Ep. 39 Half-halts: the riding enigma

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