Riding with balance and softness

This has been a question that has been asked over the ages; from the beginning rider to the advanced, from show ring judges to cowboys running cattle on the range. Thousands upon thousands of books have been written on this topic from early-day Greeks like Xenophon to present-day popular clinicians/trainers such as Al Dunning, John Lyons, Cherry Hill and many others. Each of them talks about specific techniques or training exercises for horse and rider to improve riding and the horse’s performance. Some of them focus on the rider and the skills needed to “ask” the horse for certain types of performance. Others focus on the horse. There are books that discuss the physiology and bone structure of the horse and how the physics of balanced riding or lunging enhance his mobility; books on the mentality of a horse – how he thinks  – in order to ask “better” so he can interpret correctly; or books on how to ‘feel’ your horse for improved riding.

It is my opinion that the vast majority of these books, whether written with technical expertise or as poignant stories of past hoses, address several main issues with regards to being a “good” rider. Being a “good” rider requires:

• Effective communication with the horse
• Balance, muscle training and muscle memory
• Sensitivity to the horse’s mental state and an understanding of how he thinks
• Certain technical skills with regard to the rider’s body placement and hand and leg use
• And above all, consistency, practice, patience and an ongoing learning process.

Often we get caught up in how we are supposed to “look” based on an old equitation model that typically features a tall and slender man atop a lean thoroughbred. This image neglects the fact that people, as well as horses, come in all shapes and sizes and because of this, how we sit upon our horses, whether our feet are perfectly parallel to the horses body or our legs fall exactly behind the girth area, can vary somewhat. When we get so caught up in how we look on our horses we often become tense and constricted and our moves mechanical. A horse is a sensitive animal and he will instantly pick up on these tensions, thereby becoming tense and constricted himself thus inhibiting a lot of his natural ability.

Typical child - relaxed on their horse!

Have you ever seen a confident child ride a horse? Their arms flop loosely at their sides with much give to the horse’s gait. Their legs rhythmically swing with the horse’s motion and their seat moves according to the balance point of the horse – that area right behind the withers and the center point of gravity of the horse. Their horses typically perform well with a lot of joy and enthusiasm.

So how do we work on improving our riding and our horse’s performance? It takes a little practice but we start by relaxing! Shake out your shoulders, pry your elbows from you side, unclench your jaw and shake your booty around a little in the saddle. As one of my instructors likes to say; do the funky chicken! We also need to keep in mind that as we get tense or uncomfortable, our natural inclination is to curl up…we round our backs and look down, pull our arms and hands to our middle, tighten our necks and lock our position. The good news is we can retrain ourselves! The best thing to dissipate that tension the moment we start to recognize it is to lift our heads and look out in front of us, widen our hands and bring our arms away from our sides, breathe deeply and move our hips from side to side a little (which counters  that typical clenching of our bottoms). And above all, have a little faith that our horses want to please us and don’t intentionally plot how they can make us frustrated and miserable – we do that to ourselves! The moment we ‘open’ ourselves by uncurling, straightening our spine (by looking up), expand our chest (by moving our arms away from our bodies and breathing deeply) and sit deeper in the saddle at the horse’s balance point (by loosening up our hips when we shake them around a little), we will see an amazing and instantaneous change in our horses. It is remarkable.

Working on that mentioned above will lay the foundation for learning the technical skills associated with being a good rider. There are certain positions we need to train our bodies to acquire in order to effectively communicate with our horses. Things like keeping our heels down unlock our knees and allow us to apply pressure to the horse’s side. Bending our arms at the elbow and maintaining a straight line from elbow to the horse’s mouth provide an open means of communication to the horse. These are the things a good instructor helps you with. Over time and with constant repetition we train our muscles to these positions, eventually acquiring muscle memory which means we do it without thinking.

Me and Hershey hanging out in the water

There are also ways to ask the horse that take into consideration his mental abilities. Horses are simplistic creatures that work off of pressure and body contact. When we ask our horse for some new movement or performance, we need to break it down into simple steps that we do one at a time. Each step builds upon the next until we can put them all together to get the desired performance. We need to ask, reward and practice again and again what we ask. Patience is key here and if at any time our horse seems to balk at what we ask we need to rethink how we’re asking. Our horses, if they’ve been cared for and treated kindly and respect us as their leader (which is a whole other concept I’ll talk about in a future post), don’t typically think to themselves, “Ah, I see you’re asking me for this and to hell with you – I ain’t doing it!”

Occasionally your horse will test the hierarchy between you and them…who exactly is the leader here…and this is where a good understanding of horse behavior comes in. We need to know how a good leader behaves in the horse world. Observing how horses interact on their own and working with a knowledgeable person will help you in establishing that leader-follower relationship with your horse – with you being the leader of course (remember, there is no concept of democracy in the horse world). It’s the little things we do on a daily basis with our horse, like leading or body space, which sets the stage for leadership role. Every moment we interact with our horse is a learning opportunity and a chance to instill our position within the herd that comprises us and him.

A nice moment of reward and communication with Tessla

Putting this all together, we become better riders. By relaxing we keep the tension out of our horse. By learning the fundamentals of body position on the horse we can ask the horse with more effectiveness. By understanding horse behavior and the leadership role we create respect in our horse and a willingness to do what we ask of him. From this point we can advance to more complex performance and riding skills which are generally just variations on these basic principles with a little more detail added.

Certainly there are a lot more details to expand on what I mention above. Fortunately there are a lot of good books and good instructors out there that can assist in this endeavor if your goal is to become a good rider. Take advantage of these learning sources! If your goal is to look good and you’re not willing to put in the hard work understanding your horse or learning how to communicate well with your horse, then by all means spend that 20 grand on the push button horse to perch atop and look good on. Over time you’ll be trading him in for a new version because you broke the old one due to lack of ‘good riding’. But at least you looked good doing it….