Читать книгу Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation - Geoff Teall - Страница 54

Many instructors—myself included—have a tendency to be “control freaks.” As I explained earlier, at the beginning of your riding career, this is a necessity. The instructor must be in complete control and demand your absolute compliance to everything he says. Your life literally depends on it.

At some point, however, you must learn to think for yourself—to take responsibility for your actions. If you don’t, you run the risk of becoming too reliant on your instructor to make any significant progress.

Every instructor must realize that as students improve, they should be allowed to do more on their own. When you have gained a foundation that will allow you to have some success making your own choices, your instructor should recognize your abilities and encourage them.

Becoming a thinking rider doesn’t just happen. It has to be planned. As a teacher, I am constantly trying to create a rider who doesn’t need me. I want to produce a competent trainer who is self-reliant and who doesn’t require my input for every phase of the training process.

The way to become a thinking rider is to gradually do more and more on your own. Maybe you will begin by warming the horse up on your own. That might lead to doing a complete schooling session without the instructor’s input. As your skills improve, your instructor may ask you to school a green horse or analyze a part of a course by yourself.

Gradually accept responsibility for more and more difficult things. You must start to build experiences handling such things as course analysis, schooling problems, flighty horses, and training concerns on your own, without the instructor there to guide you every step of the way.