Self-half-halt: teach a horse to re-balance himself (“crunches”)
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- Опубліковано 10 лип 2024
- The quickest path to true self-carriage is helping the horse find their own balance WITHOUT drive and restrain. Putting the “self” in "self-carriage” empowers the horse, and teaching “crunches” is a fun way to get there.
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Thousands of people learned from my original e-book (no longer available), but here I want to share some simple tips and tricks to make it easier to move forward in a safe, happy, healthy way.
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(Yes, “crunches” is an awful name for it, but... it’s the name that stuck, so here we are.)
FYI: THIS IS NOT A SCHOOL-HALT.
It can sometimes look something like an Academic Art of Riding “School-Halt”, but it’s NOT. Where School-Halt is a very advanced and technical exercise meant for near the TOP of the classical training scale (Collection), we teach “crunches” at the very START of a horse’s journey.
Crunches are meant to be a fairly simple exercise that ANY horse can learn at ANY time. The goal is nothing more - and nothing LESS - than a horse that half-halts HIMSELF.
A horse that re-balances HERSELF.
Most important note: have fun :)
This is meant to be fun for BOTH the horse and the human.
Be sure to check the Instagram hashtags for #intrinzen and #pantherflow for more examples and support from the community.
And if you’d like to learn more, see our online course at:
www.pantherflow.com/
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Musicbed SyncID:
MB01UILX9JR7EOT - Домашні улюбленці та дикі тварини
My horse loves Crunches! 😍☺️ Thank you for this video 🙏
Yay! Love to hear that 😁🙏
Well this is something else! I think I just found my favourite horse training channel!
Not gonna lie… I’m happy to see someone finally hit the DISLIKE button 💁♀️. Working with horses in this way is not exactly *traditional*, but I like to believe the Old Masters would have embraced modern movement science. We all do the best we can given the knowledge and wisdom of our time… but when knowledge expands (thank-you science 🧪 🙏), new perspectives and approaches emerge. But it can mean- sometimes- letting go of some long-held assumptions.
OHOHOH so much creativity, power, horse owns her movement, co-creation, fun AND the slow motion videos to see the subtle movements. SuBLime. The music mirroring the movement. ENticINg. Thanks you, your horses, sidekicks and inspiration for others to go out play with crunches to infinity and beyond.
Thank you very much! I only recently discovered intrinzen and I have yet to start working on crunches with my horse. This video is really helpful.
Wow Thank you for your generosity and sharing this info.
I have been wanting to help my horse develop a stronger spine for the possibility of once again riding and have been so so stuck at how to do crunches without creating a dislike to this from my horse as has been in the past with my intervention.
I am so going out there to begin with great principles and some understanding now.
Yay 💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃
Reminds me of the concept of head - loading, which a bio-mechanist described as eliciting a 'jack-like' effect of naturally pushes upwards, against the weight ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Love this ❤️❤️❤️ thank you so much for putting this together
You are so welcome! 🙏🤗
Thank you! This is wonderful 👏👏👏👏
Absolutely fabulous! Thank you for this!
🤗🤗🤗
🔥🔥🔥
Love this!
🤗🙏
Thanks for this, i dont own horses anymore but train whit whith some of my freinds horses and i love your way of training 👍😍
Yay 🤗🙏
I'm halfway through this video and I love the idea of a self half halt... I haven't yet seen anything that will actually teach me to teach it to my horse though... backing her up to a wall, hugging her butt and rubbing a pool noodle on her back aren't going to just work by magic. Please make a clearer "how to" video for this.
It isn’t magic 😉, but all of these ideas are about how to help the horse find these moments, and then rewarding the horse for doing it. Most horses (not all, ofc) can learn the basics of doing it in just two or three five-minute sessions *if they already understand positive reinforcement.* There IS no one recipe for it… it’s about giving the horse natural reasons to rebalance himself. What’s in this video are just some of the more convenient ways, but there’s no “correct” way except to explore and let the horse figure out what they find fun about rebalancing. The way I mostly teach it today is not in this video because it’s just a side-effect of doing things like unexpected change of direction.
But your comment made me realize I should make an updated version 🙏
💕💕💕🔥🔥🔥
Thank you so much! I've been wondering how to teach this!
Hope this helps 🤗
@@KathySierraVideo It really has helped! After one session, my horse is already doing this!
@@themagichaflinger4569 🤗🤗🤗so happy about that!!
Thank you for this amazing video, I have trained crunches with my horses for a while and realised that we have missed some important details. One of my horses is only 5 and I haven’t ridden her yet because I think that her back is still to weak. Watching this I realize that she don’t really lift in the whithers. I have tried to move around in different positions and holding there to try to encourage her but without any results. She did throw her neck up from the beginning, just like you described in the video but we have succeeded to avoid this now, but still no lift in the withers. Do you perhaps have any more tips on how to get this to work? 🌸
It's really interesting that Bend Branderup teaches a similar moverment. Whereas your point is letting the horse find its movement himself, Bend Branderup teaches it in a very friendy and precise way.
Of course I've experimented in both directions, and my pony and me have had a lot of fun. At the moment, however, we've got stuck. My pony doesn't want to bend more than a bit. Of course, I'm very happy that he can lift his body. But is there a way to persuade him into even more bend in the hawks?
Thank you for this video! Is this a system that you created/started? If not can you tell me who originally came up with this? Thank you !!
I came up with this *specific* idea of developing the horse’s ability to resist the weight of the rider, which I loosely called “crunches”. I put out an ebook almost 10 years’ ago on it, though that book is now available only inside a (free) Intrinzen community project. But of course lots of people and methods are around for getting a horse to lift the back, though most involve stimulating the horse from below to evoke either a reflex or a “move away from pressure” response. We don’t care 🤷🏼♀️ how it’s achieved; we mostly care that the horse can safely resist the weight of the rider dropping the spine into extension. This particular way I developed is just one possibility 💁♀️.
There are some forms of classical training that develop a *collection* exercise (example: the School Halt) but these are usually considered extremely advanced, and never intended for horses (or trainers) that are not at an advanced level in both physical ability and skill. Our version of “crunches” (which I just think of as a self-half-halt) is nearly the opposite, in that it is something we do from the beginning, in some form 😁
This looks like it could possibly help work on improving kissing spine? Has there been any evidence of that? Of course working through it on the ground only?
I don't know about this exercise specifically but the BTMM has some before & after x-rays of kissing spine horses who have been cured through the pillarwork, and pillar 2 is kind of similar? It's a shift of weight from the poll to the sternum, but definitely not exactly the same. Anyway, my point is that I definitely wouldn't be surprised if this work helped kissing spine
would love to know what that song is around 12 minutes
It’s “Just To Find You” by Marie Hines 🤗 (licensed from MusicBed, where I get most of my video music).
Seems to me that you teach a school halt in a bend and use that to teach half halts through transitions. Nicely done!
🤗sort of… except it’s not a proper “School Halt”. Academic riding teaches and executes School Halt quite differently, and at a more advanced stage in the horse’s development. The “crunches” have some of the same goals, but there is no “correct” way AND it’s meant to be for any horse at any stage - including/especially EARLY in a horse’s training. We use it as a foundation on which everything else can emerge where AAoR puts this near the very top of their training scale.
I respect that they wish to keep the label “School Halt” to mean something very specific. (And many Academic trainers *really* do not approve of what I do.)
This is the same reason that we have PantherWalk, but not Spanish Walk… even though PantherWalk can sometimes look similar. I’m actually working on the PantherWalk video right now 💁♀️ to go along with this “crunch” video.
@@KathySierraVideo To me this is still school halt. That being said, I'm not a strictly academic horseman. :D
I don't care that much for strict workplans. The way the horse understand and manages to put the pieces of the puzzle together is the best way in My own opinion.
Your horses doing "crunches" bend their hocks taking their weight back and lift their backs, round up. Your "crunches" serve as the "tool" that a school halt is used as. I even dare to guess that if you ask for "more" crunches, on horses you assess to be able to do "more", that the inside foreleg would lift. Granted it is a delicate thing to reinforce the horse when it tries to "hold" or be more isometric in their approach, rather than "bursting through" or move/get through. This is all I care for as far as being "correct". Everything else is limited by the individual horses' phisiological capability. It is a learning curve for a reason. :D
If anyone finds this to be "wrong" I'd guess they don't have the necessary knowledge of animal psichology to understand how and why you get your results. Only strickt, already laid "trainig plans". Heavily relying on micro management. (And if a horseman lacks the capability to obtain and use said knowledge, then it is absolutely fine to stay on the estabilished method.)
You on the other hand build your horses through psichology. Modern psychology.
I know I'm not AAoR student, but I can only see the same goals being aimed at and the same principles being realised. "Only" difference is everything in the foundation you build upon. The relationship, the infinitely more precise psichology...
Thank you for your time and effort and the fun educational videos! :)
@@KathySierraVideoI am happy to have a video from the source to show when horse friends have questions. Thanks
Slightly off topic. Do you think the horse is always thinking, "I can't do it" when you ask for something and he doesn't do it? Do you think it is ever a behavioral problem?
I like this question and it's never "off-topic" :) I don't think *anything* is ever a "behavioral" problem, in the sense that at any given time the horse's nervous system is 'deciding' how to allocate resources both cognitively and physically. So if the horse does *not* do the thing I ask, it's always possible his nervous system says "bad idea", but I won't necessarily no WHY... it could be:
1. BAD IDEA DANGEROUS (but this could be a very precise movement, so from the outside, it can look like the horse is "freaking out" about a movement that he just did no problem... but to the brain, the context can be completely different. )
2. BAD IDEA WASTE OF ENERGY -- the brain could be 'saying' it's just not worth using resources for [x]'. This could be for any reason and includes when the horse is simply confused about what we are asking, and perceives it as something harder than it might actually be. OR because the horse is currently in a resource-saving mode for reasons we might not know about.
3. NO BIG DEAL, BUT WHY BOTHER? Similar to #2 -- brain says it's a waste of precious resources, but in this mode... all we need to do is 'tip the scale' just a tiny bit and raise the chances of the brain saying, "Sure, why not..."
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And of course anything in-between... the "no big deal, but why bother?" is where maybe we're competing for motivation. If my horses are standing in the middle of a fabulous pasture, and they were just turned out an hour earlier, I expect their brain to say, "grass is way more valuable right now... winter is coming!" but two hours later, their brain might make a choice that says doing this thing is a fine idea.
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To summarize most of my work:
* Steadily removing as many "Bad Idea Dangerous" responses from the nervous system by giving it credible movement information coming autonomously from the horse.
* Steadily increasing the pool of higher effort movements for which the nervous system says, "this is no big deal", which also means using exercise physiology to my benefit... e.g. if the horse is more easily able to do [x], then there is less reason to resist doing [x].