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Tag Archive 'half-halt'

How to Begin the First Uberstreichen Half-Halt Exercise

Posted in Misc on Dec 10th, 2009

The Uberstreichen Half-Halt Exercises school the horse from the ground to respond more effectively to your half-halts when you ride.

(Half-halt is when you ask the horse to stop and he responds immediately and in the moment you know that the horse will stop you ask him to go forward and he does this whole-heartedly. The purpose of the half-halt is to prepare the horse to listen for your next request. It prepares the mind and body of the horse to be able to respond easily and promptly.)

There are about 10 different reasons one asks a horse to half-halt. Keep in mind that a half-halt is a message to a horse that you will be asking him to perform something different that what he is doing in the moment. From your half-halt you may be making a request to halt or go forward or change pace or gait become more active, lengthening or collect or soften or change direction or to bring a horse to straighten. I am not going to go into the minutia of the benefits of all the exercises because it will not really help to create better result. If you need more explanation… Read more

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My Uberstreichen Excercises

Posted in Advice, Lessons on Apr 21st, 2009

Hi again. A week or so ago I mentioned my uberstreichen excercises and many of you wrote in asking more about them. Well, the good news is that I have just given the green light to produce a series of DVDs on how I use them. These will be coming out later in the year and in the meantime, here is a piece I wrote about how the excercises can help with dressage.

Uberstreichen or more correctly, überstreichen, comes from German although there doesn’t seem to be a literal translation you can use (unless you can tell us otherwise!). What I like about the exercises are that they can be used on all horses no matter what level of training they have received. The purpose of the exercise are to enhance the forward expression of the horse’s gaits. They improve collected and extended gaits by giving the horse the ability to perform with ease. They support the horse’s way of going by removing locked muscles while simultaneously schooling the horse to respond correctly to rein and leg aids.

The eight uberstreichen exercises are exaggerated requests of the half-halt. There are eight because they cover the different ways we want the… Read more

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