(“It’s all about maintaining his confidence  in you.”)

Practicing a finished movement is a whole different ballgame than teaching that movement to your horse. If you neglect this fact, you make your horse’s life much more difficult.

It’s easy to be greedy and ask for too much too soon. Some examples: when you’re teaching shoulder in, it’s better to do a handful of steps, make a 10 meter circle, and do more steps than to try to maintain the movement all the way down the long side of the arena. As your horse learns to keep his balance, then make longer segments. It’s about keeping him in balance, but it’s also all about maintaining his confidence in you. As an aside, note this is the reason behind the “staircase exercise” when you’re teaching your horse to leg yield.

Example number two: better to make a brief and correct lengthening with your horse staying in balance and maintaining his rhythm and connection than to make a long line where he runs on the forehand or gets flat. Repetitions closely spaced together rather than one long flawed attempt.

And finally a more exotic example: riders starting one tempis often want to do a whole line of 15 as called for in the Grand Prix test. Result: tension and anxiety. Major Lindgren always said make your horse really good at five in a row. When that’s effortless, you can add as many as you want. Even on a much more basic level when you are just beginning tempi changes, better to do one pair every sixth stride maintaining your horse’s cool. This gives you time to relax and reorganize him between the changes as you learn to count. Then add a third change after six more strides. By and by, you can shorten the interval to every fourth and then every third.

This is what they mean by “programming for success.” It beats the alternative every time!