For those of you new to horses and unfamiliar with horse vernacular, there is a term for a horse that doesn’t spook: a “bombproof horse.” “Bombproof Riding,” and the resultant “Bombproof Rider,” are a play on that—yea, an answer, a challenge, to that.
Here’s the TL;DR version: I saw was riders who wanted to enjoy riding, but were too scared to unless they were on bombproof horses—an approach that was unreliable and non-transferable—so I shifted the responsibility of being bombproof onto the rider.
There’s a lot of entitlement in the equispere. Many riders and horse owners are encumbered with massive egos coupled with a severe lack of accountability. Riders get a horse and expect something of it, and when they don’t get it, it’s never the rider’s fault, nor the rider who needs to be fixed—it’s always that the horse needs more training.
Let’s put aside the irresponsibility of rider and horse owner in that narrative—and make no mistake: it is irresponsibility, full stop—and follow that train of thought and subsequent course of action. The rider feels threatened on her ride (because of her incompetence), and rather than working on her own athleticism, sensitivity, balance, coordination, timing, and other personal competencies, decides that the solution is to remove the horse’s impulses to do horse things that horses naturally do, like spook at things or want to go fast.
Training a horse to be more polite is perfectly ok. Shirking all responsibility to be part of that polite interaction, failing to examine one’s own culpability, is not. And that’s what I kept seeing: Riders didn’t want to improve their own abilities at all. They just wanted the horse to take up all the slack.
So where does that lead? The rider/owner sends the horse off for training, or a trainer comes in—and let’s take for granted in this scenario that it’s a good trainer, which in reality we cannot—and trains the horse to be less reactive or more polite or whatever they’ve determined will “fix” that horse to the owner’s satisfaction.
Knowing that the rider/owner does not take responsibility for her own part in this story—knowing that she is irresponsible—predict how she follows up with that training. She continues to be neurotic, which the horse can pick up and makes it antsy. She confines it, hauls on its mouth constantly, turns it around in tight little circles, and otherwise refuses to allow it to express itself the way it knows best: by moving forward. The while, she congratulates herself with pedantic concepts and dogmas to reassure herself that she’s riding “correctly,” rather than asking why she doesn’t feel safe (which is almost always because she’s not, because her “correct” riding isn’t effective riding).
But look! I’m getting him to round his back!
But look! Ear hip heel alignment!
But look! Foam!
I’m not the problem! He’s the one who’s f*cked up!
This rider and owner was and is driving the market; and by driving the market, she was influencing the culture and setting the baseline for normal rider behavior and expectations. It was (and is) an echochamber for irresponsibility and unaccountability.
There’s nothing really revolutionary about the Bombproof Riding System. It aims to keep things simple, it’s robust, it’s elegant. Inasmuch as it is innovative, it’s because it steps back from the many “tried and true” systems that are horribly corrupted by Braden effect, Cargo Cult effect, tribalism/tribal beliefs, and the mutable fashion whims of subjective show culture.
Where it departs from other systems is unapologetically laying the responsibility back on the rider.
Do you want your horse to be under control?
Control thyself.
Do you want your horse to be calm?
Calm thyself.
Do you want your horse to be responsive, supple, and athletic?
Be thyself responsive, supple, and athletic.
If you want a good ride, earn it. Riding is a skill, and skill can’t be bought.
It’s your job to be bombproof, not the horse’s.
Martial Equestrian 