Equestrian Masterclass 4+

I joined Noelle Floyd before they had an app and the classes were only available through a web viewer. The classes are great and I’ve learned a lot through them. I highly recommend checking them out. Now, the app…it’s a good first start but there are things that they can do that would greatly enhance user experience. Just a few things that come to mind:
1) the lesson chapters should flow from one to the next once you complete viewing a lesson. It’s very clunky to have to go out to the chapter menu and select the next one. If there are a lot of lessons it’s easy to get mixed up with what you’ve watched and what you haven’t watched.
2) it should mark what you’ve already watched so you can easily pick up where you’ve left off, especially after taking a break from a class.
3) the addition of a “continue watching” group on the navigation screen
4) bug fix needed! Videos freeze in the middle of watching a lesson (not buffering) and will not play again until you’ve force quit the program.

This said, it’s a great learning program and I can’t wait to see what other classes they add in the future. The Tim Maynard class on anxious behaviors completely changed the way I approached training my horse and made a huge difference!

This is a great resource for those who don’t have the time or money to acquire this information. The horse world seems to only let their expertise out on a pay or work to know basis, but this program is around $200 instead of the $50,000++ necessary to show on the circuit with a great trainer and horse. Also a much better deal than working as a groom or working student, trying to scrape together all this knowledge in your two minute breaks. Nothing replaces hands on training, but it would take years to have all the conversations that are accessible on this app. Won’t replace the connections you’d get with showing or working alongside a knowledgeable trainer, but totally worth it for the information provided. Then, when you’re ready to find that trainer to work with, you’ll be armed with enough knowledge to feel confident in your abilities. Riding horses on a “horse poor” budget requires a multi pronged approach, and this is a great place to start!

I love everything about what Noelle Floyd offers through these masterclasses and the quality/quantity of information is astounding!

My only complaint with this app is that it’s more difficult to use than the website. I find myself using the website on my phone instead of the app for these reasons:

•the app does not allow the video to be played sideways (full screen) and even though it has a full screen button in the bottom right of each video, tapping it does nothing. The regular view is just too small on a phone. (My phone did not have lock rotation on and I could play the videos on the website in landscape/fullscreen mode easily)
•there is no way to “mark as complete” like you can on the website which makes it more difficult to track where you are in each course unless you add to favorites each time you move to the next video.

Other than that, this app is fantastic and would get an easy 5 stars from me if the above issues were addressed! :)