Sep 30 2009
Simplify Your Riding: Step-by-Step Techniques to Improve Your Riding Skills
This step-by-step how-to book for equestrians of all disciplines offers an illustrated, easy-to-follow series of progressive horseback riding lessons.
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Whether you’re a new rider or have been in the saddle for years, whether you participate in dressage, eventing, fox hunt, play polo, barrel race, ride Western or English, compete or just ride for pleasure this book should be in your barn, truck, trailer, any place but collecting dust on your bookshelf.
Wendy takes some of the most important yet basic principles in riding and makes them simple and easy to understand. She helps you understand from a different perspective. Every chapter is filled with photos and sketches to show what she is explaining.
This the only riding instruction book that provides photos of the human skeleton to show what your body is doing, or not doing. Rather than simply discuss things like pelvis position she shows you the skeleton so you can understand why you may have had a problem perfecting some aspect of your riding.
The other thing she explains is how your riding position and movements can affect your horse and their ability to carry you or perform. It is amazing to learn how much change can come from a minute adjustment of position. Her teaching philosophy comes through in this book, which is that you can’t consider just the rider or the horse, but that they are truly a union.
The writing style is smooth and easy to read. You don’t get overpowered with explicit detail that leaves you scratching your head. You don’t have to start at the beginning and read to the end. You can pretty much open it up and start anywhere. Each chapter is like one of her lessons. You can’t put her 17 years of experience into one book, but this is a good start.
I have been aware of Wendy Murdoch’s work for some time through her clinics in VA and many articles in equine publications. So I expected no less than the well-written treatises on riding mechanics I had come to know. However, the book she has written is much more than the sum of its parts.
Rather than the ethereal imagery and intangible concepts one finds in many riding texts, the clear, simple language and accompanying photographs are a breath of fresh air. The exercises and suggestions are easy to understand and apply in practice. From strength building and alignment of the body core & extremities; from gross to fine motor skill development, each section proceeds in a logical fashion-explaining the problem, showing how to recognize it, and proceeding with suggested remedial exercises.
If the book does nothing more than help one uncover one’s own musculoskeletal asymmetries and just how one is out of balance, it has done its job and more. For while it is one thing for your riding instructor to tell you, “Your shoulders aren’t even!” or “You’re collapsing your side!” unless you learn to feel your position, improvement will be slow indeed.
As an equine professional who works with horses and riders daily to improve performance and efficiency of movement by correcting muscle imbalance and faulty holding patterns, the suggested exercises can easily be incorporated into a lesson plan for the betterment of both. For what improves the rider, improves the horse (if only to make his/her job easier). An excellent addition to one’s equestrian library!
If I had to pick one book that tells the whole story about really learning how to be a confident and balanced rider, it would be Wendy Murdoch’s new book. The text, photos and illustrations harmonize to give the reader (no matter what their level of skill) the big picture in understanding any discipline of riding.What’s great about this book is that you can use it as a work book and structure your own lessons from it. Buy this book… it’s a great read and your horse will love you for it.