Classical Dressage Position - Programming Your Riding Position
You'd probably agree that having a balanced, centered position plays a huge role in being an effective rider. And you'd probably also agree that it seems like you've been picking away at your faults for years but still struggle to find an independent seat and an elegant position.
How do we know that? We know because we've been in the same boat and know how frustrating it can be to ride around for years with the same old position problems and crooked bodies.
So we put our heads together and developed our unique program based on two very powerful sports psychology techniques.
Those two techniques are:
1. Programming the subconscious mind
2. Anchoring
Programming The Subconscious Mind
First, you should know that one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try to improve your position with iron-jawed determination. The reason iron-jawed determination doesn't work is that you can only make short-term, temporary changes to your skills when you direct your effort and energy to your conscious mind through will power.
However, when you direct your efforts to your subconscious mind, the changes are permanent.
Next, you need to know a couple of things about the subconscious mind. It operates, in part, as a goal striving mechanism. It's kind of like the genie in the bottle. It's just waiting for your instructions. It hears and believes everything you say and visualize, sees it as the goal, and like a guided missile zeroes in on that goal.
Finally, the exciting thing about programming your subconscious mind is that it's a lot easier to do than using will power. All you have to know is two things:
1. Vivid visualization
2. Self-talk
Program Your Position uses both visualization and self-talk to change the "software" in your mental computer. You get very vivid images as well as illustrations of those images to adjust every part of your body. You'll start at your seat-your core-and from there, you'll work down to your toes, up to your head, and right through your fingertips.
Anchoring
Once you have the vivid images in your mind's eye, you're given specific "buzzwords" that anchor those images in your subconscious mind. The buzzwords act as a shorthand cue to trigger position corrections. You don't have to actively "do" anything. Your subconscious mind causes your muscles to fire in the right way so that you automatically "self-correct".
For example, let's say you tend to collapse the left side of your waist. Visualize that you have a toothpick on each side of your body. Each toothpick rests between your last rib and your waist. If you collapse on the left side, you'll get jabbed by the toothpick on the left, and the toothpick on the right will end up on the ground.
You want to stretch up through your left side so your toothpicks stay in place without sticking you. Plus, when you stretch up, you create the right muscle memory. Once you're sitting correctly, you'll anchor that feeling with the buzzword "toothpicks".
Programming Your Position process is fun and effective. And the best part is, once you know the details of how the system works, you can use your own images and buzzwords in the same way to get amazing results without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears!

