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Introduction: The Five Easy Pieces

by Suzanne Drnec as told by Les Vogt

Have you ever wished your horse had an instrument panel like a car, with dials and gauges so you could monitor at a glance your progress down the road?

I sure have, and after 40+ years as a professional horseman and teacher, I've developed a system to teach, test, and correct common performance horse problems. Whether you ride trail, rope, rein, jump or ride dressage, my Five Easy Pieces warm-up exercises will help you communicate better with your horse, let you make faster training progress with no resistance, and have a better relationship with your horse.

Try my Five Easy Pieces and you'll find that setting out for a ride, or entering an arena, can be as reliable and pleasant as getting in your well-tuned car for a drive.

By teaching your horse in small, discreet units, you can avoid the confusion, frustration, and even fear that results from training with a nonsequential system of conflicting commands. You'll also detect developing physical problems early: A horse who usually does Easy Piece four, the hip exercise, with no resistance but suddenly gets sticky and agitated to the left is likely telling you that something over there hurts. Check his back and left leg for soreness or swelling, and you may avoid a crippling injury.

Five Easy Pieces will allow you to teach your horse to travel "in frame". What's frame? It's a general term used by horsemen to indicate that a horse is traveling efficiently, with his body positioned in such a way that he can easily maintain his speed, pace, and position. A good way to think of frame is to imagine it's your horse's posture.

If he looks like a crabby teenager - slouching, neck jutting forward, shoulders haunched, and shambling along - not only is he unpleasant to watch, he's not showing any grace or athletic potential either.

My system will work for a novice rider or a green horse as well as for seasoned pros. Why? Because, by dividing the horse's body and physical mechanics into easily trainable zones, we can pinpoint the exact source of a frame or 'posture' problem, and concentrate on fixing that problem before it compromises our horse's performance. A horse's body and brain form a complex system, but if we can guide that system by working with discrete zones of the horse in basic exercises, we'll build the foundation of learning, conditioning and obedience that is the basis for all advanced training and high performance. Plus, it's cheap and easy: you and your horse can learn my Five Easy Pieces in an area as small as a box stall, with simple equipment, at a walk, and see immediate results.

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