foreign
all right hello everyone i'm amelia today i'm going to explain to you exactly how to use your
reins when you're riding and break it down in a way that makes sense and is understandable
and i think this is something that a lot of us struggle with is figuring out like
okay ideally you're mostly making your aids from your legs in your seat i would say like
about 75 of the age should be from your seat and your legs only 25 from your reins but your reins
do serve an important role for steering your horse for getting your horse to accept the contact and
for supporting the half halt if your horse doesn't listen to your seat so give me a thumbs up let me
know if you're excited to learn exactly how to use your reins in the comments and also be sure
to check out in the description i have a free mini course on confidence so if you're struggling with
fear or show nerves or you just want to figure out how to feel more confident in your writing
be sure to sign up for that mini course so let's get started i was reading an article actually by
christine traurig so i have to credit her for some of these ideas and she just did an amazing job of
breaking down exactly how to use the rain aids christine is an amazing coach and trainer and so
thank you for giving us some ideas about how to use your reins so the first thing
we're going to talk about are the turning aids because i think that that's probably
one of the most important uses for your reins and so if you're walking along
and you want to turn your horse let me show you most people like if they're walking along and
they want to turn what most people do is that they just like if you're a beginner rider you just kind
of pull on the inside rain to get your horse to turn so that's not really the most correct way of
turning because you saw what happened to mercurio here is if you just pull on the inside rain
he over bends and kind of just falls that way so in order to correctly turn your horse what you
want to do is you want to think about that your inside rain indicates which way you're going so
think about your inside rain like the blinker of your car so you're going to use a little
scrambled eggs or little fingers on your left ring to indicate that you're turning to the left
but your outside rein actually executes the turn so if i'm walking here i'm going to use my fingers
on the left rain fingers fingers now my right rein closes to execute that turn it's important
that your outside rain doesn't cross over the horse's neck so my outside rain can be right
up by the withers but i don't want to have my outside rain actually cross over the horse's neck
so here i'm indicating with my left rain left rain right rain makes the turn now if i want to turn
to the right i'm indicating flexion with my right rein and now my left hand makes the turn good boy
so again i'm i'm turning my blinker on with my right fingers and then my outside rein executes
the turn and again like i said before you'll notice my left hand stays on the left side of
the withers my right hand stays on the right i can open my right rein a little away from
his neck so like if i want to turn to the right i can do this i can open the rain but i don't want
my left hand to do this because if you use an indirect rain aid with your outside rain
then this is what happens the horse looks to the outside and falls to the inside like you know in
the western movies how they just neck ring the horses and the horses just bent completely the
wrong way head straight up in the air looking the wrong way so you don't want to do that
when you're turning your horse and the same thing applies to the trot and the canner so if i'm
say i'm going along here and i'm going to make a 20 meter circle i'm going to
indicate a little flexion with my inside rain and then my outside hand stays by the withers
to help turn that shoulder around so i'm indicating flexion and i'm turning i'm indicating
and i'm turning with the outside rain but again the the inside rain gives the horse the idea
the outside rain actually executes the turn good boy so that's how you use your reins for turning
now there's a few other uses of your reins the first thing we're going to talk about is just
that you want to always first start out with establishing contact
and just having basically a neutral contact with your horse's mouth what i mean by that is
if i'm walking along here first i have to use my leg to push him up to the contact and here
my hands are just following so here see how i'm just following the motion of his neck in the walk
the horse has a little bit of a nod so my hands are just following now from this neutral contact
you have two options one option is that you can take back and have kind of a resisting aid so i
can tighten my elbows and you really when you do this you start from your upper back so if i want
to start having more of a resistance in my rain i i think about my armpits my upper back and holding
a little in my elbows and that's going to cause your horse to stop or slow down so again following
contact resisting contact now the other option is you can go from a following contact
to giving so that's the other option here i'm following now here i'm giving the rain
and those are kind of the two things that you can do so when do you do what well
it depends you know sometimes you need to take a little more of a resisting contact
to make a half-halt come through or a transition come through but then you always also want to test
the self-carriage by giving you can give either on just the inside rain which is the recommended
i recommend just giving the inside range to test the self-carriage or you can give on on both reins
so let me show you this in the canner because i think that's where it's the most obvious
and first always get your horse going forward from your leg
so now here is my following contact you see how my elbows are bending and straightening
and this is kind of like just a neutral contact i'm not really asking him to do anything i'm doing
a little bit my turning aids just to keep him here on the circle now from here what i might
do is test this self-carriage by giving so you see how here i have neutral following contact
let me show you where the camera can see well i'm gonna make sure he's round and then i'm gonna give
on that inside reign you wanna give for like three or four steps and then take contact back
otherwise you would expect your horse to look for that
now if i hold a little more with my reins so if i take a little more contact
then what you're going to see is this horse is probably going to break to the trot like
that so when you take a little more contact unless you add leg at the same time your horse
is going to slow down so here i'm following now i'm resisting and my horse slows down good boy
it's really important to note that whatever you do with your hands needs to follow through from your
seat and your legs depending on what you want like i mentioned before about 70 of your aids
come from your legs and your reins so if you're cantering along and you're in that neutral contact
and you're just following and suddenly you take more rain if you want your horse to collect and
stay in the canner you need to add leg at the same time let me see if i can show you that oh
so if i'm if i'm just cantering along here and i'm just following following following following
and i want to collect the canner you actually start the collection from your leg so it's always
leg seat then hand so i'm gonna bump him up a little from my leg then i'm gonna think about with
my seat holding a little in my tummy oops there i did too much holding a little in my tummy and then
a little half half out half half half half half out good boy you saw him collect a little so it's
really important that when you use that resisting rain aid that you always start it from your leg
to your seat to your hand good boy you never just want to go right to your hand good boy so
that's always really important to note is that the sequence of ages always leg seat then rain because
if you just go to the rain right away your horse is going to resist and probably stop so let me
know in the comments if that was helpful i think it's just a really good way to kind of think about
how to use your rain aids one thing that i didn't mention which is super important is that there
should always be a straight line from your elbow to the horse's mouth so you always want to start
out in this correct position if your hands are low in brace like this that's going to cause stiffness
and you see how there's no longer a straight line from my elbow to the horse's mouth if your
hands are too high like this again that breaks the contact so you want to imagine like imagine like
your forearms are really long you want to imagine like you could hold the horse's bit like this
when you're riding them and then whatever you're doing when whether you're turning or
following the contact or giving or resisting you always are maintaining that straight line
from elbow to mouth and that's what allows you to have an elastic and supple contact
so hopefully this helps again i think as much as you know we struggle with contact and connection
it's always important to remind yourself to ride more from your seat and your legs
because our brains are programmed to do everything with our hands but when we ride we need to use
our seat and our legs more than our hands so hopefully this was helpful thanks for watching
and be sure to check out in the description i have a mini course on rider position and
also one of confidence there for you to sign up so that's it for today good boy mercurio
bye