hi it's josie and today i'd like to talk to you about training your horse and in particular down
transitions down transitions are obviously an important part of riding your horse you need to
stop him but you also need to change gaits you need to understand the sequence of events your
horse needs to understand how to answer your aids um and once you get it you can teach your horse
and we break it down into little building blocks for both of you so you get it and then he gets it
you need to have a scale that you expect your horses to respond to your aids my scales from
one to ten one one being a very subtle subtle aid ten being a little bit of a excuse me we are doing
this thank you very much listen to me and then you work somewhere in there you need to decide
what points you're happy to have your horse respond to your aids and then you need to always
ride and remember to correct your horse if he doesn't sit within that window if you do a
correction you must come back and redo the aid we never leave the horse on the correction we always
leave the horse on the soft aid that's the way you keep your horse soft and subtle to your aids
i like to have the horses stop on about a one to a three and most of that is my seat and then
maybe just a squeeze of the reins and why is that because i like to use my reins for flexion
direction length of neck depth of neck length of stride and a few other things that we use
our reins for and if i'm using my reins to stop my horse then i've just lost the finesse of some
of the other aids take the time it takes to learn this guys you might feel like it takes
it's it's the long way to go around somewhere but i promise you it's actually the shortest
route once you can do this yourself without really thinking about it it happens on automatic pilot
then you can go on and do other things and also it gives you the ability to train your
horse as well so let's get on and do a few and i'll talk a little bit of theory as we go
so the stopping aids for me are
rebel feels like he's stopped already he's gone to sleep while i talk to you come on so the first
thing i do is before i give any aid to any horse is i pick my own body up the best way to explain
that to you is i grow a little bit taller and i engage my core or pull my belly button to my
backbone slightly my horses can feel that through my seat one of the reasons you need to have a soft
seat a soft supple balance seat on a horse so that any little movements mean something to him
whereas if you're falling all over the place then he's getting a lot of white noise and
nothing means anything i do have a video and i'll link it up here on how you can work on your seat
i'll pop it in the description as well so my stop aids first of all you need to have a following
seat now if you can just watch my pelvis i think you can see here that my pelvis is just following
his movement in the saddle i'm not doing anything here i'm sitting here soft and draped around my
horse so as he steps he pushes my pelvis along and i'm allowing it to happen but keeping tone in my
body that's the first part of stopping a horse is having that because then when i stopped that
you can see he's trained with this but he stops because my pelvis stops following
that's my horse stopping from my seat rebel's a good stopper because he's essentially a lazy
horse but anyway he still is um stops from my seat so when i walk off my pelvis follows
the next part of stopping the horse
comes sorry mate from touching the reins now i don't pull to start with the next part is
using your reins in a stop you don't pull back to start off with you should be holding your reins
correctly so through your little finger and your ring finger and up over the top with your thumb on
top so the next bit for me is just to squeeze like i've got a sponge in my hand if you have
a contact this doesn't mean your horse is on the bit guys if you have a contact and you're touching
his mouth he can feel that so that's the second bit uh moving on if he doesn't i will
pull my wrist in so i will bend it that way not that way it'll go that way because trust me i
can get two more inches feel on the rein doing it that way that's quite a bit of pressure on a horse
and then if my horse is not actually going to stop i'll do a one rein stop
or i'll turn them on a smaller circle i've done a video on that
and i'll link that up here and in the description below as well if you like this stuff guys don't
forget please subscribe to the channel hit the like button leave me a comment tell me
if you're enjoying them i'd love to hear it right let's get on with some down transitions
so i'm going to start in rising trot in rising trot for a down transition
at the top of the rise i might pause for a split second pull my core in and what yeah good
and warn my horse that is coming and then he does a down transition so the pause at the top of the
rise is almost like i told you when i was walking i pick myself up and it's not for the horse to do
a down transition it's just a warning for him that something's coming try that again so from
trot i pick myself up and then i probably squeeze the rein all within one footfall of the horse
so a down transition in rise trot top of the rise i just pause a second pull my belly button in yes
he's listening you can see his ears are on me then i'm going to squeeze my outside ring finger
and walk pause at the top of my rise squeeze my outside rein and ask him to walk so what i did
then was i went squeeze squeeze with the outside rein sat down in the saddle right so my horse is
walking along i'm growing up a little taller so he's listening to me i'm going to stop my pelvis
and then close my outside ring finger now now and that was how much i took to stop him
didn't start that way in the beginning and as i said i've got that other video go and watch that
so my seat is following my horse i'm going to get him up into a trot transition
i'm going to ask him to come down i didn't really want halt but
you know why he halted because i used too much aid in front and he stopped
and then i paused up here yep and he listened then i felt him and now i'm going to just sit
down in the saddle and stop following with him until he comes back to walk and then i follow
in walk i'm allowing my pelvis to follow with him and now i'm going to stop my pelvis from following
and he stops it's a very quick video but i hope it helps if you've got any questions
pop them in the comments below and i'll try and answer them for you
thanks
you