Nadine O'Sullivan Classical Coaching Solutions

25/02/2024

Brilliant morning with my boys Sunny & Spooks under the sympathetic, effective & educated eye of Classical master Rodrigo Matos.

Monday times included for interested spectators and one vacancy has come up mid afternoon

17/01/2024

I was very lucky & honoured to host Robyn Hood Nov '23 & encourage my horse friends to sign in to this webinar. Robyn is amazing, has a very logical and effective manner. I will be watching 🤩🤩

Aloha,

On Sunday, January 21, at 11:00 a.m. PT join Tellington TTouch Instructor Robyn Hood as she presents "Empowering Posture: Helping your horse discover their optimal function".

In this webinar Robyn will share simple techniques and exercises that can transform your horse's posture and self-carriage without force or repetition.

Harness the intelligence of the nervous system, by offering your horse new and novel ways of feeling and moving in their body as they explore freedom of movement and their comfortable range of motion.

Using a variety of gentle body work techniques as well as slow, mindful groundwork, you will learn how a few minutes a week can offer your horse new possibilities of long lasting movement and function.

To register for the talk visit:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8DG1oMalQqyx6S6QHsphiQ

Photo by Karin Oberbichler

15/01/2024

Worth a read to understand the whole picture behind a finished product, same for services, not to mention Trade certificates and University qualifications.
That old saying: you get what you pay for.

A customer asked me how much it cost to do this job....
I answered him: $ 1500
He said: So expensive for this job?
I asked: How much do you think it would cost you?
He answers me: $ 800 maximum... That's a pretty simple job right? !"
- For $ 800 I invite you to do it yourself.
- But.... I don't know how to.
- For $800 I'll teach you how to. So besides saving you $700, you'll get the knowledge for the next time you want
- It seemed right to him and he agreed.
- But to get started: you need tools: A welder, grinder, chop saw, drill press, welding hood, gloves etc...
- But I don't have all these equipment and I can't buy all of these for one job.
- Well then for another $300 more I'll rent my stuff to you so you can do it.
- Okay, he says.
- Okay! Tuesday I'm waiting for you to start doing this work
- But I can't on Tuesday I only have time today.
- I'm sorry, but I'm only available Tuesday to teach you and lend you my stuff. Other days are busy with other customers.
- Okay! That means I'm going to have to sacrifice my Tuesday, give up my tasks.
- I forgot. To do your job yourself, you also have to pay for the nonproductive factors.
- That is? What is this?"
- Bureaucratic, tax, vat, security, insurance, fuel etc.
- Oh no!... But to accomplish these tasks, I'm going to spend more money and waste a lot of time!
- Do you have them? You can do it to me before?"
- Okay!
- I'll make you all the material you need. Truck loading is done Monday evening or Tuesday morning you'll have to come by 6 loading the truck. Don't forget to be on time to avoid traffic jams and be on time
- At 6??? Nope! Too early for me! I used to getting up later...
- You know, I've been thinking. Y ' all better get the job done. I'd rather pay you the $1500. If I had to, it wouldn't be perfect and it would cost me a lot more.

When you pay for a job, especially handcrafted, you pay not only for the material used, but also:
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Study
- Tools
- Services
- Time to go
- punctuality
- Accountability
- Professionalism
- Accuracy
- Guaranteed
- Patents
- Sacrifices
- Safety and security
- Payment of tax obligations

No one can denigrate other people's work by judging prices.
Only by knowing all the elements necessary for the production of a certain work can you estimate the actual cost.

I did not write this dialogue, but am sharing it to support craftsmen and entrepreneurs.

08/10/2023

A good visual illustrating why lateral flexions are always executed with the poll the highest point. Lower than the wither results in convexity of the neck vertebrae and tilting of the ears. You see this every time riders bring the horses' nose to their stirrup, there is no physical benefit, no osteopathic advantage at all.
Lateral flexions performed correctly have the potential to be enormously therapeutic especially combined with or resulting in jaw mobility/release of the jaw.

❓ ARE YOU CONDUCTING THIS STRETCH CORRECTLY?

A stretch is not just simply moving a part of the body from A to B and back to A. It is the careful repositioning of a body part from neutral (A) gently to correctly mobilised (B), held for 10-15 seconds before a controlled return back to neutral (A).

A stretch that is commonly struggled with in relation to this progress is a lateral cervical mobilisation stretch. In the left photo you can see the stretch being incorrectly carried out, with the tilting of the head and neck to get the treat without stretching the muscles of the top of the neck and poll region.

In the right photo, the ears remain perpendicular to the ground and you can see a clear stretch of the muscles around the body of the handler. You can imagine here that each vertebral joint has an even extension around the handler, rather than some joints being mobilised and others locking.

If you are using stretches for your horse, ensure your physiotherapist has seen you conduct them to make sure the desired result is being achieved. ✨

15/09/2023

Yes!

"Lowering the horse's head lifts their back"

This is something I see a great deal, and whilst it's not inherently wrong there is so much more nuance to it than simply lowering the head. And it's the misunderstanding of the nuance that I believe has the power to hurt a lot of horses.

When you look at the horse's thoracic spinous processes, their orientation depicts the range of motion - the spinous processes of the wither are longer and angled towards the horse's tail, the spinous processes of the mid thoracic (where the rider sits) are more upright, and the spinous processes of the late thoracic begin to angle towards the horse's head. This enables greater flexion/extension of the spine through the mid thoracic region.

The supraspinous ligament runs over the top of the thoracolumbar spinous processes (the bright pink line on the picture) this then blends into nuchal ligament - the funicular portion of which attaches to the horse's skull - the lamellar portions fan off in sheets to attach to the cervical vertebrae.

When the horse with a healthy back (and that's the important piece here) lowers their head, the nuchal lig. tractions on the supraspinous lig. and the early thoracic spinous processes orientate slightly forwards, creating space between them and lifting the mid thoracic region. You can see this when a horse lowers their head, the dip behind the wither should lift.

From a ridden perspective, this should be supported by the thoracic sling muscles, which lift the ribcage between the front legs and the horse's core muscles (not just their abs FYI!)

When a horse moves with spinal tension (poor riding/saddle fit/management etc.) The ligament system is restricted - the muscles of the neck become braced, the errector spinae muscles become hypertonic and the back becomes extended - evidenced by the acute angulation at the base of the wither.

When the neck and back muscles aren't free and mobile, the spinal ligs. reduce their range of motion and then potentially shorten. The thoracic processes approximate towards each other and we perhaps put the horse into a kissing spines danger zone.

So if you try to force their head into a lowered position and the horse braces, you create strain.

Their back muscles are tight and to offload the weight of the head, they have to tighten up more. So you are inducing the back into more tension, but then the weight of the rider/saddle/restriction of a surcingle will possibly induce more extension still.

Add pain in here and you create a bigger issue.

If you deal with the pain, unload the horse's back (e.g. no rider/no saddle/no surcingle), help the horse to relax and then lower their head to tolerance without creating a brace, you can help to restore this system.

-

There is 30 mins difference between the top photo and the bottom photo. Notice how the horse's withers have lifted in the bottom photo, but also the angulation at the base of the wither is less acute even though the horse's head is higher.

This is the starting point of restoring the activity of the ligament system, the thoracic sling and the horse's core.

-

Interested in learning more? Sign up to The Fundamentals of Horse Posture:
https://www.yasminstuartequinephysio.com/fundamentals-of-horse-posture

13/03/2023

Most of you will have heard of the latest upheaval at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Chief Rider Andreas Hausberger who served for 40 years at the School was suspended from his job for criticising the leadership of the current director Alfred Hudler.

This is the latest event in a long series of conflicts between the chief riders of the school and the business leadership stretching back more than 15 years and at least three different directors. The core issue seems to be that the last three directors came from a corporate business background, not a dressage background, and tried to run the Spanish Riding School like a hotel (Elisabeth Gürtler) or a brewery (Alfred Hudler) with the bottom line as the top priority.

The inevitable consequence of a profit oriented leadership style is that corners are cut in the training, horses have to be pushed up the levels faster than they can handle, and they have to perform more often than is healthy in order to maximise profits. The well-being of the horses is compromised, lamenesses become a regular occurrence, and the quality of the training deteriorates.

Whenever chief riders stood up to the leadership and pointed out the harmful consequences of their management, they were fired, rather than trying to find solutions to the problems they brought to the attention of the director.

In a corporate environment, having a young dynamic team may be an advantage, but in a classical riding school decades’ worth of practical training experience with hundreds of horses can’t be replaced by anything, not even youthful enthusiasm. And while it may be relatively easy to replace a chef at a restaurant or a brew master in a brewery, replacing a chief rider of the Spanish Riding School takes 30 or 40 years because they have to be made from scratch - under the supervision of the previous generation of chief riders. Once this chain of transmission is interrupted, it cannot be repaired.

If you count Arthur Kottas as the first chief rider to leave the school after the privatisation, the school has lost a total of six (!) chief riders (Klaus Krzisch, Johann Riegler, Wolfgang Eder, Herwig Radnetter, and now Andreas Hausberger) in 25 years. Each one of them has 40+ years of practical experience in riding and training horses. That adds up to more than 240 years of combined experience. This is a loss that is impossible to replace.

The Spanish Riding School has existed for well over 400 years and used to uphold the highest standards of classical European equestrian art. The secret to its success was the unbroken succession of teachers who trained horses to the highest levels and then used these horses as four-legged teachers to pass their knowledge on to the next generation of two-legged students. This resulted in the accumulation of a vast body of practical knowledge. The instruction always took place in person, one teacher, one horse, one student at a time. Very little was written down, which makes the tradition vulnerable to disruption if only one generation doesn’t take care to preserve and transmit this knowledge to the next generation. All this incredible training knowledge can disappear very quickly if the chain of transmission from teacher to horse to student is interrupted. Thanks to the corporate leadership of the last 15-20 years, we may have reached this point today.

If the highest priority of a cultural institution like the Spanish Riding School is the well-being of the horses and the quality of the training, then ticket sales and merchandise will not be able to generate enough income to cover the expenses. Trying to increase sales by holding more performances and training horses faster destroys the health of the horses and the integrity of the training, as three consecutive corporate directors have amply demonstrated. So the gap in the budget needs to be filled in other ways. Either the Austrian state has to step in and subsidise its cultural heritage, or private sponsors can help to finance the school, similarly to the way opera houses in the United States are supported by countless small and large sponsors.

In the meantime, there is a petition you can sign that demands a change in the way the Spanish Riding School is managed.

https://www.change.org/p/stopp-der-zerst%C3%B6rung-des-weltkulturerbes-spanische-hofreitschule?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=share_for_starters_page&recruited_by_id=c5a868c0-c17b-11ed-a16c-d75057b1d2eb&share_bandit_exp=initial-35668032-en-US&utm_content=fht-35668032-de-de%3A0

Or you can write a letter to the director of the school, Dr. Alfred Hudler:
Email: [email protected]