How to Use NF+ to Improve Your Horsemanship

Maybe you joined NF+ because you want better groundwork. Maybe your horse has started doing something that has you standing in the arena thinking, Okay...now what? Or maybe you are not trying to fix anything at all. You just want to become a more educated, capable horse person.

Good. You are in the right place.

There are a lot of videos inside NF+, but the goal is not to sit down one weekend and attempt to watch all of them. Your horse would probably prefer you came to the barn anyway.

Instead, think of NF+ as a horsemanship resource you can keep coming back to. Start with the skill you need today. Learn the thinking underneath it. Spend enough time with one trainer to understand their approach. Then branch out, compare ideas and follow whatever catches your attention next.

Here is how we recommend using NF+ to grow your horsemanship.

1. New to groundwork? Give yourself a starting point.

If groundwork is relatively new to you, start in the Groundwork collection, particularly with Chelsea Canedy’s Two Weeks to Better Groundwork.

Chelsea gives you a place to begin instead of sending you into the arena with a rope, a horse and a vague instruction to “work on your connection.”

Over two weeks, you can work through core skills like leading, personal space, moving different parts of the horse’s body and becoming more aware of how you use your own body and energy. Watch a lesson, try it with your horse and return for the next piece.

The point is not to collect a bunch of groundwork exercises you can perform on command. You are learning to communicate with your horse from the ground and, just as importantly, starting to notice how your horse responds.

Once you start noticing those details, horsemanship gets a lot more interesting.

2. Learn the exercise. Then learn the reason behind it.

Sometimes you do not need an entire masterclass. You need an idea for this afternoon.

That is where the How-To Exercises collection comes in.

Use it as your practical toolbox. Browse for exercises you can take straight to the barn, especially when you need something concrete to work on with your horse.

Then resist the urge to stop there.

An exercise becomes far more useful when you understand why you are doing it, what response you are looking for and how to adjust when your horse does not respond the way the demonstration horse did.

Because, naturally, your horse has not watched the video.

That is where the rest of the NF+ horsemanship library starts working together.

3. Spend some serious time Inside the Horse’s Mind.

This might be one of the most important collections in NF+ for anyone interested in horsemanship.

Because there is a big difference between knowing how to perform an exercise and understanding the animal you are performing it with.

Inside the Horse’s Mind gives you a place to study the behavior underneath the training. You can learn more about how horses perceive their environment, what motivates them, how they experience pressure and how fear, anxiety, curiosity and confidence can influence the response you are getting.

Tik Maynard’s Understanding Horse Behavior is a particularly good place to start. Tik looks at how horses experience the world and why behavior that can look silly, stubborn or inconvenient to us can make perfect sense from the horse’s point of view.

Then keep exploring.

Listen to Dr. Stephen Peters talk about the equine brain and the neuroscience of learning. Spend time with Josh Nichol’s work on the horse’s emotional needs. Explore conversations around feel, communication and horse behavior from trainers working across disciplines.

This collection is less about giving you a script and more about improving the questions you ask.

Instead of only thinking, How do I make my horse do this?, you start wondering, Why am I getting this response in the first place?

That question can take your horsemanship a long way.

4. Go deep with Josh Nichol.

At some point, we recommend choosing a trainer whose philosophy interests you and really spending time with their work.

Josh Nichol is a great person to do that with.

His Relational Horsemanship content moves beyond isolated exercises and into how you understand the horse as a whole. Start with Understanding Your Horse’s Needs and continue into his work around the horse’s body, pressure, fear, self-carriage and common training struggles.

Then watch him problem-solve in real time in his Horsemanship Case Studies.

Josh's Review My Ride sessions are especially useful because you get to see him look at real horses and real rider questions, from herd-bound behavior and mounting problems to posture and connection.

That is where studying a trainer becomes more interesting than copying their techniques.

You start to understand what they notice first. You hear the questions they ask. You see which details change their decision about what to do next.

Eventually, you are not just learning Josh’s answers.

You are getting better at finding your own.

5. Use Tik Maynard’s library like a horsemanship encyclopedia.

Then there is Tik.

If you have a horse problem, there is a decent chance Tik has made a masterclass about it.

His NF+ library covers horse behavior, groundwork, play, confidence, young horses, spooky and anxious horses, trailering, OTTBs and the everyday training situations that make perfectly competent horse people question every decision they have ever made.

Start wherever your horse takes you.

Have a spooky horse? Go into Training the Spooky or Anxious Horse.

Your horse feels overwhelmed in new environments? Try The Confidence Advantage, which looks at how horses learn to process challenging situations rather than just endure them.

Trailer loading becoming the bane of your existence? Tik’s trailering work breaks the issue down beyond the trailer itself, including groundwork you can teach before you ever ask the horse to walk up the ramp.

Working with a young horse? There is a full young-horse masterclass.

Want to understand Tik’s overall philosophy? His Four Building Blocks to Better Horsemanship series explores observation, communication and the foundational pieces underneath his approach.

This is where NF+ can become incredibly personal.

You can follow the problem you have today and end up learning something much bigger than the problem you started with.

6. Do not marry one method.

This might be our favorite way to use NF+.

Go deep with a trainer.

Really study them.

Then go learn from somebody else using the NF+ library.

There is enormous value in understanding one person’s philosophy well enough that you can see the whole picture. There is also enormous value in hearing another respected horse person explain the same issue from another angle.

Josh might make you notice one thing. Tik might notice another. Chelsea may give you an exercise that helps you put an idea into practice. A sport trainer may talk about the exact same principle using completely different language.

You do not have to decide that one of them has The Answer.

Horse people have been learning this way forever. They rode with one trainer, audited another clinic, watched someone work a tricky horse, read everything they could get their hands on and kept adding to their understanding.

The best education is rarely one straight line.

NF+ lets you do the same thing, with an unusually large group of horse people available in one place.

7. Leave the horsemanship collection.

Yes, really.

Some of the best horsemanship lessons inside NF+ are not labelled “horsemanship.”

Watch Ian and Amy Millar train sport horses. Spend time with Will Coleman. Watch Steffen Peters work through flying changes. Study Peter Wylde, Anne Kursinski, Karl Cook or another trainer from a discipline outside your own.

Do not only watch the exercise.

Watch the horse person.

How do they react when the horse gets something wrong? How much do they ask for at once? What do they notice? When do they change the question? How do they prepare a horse before asking for something harder?

Your goal is not to ride exactly like twenty trainers.

It is to expose yourself to enough good horsemanship that you start developing a much richer understanding of your own.

That is one of the biggest advantages of having an entire education platform instead of buying a single course.

8. Work on the human half of the partnership too.

We could give you every groundwork exercise on earth, but unfortunately you still have to bring your own brain to the barn.

Horsemanship is not only about understanding the horse. It is also about noticing what we bring into the interaction.

Fear. Frustration. Expectations. Confidence. Breathing. Body awareness. The day we had before we got to the barn.

The horse gets all of it.

That is why Ride Well, Live Well belongs in your horsemanship education too.

Cassandra Ogier’s Reflective Horse meditation series, for example, includes guided practices designed to help riders become more present in their bodies before and around their horses. Other mindset and audio content inside NF+ can help with nerves, confidence, goals and the mental side of riding.

You might come to NF+ looking for a horse-training solution and realize there is something useful to work on at your end of the lead rope too.

Rude, but helpful.

9. Use NF+ when something happens at the barn.

This is where the library becomes especially useful.

Do not only open NF+ when you have an hour to “study.”

Open it when your horse gives you a question.

Your horse suddenly will not load.

Your young horse has become pushy.

Something that was easy last week is suddenly difficult.

Your horse is spooky in a new environment.

You have started noticing that the same training issue keeps appearing in several places.

Search the library. Browse the Groundwork collection. Head into Inside the Horse’s Mind. See if Josh has addressed it. Check Tik’s library. Look for a How-To exercise you can try.

NF+ can be something you use alongside the horse you already have, not a curriculum you have to complete before you are allowed to apply it.

10. Come back six months later.

This may be the most underrated way to use NF+.

Rewatch things.

A lesson that feels useful today may feel completely different after six months of riding, another horse, a few mistakes and several new questions.

You will notice things you missed.

An idea you were not ready for may suddenly make perfect sense. Something you thought was about groundwork may turn out to be relevant to your riding. A video you originally watched because of one horse may become invaluable with another.

Horsemanship education compounds.

Which is also why Member for Life makes so much sense for this library.

You are not buying NF+ because you need to watch 1,300+ videos right now. Please do not attempt that.

You are giving yourself a resource you can return to as your horses change, your goals grow and your understanding deepens.

Today you might need Chelsea’s groundwork program.

Next year you might need Tik’s OTTB work.

Then you might find yourself studying Josh Nichol, getting ready for a competition with a sport masterclass, doing a guided meditation before a ride or revisiting a horse-behavior lesson because a completely new horse has just handed you a completely new question.

That is the point.

Member for Life gives you one payment, no renewals and access to the NF+ library available when you join, so you can keep learning from it for years to come.

Your horse will keep giving you new homework.

You might as well have a very good library.