry the posture that suits them best.
- The big square broken into thirds is how I look at the Shoulder, Mid section and Hindquarters to see which is the largest third and which needs more development.
- The First line across the back (the one on the top) is the line telling me whether the horse is level, Uphill, or down hill in their natural balance.
- The line that follows the back contour, tells me whether or not the horse needs to build up their back muscle. (primarily the muscle behind the withers tends to be a common weakness)
- The Neck line (orange) also tells me where there is a need to build the neck up. The back and neck musculature tend to go hand in hand with core strength and rounder more engaged work.
- The muscle under the neck will tend to soften and contour as well with the right exercises giving the appearance of a longer and more arched neck.
- the underline again measures how much slope there is between the stifle and the elbow.
- The line of the hind limb shows how much angle is present in the joints of the hock and stifle.
The next Live streaming demo is Sunday the 17th at 11:30am ET. It will be focusing on the individual Liberty exercises I use for the Natural Outline (Frame). The link to the demo will be sent out to class participants sunday morning prior to the demo. Remember there is still time to participate in the class and get access to all the other great features of membership. Register now