Is this your horse?

Does your horse do any (or all!) of the following :
resist your hand/bit,
drop his back and trail his hindlegs
not go forward with impulsion
feel stiff
fall out through his shoulder on turns
not halt square

If you have checked his health and tack it is probably you and how you are sitting and riding.  And how do you find out and then fix it?

Is this you?

Analysing your own riding faults is very difficult but a video of yourself riding can be illuminating if a little crushing.  But try to take a detached look at yourself and see if you are doing any (or all!) of the following :

sitting more to the left (or right)
appearing to have a longer leg one side
a toe turned out more on one side
riding better on one rein than the other
falling behind the movement
unsteady legs
reins slack then taut
looking down to the inside
uneven shoulders
slumping in the saddle
bouncing in sitting trot, rocking in canter?

The rider must change first

Any one of the above rider faults will cause problems for the horse but it is often hard to work out whether it is you causing the problems or the horse not going well and making you ride badly.  To be truthful it is a little of both but without doubt, it is the rider who has to change first and it can transform the way of going of your horse and make good riding easier for you.

Changing ingrained patterns in our riding can be very, very difficult and some of the conventional methods (sit up, heels down repeated ever more loudly) are often unsuccessful. Luckily riding tuition is undergoing a slow revolution.  Nowadays using analysis of muscle use, visualisation, modelling and NLP (reprogramming the brain to change behaviour) can give the rider the tools to rectify a long standing problem and make a breakthrough in more quickly.

The asymmetrical or crooked rider

Take for instance, just one common positional fault - the crooked or asymmetrical rider. The problems this causes the horse are huge and very little advanced riding can take place until it is fixed. It is useless to be told to lower or raise one shoulder, turn a right or left toe inwards, stretch up one side or ‘sit up straight’. Often this will cause further tension and will not be sustainable by the rider. The root of the problem is often a lack of true balance and core strength, (i.e. the internal muscles that hold our torso vertical), plus weak and unstable legs, tight tendons in the thigh/pelvis, locked hips and even breathing patterns.

Engaging core muscles for stability

All this sounds daunting to rectify but actually is easier to deal with if each component is been identified by a knowledgeable trainer on the ground. For instance, we use our core muscles every time we cough, blow our nose, carry heavy objects, even when we breathe correctly and locating these when doing the above is the first stage to learning how to bring them in to use while we are riding.  Placing our hands, one on our stomach on the navel and one on our lower back and pushing out our front and back towards them as if we were trying to push them away will instantly bring a set of important muscles to your attention.  You need to have these muscles pushing out while you are riding to give you stability while your own sense of balance is learning where ‘straight’ is.

Also, if instead of trying to sit up straight (which could make you rigid) you could imagine a rope attached to the top and back of your head and being pulled gently upwards all the time you are riding. You will feel the back of your neck lengthen and your chin go down. This feeling is subtle but important as it allows you to balance your head, keep it level, look forward and release your shoulders all at once! Releasing the shoulders is vitally important but very difficult if your core strength is weak and cannot keep your torso balanced and therefore give you a secure feeling.

Those pesky legs!

The next stage is to deal with the legs and increase muscle tone and correct use of opposing muscles groups and tendons to give the rider an effective stabilising tool in the bottom half of the body.

Again, telling the rider to stretch the leg down, turn toes in and drop heels will often produce stiffness because, for instance, the opposing muscles on the front and back of the thigh may be working incorrectly.  If a rider has a very short contracted top thigh muscle and a long over stretched under thigh muscle, they will find it very hard to get the correct angle at the pelvis/thigh, knee and ankle. Directing the rider’s attention to this and getting them to imagine lengthening the top thigh muscle and shortening the underneath muscle will keep the knee down and back and the lower leg more stable. This then allows the Achilles tendon at the back of the heel to be free to do an opposing stretch down producing a longer, more toned and strong leg. Making the whole body more toned and stronger usually means the dominant side of the rider’s body that is trying to take over riding the horse can let go and one -sidedness can be conquered!

Develop your sixth sense

Just using the techniques above (there are many more) can make huge inroads into several riding problems and improve other long held faults, like being behind the movement. The added spin off from this analytical approach is that the rider also starts to take responsibility for the horse’s problems and develops a vital sixth sense - awareness of their own body as it is now and exactly what muscles and tendons need to be used to make the change towards being a more effective and competent rider.