Lunch with Angelo Telatin

And by that, I mean me eating chicken nuggets while watching a live Q & A.

#goals
If you've been following this blog for a while, you might remember a rather old post from when I went to the Maryland Horse World Expo for the first time. That was my first time meeting Angelo Telatin, and it's no secret that I love this bald, old, Italian man. As much as I wanted to go to Delaware Valley, they had no majors that suited me. Shame.

Get you a man who looks at you how Angelo looks at horses

Much of the discussion kept going back to this idea of cues, mainly because Angelo is known for his bridleless riding. Not surprisingly, taking the bridle away (whether it be bitted or bitless) takes away a place of contact, which therefore takes away your hand cues. If you have a neck rope, you can regain some cues; it just depends on your individual set up. Someone basically asked the age old how do you get your horse to go bridleless, and so the answer was that you need to replace those mouth cues while also maintaining your leg cues. A follow up question was something like what cues do you use?

Anything. Literally anything. That was the answer, and it's true because you can use whatever cues you want so long as the horse can recognize them. With this in mind, the following response was shared:


And, to be quite honest, there is a bit of a standard. Kick to go, kick more to go faster, move away from the leg, cluck/kiss to move. But it does remind me of one horse from my old barn that had been taught to canter with the inside leg moving back. Sure, we trained it out of her, but even with those basic cues that seem to be universal, there is still great variation in the specifics.

But I had my question (guess who forgot to screenshot their own question -__- ): As someone who trains a large variety of people, do you find that your methods change depending on the student, or do you stay consistent in your teaching style?

And I asked it because I hope to be a trainer, and in the past year I've thought more and more about the style of teaching that I benefit from. I've ridden with several good trainers. I've learned from all of them, but I mesh shockingly well with my trainer, and despite not being in consistent lessons, I've excelled greatly under her. Like I said in the last 10 Questions post, she is a perfect trainer for me at this time.

She made this possible

Yet, with that in mind, she still doesn't teach me the way that she teaches other students, and she doesn't teach them the same way either. The only time she is constant in her method is in the first, like, 10 minutes with a new student. From there, she adjusts. Angelo is similar, except he said that after telling someone to do something three times, he uses a visual tool, and if that doesn't work, the rider basically gets a custom exercise to help them with whatever isn't going quite right. Verbal, then visual, then tangible.

Last thing, he referenced that Einstein quote about how doing something over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity. In Angelo's opinion, if your trainer is telling you the same thing over and over again, tell them they're insane.

Full video is available below. Thank you Angelo and CRK Training!

Comments

  1. Ha I like that last bit. Nothing annoys me more in a trainer than when they keep saying the same thing again and again and again when it's clear that I'm not getting it or what they are saying isn't working lol

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    Replies
    1. I'd just tune out at that point. Broken record.

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  2. Ha! I went to Del Val and rode with Angelo quite a lot in my classes! So funny that he is now "famous"! I can't say that I think everything the man says is gospel, but he taught me how to sit the trot and helped transform me from mostly useless to mostly capable.

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