The good news is that it’s easy to ride a horse. It’s probably the easiest thing you’ve ever learned, and the easiest thing you’ll ever try to learn. Technically!
Think about what you can do with a horse. You can control neck/head, shoulders, hips and speed. To do this, you can use two hands, your ass and two legs and the number of combinations you can use to give your horse instructions are few.
The conclusion is inevitable that riding is technically simple, to satisfy the most wifi and screen damaged individuals in today’s society, riding is like the easiest language in world history and the smallest keyboard ever invented.
But if it’s that simple, how can it be so hopelessly difficult to make it work sometimes?
I challenge you to do a little experiment requiring a calm, sensible and rideable horse, an experienced rider and one as inexperienced rider as it is possible for you to get hold of. Unfortunately, it is a prerequisite that the inexperienced is gifted with the ability to want to receive and understand simple instructions, something that can be remarkably difficult for members of the human race.
If you get that mix together, you put the inexperienced in the saddle. Now it should not take more than a maximum of 15 minutes for the experienced rider to tell the inexperienced exactly how he should do to be able to get the horse to start, stop, reverse a few steps, and turn left and right. Let’s be generous and put in another 15 minutes to allow the experienced to adjust the inexperienced a bit.
After that, the inexperienced can be completely on his own without an instructor who constantly tells him what to do, independently control the horse, stationary and walking. In less than half an hour, the total beginner has learned how to ride a horse. Not everything will be elegant and not everything will work every time but it will work. You have proven that riding is easy! Now you can develop your knowledge, and become more discreet and sensitive.
Now, this horse happens to have a brilliant sense of humour so he starts trotting and the inexperienced rider suddenly fails miserably, nothing works. So the experienced rider takes his place and everything works again both walking and trotting. What the hell is going on? Divine intervention? Not a chance. Well-hidden technical knowledge that the experienced rider keeps to himself to make you feel incompetent and come back for more lessons and pay more to learn things you already know? Not that either.
Let’s think about how the horse experiences this situation. When the experienced trot the horse, it does not feel any different from when you or the experienced walk the horse. The experienced one does exactly the same thing in trot as you both do walking him. He sits still and does absolutely nothing until he decides to use his body to communicate with the horse and the horse recognises the signal and responds correctly. But you do a lot more in trotting than in walking, a huge amount of things you do not do walking him. Becomes stiff as a board, bounces around in the saddle, shifting your weight here and there, swings your arms like a windmill and pulls the horse in the mouth, the make drum rolls against his belly. This happens completely unconsciously, but for the horse, there will be a large number of fragments of signals that are thrown at him without interruption. To a horse, it feels as if someone is standing in front of you speaking very fast in a language you do not understand. There is no way for you to understand and react correctly in that situation. And believe me, there is no horse on the face of the earth that can react correctly in a similar situation. So, the short version is that the major difference between you and the experienced rider is not technical, it is simply that the experienced rider can sit still and do nothing, but you do not. It is one of two major benefits of experience.
So how can you compensate for all the experience that has given the experienced rider the advantage of being able to sit still and do nothing? There is a good method for that. But before I go into that, I have to make you understand that the art of sitting still and doing nothing is not good to know, it is absolutely crucial to your ability to develop as a rider. If it does not work, nothing will. Make or break you, do or die. You must understand this otherwise there is no point in trying.
Well, to the point. You need to sit on a calm horse in a place where you feel completely relaxed. You choose that place entirely yourself, let no one influence that decision. Then you start walking and forget about riding, just sit and feel one body part at a time, think about it, feel it, and become aware of it. Then you take the next body part and the next. Large or small part does not matter, you decide. When you run out of body, you start over and continue until you are fully aware of your whole body. Only then can you consciously check that your body is not doing something without you knowing about it. Only then can you think about developing as a rider. When you have a routine for this exercise in walking, you can start trotting / jogging your horse. And do exactly the same exercise in trotting. Now, trotting is the gait that God forgot, but there are some things you can think about when you start training body awareness and body control in trotting. First, just take a few steps at a time, there is no point in fighting when things are not going well, you get no control just because you are fighting headwinds all the time. Just gets crazier. Try a few steps at a time and start over. A straight line is not a good idea, most likely it just goes faster and becomes more difficult. A horse moves softer on a small circle then a straight track. Same thing on a slight uphill. So avoid downhill, completely flat surfaces and straight tracks. Focus your efforts on the curved track easy uphills and repeated short attempts until you get your body awareness and body control to perfection. Only then can you develop your technical knowledge, the knowledge that you already have or that you can acquire quickly and easily. One stimulating thing to know in this process when trotting is that your horse does not need a lot of time to react to your ability to sit still and do nothing.
Almost without exception, your horse responds immediately when you succeed in this exercise. Of course, there are notoriously stressed and nervous horses, but as a rule, horses react at once when you get to this. It is one of the horses’ most impressive qualities, a horse just wants peace and quiet and responds exceptionally well when you can offer it. A horse never wants to fight you, just to understand you and feel safe. Do this correctly and the result will be immediate and very satisfying for both of you. And do not forget that you must understand how important it is for your ability to develop that you succeed in this. If you cannot sit still and do nothing, you can completely forget to ride your horse. Stop completely thinking about the technical aspects of how to ride, it is not a challenge. On the theme of safety, you can learn one rein stop, it is the ultimate emergency break. Then you can just think about relaxing and learning body awareness and body control.
Be aware of and control your body.
Leaquvie.