(bright music)
- Today, I wanna talk to you about some basic techniques
to help you improve your steering with your horse.
Whether you're a beginner rider,
you're just getting started riding your horse,
and you're looking for how to improve your steering,
or you're an experienced rider and you want some guidelines
to help you improve your technique,
then this video is for you.
I'm gonna take Legend out into the ring,
and we're gonna get started.
So when we're talking about correct alignment,
we're looking for ear, shoulder, hip, and heel alignment,
and we're looking for a slight bend in our elbow
which allows our shoulder blade to stay down.
And this keeps us stacked over our hips.
Now that we have a basic understanding
of what correct alignment looks like,
let's look at a couple examples of a rider
that's out of alignment
and how this is influencing the horse
and the balance of the rider.
In this first example,
you can see that I'm leaning forward and looking down,
and you can see how this is causing Legend
to have to take the turn too wide
to compensate for my lack of balance.
It's also putting me in a position
where if he were to spook for any reason,
I would easily fall off over his shoulder.
In the second example,
I'm exaggerating pulling back on the rein.
This is making it more difficult
for Legend to use his head to balance.
It's also putting me in a position
where I could easily fall off as I'm tipped forward.
My second tip on how to steer your horse
is remembering your flow of energy.
So where does our flow of energy come from when we ride,
and how is it influencing us
when we go to turn our horse or to steer him?
Our horses are always,
the flow of energy is coming from the hind leg,
up through the core, out to the shoulders.
So for us, that means we're riding from our seat,
through our legs, and then out to our reins.
That energy flow looks like this.
It comes up from our legs, into our core,
and out to our hands,
and reflects the horse's flow of energy
from his hind leg through his core, out to his forehand.
When we're riding in a correct balance,
thinking about this flow of energy,
we're gonna be more likely to sit in the saddle
and really sit on our seat bones.
We're gonna be more likely to use our seat, our legs,
and then our reins, as opposed to using our reins first.
My third tip is practicing looking ahead.
Now, this may seem like common sense.
We wanna look where we're going.
But if you're a rider,
you know how extremely difficult it is to look ahead
and how many times we all catch ourselves looking down.
And I myself have struggled with this
as a professional rider, wanting to look down,
and why do we look down?
Why do we wanna look at our horse when we're riding?
And the reason that I feel we wanna look at our horse
when we're riding is because thinking about him.
We're thinking about...
We're using our body to communicate, and we're thinking,
"What is my leg doing? What is my hand doing?
What is my horse doing? How is he responding to me?"
And because we're kind of subconsciously thinking
about our horse, our eyes naturally gravitate to him.
So something that I work on to help me with this
is picking a point ahead and looking at it
and feeling what my legs or my seat are doing
to influence my horse.
So for instance, if I was turning left, I think,
"Can I feel my right seat bone?
Can I feel my right leg?
How much am I using it?"
And I look ahead while thinking about my feeling.
And this helps me to start developing this habit
of focusing out where I'm going,
which is going to allow my horse to balance better,
and it's also gonna keep me in a place where I'm more aware
of what's going on in the arena around me
and more able to ride in a way that's safe
and that is productive for both my horse and myself.
My fourth tip is using your weight correctly.
We've all seen that horse and rider
that look perfectly in harmony together when they ride,
and it looks like the rider's doing nothing,
and the horse is performing.
The reason that that's possible is
because that rider is using their weight aid
to help influence the horse.
And what do I mean by this?
I mean they're using where they're placing their seat bones
and how they're adjusting their weight
to influence and cue the horse to do different movements.
Your core helps you to be able
to connect to your seat bones.
So this is very important
when we think about using our weight aid.
If I'm using too much leg,
so I'm squeezing in with my legs here too much,
it's gonna push me out of the saddle.
I'm gonna have less contact with my seat bones.
If I'm using too much rein, I'm gonna tip forward,
and that's gonna cause me to come out of my seat bones.
So how do I use my weight?
We don't wanna be using our weight
in this dramatic way where we're leaning.
We wanna be using it in a place
where we're sitting in alignment
and we're engaging from our core
on the side we wanna influence.
So for me, this looks like if I wanna move my horse
off of my left seat bone to the right,
I would engage my leg of course too,
but I engage my core here down into that seat bone
so that this seat bone is more in contact
than this seat bone is.
And if I wanted to turn him this way towards you guys,
I would engage my right side of my core a little bit,
which allows my right seat bone to drop
and my hip flexor here to open up
and allows me to use my right leg
in a way that's relaxed and against my horse.
So when you're using your weight aid correctly,
you're engaging your core a little bit,
which is keeping you down in the saddle
and keeping you centered in the saddle
as you adjust from right or left seat bone.
So now let's put these four tips together
in steering our horse correctly.
So first, I'm thinking about my correct alignment,
ear, shoulder, hip, heel alignment.
I've got my reins on either side of my mane.
And I'm gonna think about my flow of energy
that's coming up from those hind legs,
through my core, out to my horse's ears,
and I'm gonna go ahead and walk down here,
and we're gonna make a turn.
So I'm walking him forward.
I'm looking ahead to my point.
As I go to make my turn,
I'm gonna engage my right seat bone and my right leg
and then look up ahead at my next point.
And then we're gonna turn Legend around here.
I'm just gonna go the other way.
So when I turn him here,
I'm gonna look towards my next point.
Engage my left core.
Ride him forward.
And again, I'm looking ahead.
Left leg is gonna close.
Left core engages.
Opening my right hand a little bit
and allowing him to make that turn.
I hope these four tips helped you think
about your steering in a new way
or maybe refreshed you on things you already know
and help them to be a little bit easier,
a little bit more understandable.
If there's anything further that you would like me to add
to this lesson in future videos,
please let me know in the comments below.
Keep enjoying your riding, keep growing and learning,
and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.
(bright music)