Some General Thoughts About Training Weanlings and Yearlings

While I'm certainly no expert, some things have worked well for me and I think are logical.  I have to use a method that doesn't require strength or any special skills.  I'm a little old lady after all!  The method used needs to make sense to a horse.  That sounds simple, but many people think a horse has cognitive abilities like ours.  Nope.  Things that confuse the horse or cause pain, like shock collars, actually make learning harder by confusing the horse.  If the animal has to deal with pain or fear, they aren't in a learning frame of mind. A horse has no way of connecting misbehavior to a correction that doesn't happen at the exact instance of the behavior.  Withholding water for example has no relevance to the undesired behavior.  A fearful horse isn't listening because he's doing what he thinks he needs to do to survive. 
I like to picture in my mind the behavior I'm hoping for as well as the cues I'm going to use.  Then I break the whole into as many small parts as I can.  I think this helps me be clear and consistent when I'm teaching something and that helps the horse.  The value of timing can't be overstated!  The better your timing the quicker your horse will learn.  Good timing depends on the trainer's knowing what to look for, so it really begins with studying horses behavior in general.  Use consistent cues and reward consistently (much of the time by release).  Along with good timing comes the admonishment to "reward the try."  At first with teaching a new behavior, you may have to reward something as small as a cocked ear.  Then you can build on that by asking for incrementally bigger tries.  The reward has to be immediate.
Timing is just as important if you use negative reinforcement.  The negative has to stop the moment the horse obeys.  Keeping up the pressure after the horse has complied will only confuse the horse.
Depending on the horse, an activity may have to broken down into absurdly small components.  For example, a horse that is "needle shy"--The first component may have to be as small as seeing  the needle several feet away with the reward being removing the sight of the needle when the horse relaxes.  After the horse has learned all the small components, they can be put together.  The reward comes later and later in the series until all the steps can be completed.
Building trust may be time consuming at first, but it pays off with every consecutive thing you want to teach or achieve because you have a horse that works with you instead of against you.  It should never be a test of wills.    Submission and relaxation are essential for training and I don't see why these concepts wouldn't apply under saddle as well.