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It isn’t riding in ‘mistake prevention mode’ and keeping the horse’s head down by whatever means. But it is the ‘human trump card’ in the ‘got it/lost it’ game that each rider learns (we hope) to play with her horse. This concept suggests a viable ‘it’ that the rider wants to get back to - but this is not a foregone conclusion. This involves water going through the horse’s hoses (from his hind legs over his top line) without being dissipated, deadened or deviated, and a rider who does not fall into the traps of leaning back, growing tall, lifting her chest, pushing in her stirrups and pulling on the reins - in short ‘water-skiing’ and encouraging the horse to be her ‘motor boat’.

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Half halts are an emergent property of good biomechanics. The rider. needs firstly to realise that she needs to intervene to ‘lead the dance’ and not just get carried away on the horse’s ‘magical mystery tour’. This won’t happen until she has a ‘reference feeling’ and makes comparisons  between that and the feeling she’s actually getting. This involves the TOTE model - Test, Operation, Test, Exit. With more skills, she makes smaller interventions more often. Also, it helps to have a horse with high ‘ridability’ who agrees that his rider can influence and, effectively, interrupt him. There are different kinds of half halt, and the first one that riders learn is to slow the speed of the horse’s legs. It takes most riders a while to realise that they may well have to do this 8 times on a circle

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Let’s imagine that you and I stand opposite each other and play a game of catch with a tennis ball, allowing it to bounce once in each throw. We are doing this in a rhythm, and not trying to catch each other out. But if I (sneakily) substitute a bean bag, that would be the end of the game. Or  I might (sneakily) substitute a boingy ball, and the game would speed up. This is  a metaphor for rising trot, which we want to be a ‘tennis ball game’ with the rider ‘calling the shots’. This takes good biomechanics, in which she is able to to control the time she takes in each sit, and also not get deformed by the horse who has a hollow back.

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I have been accused of terminal rising trot  - but time invested here is so worthwhile - it’s the ‘gold dust’ skill. I offer some strategies to help your hollow back or round back, in both the rise and sit, keeping your knee in the same place and your foot back under you. Recent research has shown that it does indeed help your horse to sit with the inside hind leg, and that it’s actually his outside hind leg that works harder on a circle, not his inside one. I also offer strategies to help you not get disorganised by the ‘pingy’ or ‘stodgy’ horse.

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We use a full length mirror to get really forensic about rising trot mechanism, showing you how to differentiate movement in your hip joint from movement in your mid back. This allows you to mimic the movements rising trot and gives you clarity about the movements you need to avoid. Type A and type B horses respond very differently to the rider who does the ’itsy bitsy rise’, but all horses respond the same way to the rider who elongates her front in the rise. There’s a quick fix for this problem if you’re brave enough to do it!

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I suggest some metaphorical MRs to reduce the ‘sting’ of your less-than-stellar rides. Realise too that thinking ‘What if?…’ is a mental rehearsal, and if the rehearsal ends with you in a ‘black hole’ you are probably more scared of the difficult emotions it generates than you are of hitting the ground. Realise that you can take sensible precautions before you get on - perhaps by doing some ground work. This doesn’t mean that you’re scared, it simply means that you’re sensible - it’s like looking both ways before crossing a road. We return to a revision of rider biomechanics, and ask, ‘why is this so important?’

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How neurons that fire together wire together, in both real and imagined practice. We do mental rehearsals of personal bests, asking ‘What’s the difference that made the difference?’. We also rehearse fixing a pattern when it goes wrong, since that’s the skill you need to speed up the phase of ‘conscious competence’. I suggest some more creative uses of MR to find ways around the blocks to your progress.

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Research on mental rehearsal has encompassed dart throwing, piano playing, and many other skills, often reporting improvements in skill that surpass actual practice. Focussing in the effect of a movement works better than focussing on the movement itself, and the level of detail you can produce in your rehearsal says a lot about your actual skill level. There are a few ‘health warnings’ about ways of (perhaps inadvertantly) doing rehearsals that are not helpful.

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Research on mental rehearsal has encompassed dart throwing, piano playing, and many other skills, often reporting improvements in skill that surpass actual practice. Focussing in the effect of a movement works better than focussing on the movement itself, and the level of detail you can produce in your rehearsal says a lot about your actual skill level. There are a few ‘health warnings’ about ways of (perhaps inadvertantly) doing rehearsals that are not helpful.

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When pupils are ‘going through the motions’ of getting the horse to go, teachers tend to ‘go through the motions’ as well - or to get really impatient. Staying patient requires the coach to maintain and identity/behaviour separation for the rider, realising that she might have good skills in other fields. Ideally, the coach ‘tunes’ herself, getting centred and present, to help her tune the rider who then tunes the horse. The coach is a role model for the rider. The story of the day I heard myself say ‘Don’t panic!”, and realised that I had let the horse and rider lead me astray! On TT courses we have lots of fun role playing our most challenging pupils, and finding strategies to get them in a learning mode - learning how to learn is the biggest gift we have to give.  
MR: Stories of various clients, and also elite riders, and how they used/talked about MR. MRs of signing your name, and seeing/sensing a bowl of fruit. It is best to involve all of your senses. MR helps you discover how much your brain knows, and primes your brain, which cannot tell the difference between real and imagined performance.