The Riding Refinery Riding School
Combining Horse Training Traditions With Modern Science
What Is The Riding School?
The riding school is an ambitious project to build an online forum of self study and instructor led courses with the goal of passing on to the next generation of riders and trainers a long standing equestrian heritage of horse training knowledge and traditions from the Old School. For clarification, the Old School to which I refer is a very specific training lineage that lived within the pre-World War II Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria. Within the Spanish Riding School, this line of training became known as the Weyrother method named after the famous chief rider Max Ritter von Weyrother; although some of the traditions likely existed even earlier. This unique training found new life in the new world in the form of The Mikolka Method. Karl Mikolka was the last student in the Weyrother training lineage of the Spanish Riding School. He brought his methods to the United States and spent 40 years honing, refining, and expanding upon the methods of the Old School. In the Riding Refinery Remote Riding School, we will combine, update, and examine the ancient training techniques from the Old School with modern scientific knowledge. Sometimes, modern science reveals the errors in ancient thinking; yet, other times it explains and reveals why the ancient methods work so well.
What Is Taught In The Riding School?
The four educational cornerstones of the Riding Refinery program are:
- Equine Education - Teaching horses to be ridden
- Rider Development - Teaching humans to be riders
- Equestrian Gymnastics - Developing horse & rider through the art of high school riding
- Understanding Equines - Producing happier healthier horses (and riders) through science
Bonus material may include special topics such as: hoof health, equine nutrition, equine environmental sciences, equine physiology and psychology, biomechanics vs. biotensegrity, riding as physical therapy for humans, and riding as physical therapy for horses.