HORSE RIDING MISTAKES - 10 WORST MISTAKES

hey everyone so today we're going to talk about 10 common mistakes beginner horseback riders make but before we get started why don't you comment down below what your riding goals are with your horse and what you want to accomplish in the future and if you haven't already please like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos [Music] so today we're talking about common mistakes beginner horseback riders make so no judgment here at all we've all made mistakes we are all still making mistakes for the more experienced riders out there so today i want to address some mistakes that beginner writers make but that may not always be addressed so the first mistake we're going to talk about that beginner horseback riders make is that they rely on their reins for balance so what i mean by this is that the rider may be trying to pull themselves forward or balance themselves by yanking on the reins and having that pressure on the reins if you watch a beginner rider post trot you'll see that they're like this and they're trying to pull themselves up with their reins but that can make the horse really upset and it's also causing you to pitch forward or pitch yourself backward rather than being balanced over the horse so instead of riding like this when you're trying to balance you can sit back and sit over the center of your horse for your balance your balance is going to come from your core so these are muscles that you're going to need to build so one great exercise to combat this is to ride without your reins so you can stick your hands straight out to the side and this will force you to focus on balancing over your horse and sitting in the saddle correctly so just disclaimer make sure you have someone leading your horse or an experienced person lunging your horse as you do this just so you can maintain control of the horse while you ride without reins riding mistake number two not releasing pressure when your horse responds correctly so this is one of the foundations of horse training horses learn by pressure and release so if you can understand this concept you'll be much better at working with your horse so what this means is if i apply my pressure so let's say i'm turning my horse so i'll apply my pressure by opening my hand and my horse turns his head that's correct so in order for the horse to understand that that's correct i release the pressure so this is how horses learn so if you're a beginner you may find yourself holding this and then you just keep holding the pressure no matter what the horse does so a perfect example of this is asking your horse to stop so what i see a lot of riders do is they'll ask the horse to stop by pulling back on the reins but once the horse is stopped they don't release that pressure they hold the same pressure on their reins and this then causes the horse to walk backwards so the rider's getting frustrated that the horse is going backwards but in reality the horse is just responding to what the rider's asking so if you are finding yourself getting frustrated with your horse the first thing you should do is look to yourself to see if you're doing anything that may be causing the horse to react a certain way so if my horse is backing up when i want them to stand i need to first look at myself to make sure i'm not subconsciously telling them to back up so for our third mistake it's putting your foot too far into the stirrup so the correct placement for your stirrup is on the ball of the foot so kind of right behind your toes where your toes meet your foot i see many beginner riders putting their foot in the stirrup up to where the heel of their boot is so there are a few reasons you don't want to do this the first reason is for your own safety so when your foot is this far into the stirrup your foot can get caught in the strap if you're to fall or dismount your toes will come up to the top of your stirrup and block your foot from being able to slip out so this can be really dangerous riders have been dragged by the stirrup like this and that's why you want to keep the stirrup on the ball of your foot so another reason you ride with the strap on the ball of your foot is so you can properly stretch around your horse and stretch your legs down and this will help center yourself over your horse properly while when you put your straps right in front of your heel you're going to kind of get pitched forward like this so that's an important thing if you have posture issues when it comes to riding make sure your stirrup is on the ball of your foot so mistake number four is gripping with your heels so as you ride your horse there should be three areas that make contact with your horse your seat your thighs and your lower leg so right here i'll have touching the horse unfortunately when you first start riding you may find that you add another point of contact which is your heels and you grip your horse with your heels like this so there's a few reasons you don't want to do this the most obvious reason is you don't want your horse to think you're telling them to go forward and then they're going to take off so sadly i've seen that happen to quite a few people where they're going to start pinching and gripping with their heels and then the horse is like oh they're telling me to go faster and then it's a bad situation because the horse does what they think is right and then the rider is freaking out make sure you're sitting up straight and that your weight is being stretched down and around your horse so you may find that your natural instinct when your horse starts to go faster or maybe get a little anxious is you want to grip with your heels and your legs and you do that because it makes you feel more secure but in reality you want to make sure in those situations you're thinking of focusing your weight down into your heels and breathing deep so breathing deep just naturally helps you relax and it naturally helps you sit back on your horse and allows you to think through the situation of putting your weight down and around your horse rather than gripping another reason you don't want to grip with your heels is because now your heels are up and your stirrups can easily fall off and so i remember being a new rider and it seemed like i was losing my strokes every time i rode and so that's one of the reasons you may be losing your straps is because your heels are up you're gripping your horse and so your strap is falling off your foot so mistake number five is pinching with your knees so when you first start horseback riding you may feel like you need to grip your horse in order to stay on so part of that gripping is gripping with your knees so in reality what you should do is sit up sit back stretch your weight through your heels and then just naturally by doing that you will notice that your knees are off of your saddle so what it will feel like is just my the inside of my knee is going to be just slightly touching my saddle it's not gripping it's basically just laying against the saddle so if you take your hand and stick it right here i could easily slip my hand out but when you squeeze with your knee i can't get my hand out of there so that's an indication that this is the wrong posture in the wrong position on the horse so there are a few reasons of why you shouldn't grip with your knee when you horseback ride the first reason is that it makes your legs swing your lower leg so if you notice if you grip with your knee your lower leg you lose all control of it it's very hard to keep it still i see this most when it comes to post trotting or trotting on a horse i notice that a lot of beginner riders have a hard time controlling their legs the reason for this is the trot is a new gait and it can feel kind of bouncy so just naturally they're gripping with their knees to stay on the horse this causes their lower leg to swing so when they relax and focus their weight down then they're going to have much more control of that lower leg so another reason you don't want to grip with your knees is because when i grow with my knees look how far i can get popped out of the saddle okay so this is how you get bucked off i remember when i first started writing lessons my instructor was just talking with me and she noticed i was gripping with my knees so she said well make sure you're not gripping with your knees because if the horse bucks you're probably gonna fly off well sure enough like five minutes later the horse bucked and i flew off and she came back and she said well you shouldn't have been gripping with your knees so when i grip with my knees like i said look how far i can get shot out of the saddle there's a lot of distance between here and here right but when i relax down keep my weight down weight focused down and i'm sitting correctly it's going to be hard to pop me out of the saddle so another reason you don't want to grip with your knees is because this will make you lose your stirrups so we talked about how gripping with your heels will make you lose your stirrups it's the same concept really grip with my knees my leg swings back uh oh my strap came off so that's something to be aware of as well if you're losing your stirrups you may be gripping with your heels or gripping with your knee so mistake number six is looking down at the ground as you ride so every rider i've ever known has at some point or another had a problem with looking down at the ground as they rode so when you ride a horse you naturally want to look ahead to where you're going so i don't know how many of you know how to drive but i remember when i was taught how to drive i was taught to look ahead between the lines of where i wanted to go on the road so in the beginning as i was learning i would look right at the road ahead of me and i would have to be turning the wheel all the time because i would notice that these trends were coming up and i wasn't prepared so same thing as you ride a horse you want to look up where you're going so you can prepare ahead of time for whatever obstacle you're going to come across so when you're riding your horse and you're looking forward to where you're going you're going to be riding your horse more confidently compared to if you're riding looking at the ground so first of all your horse can feel you looking down at the ground when i look at the ground i kind of my shoulders drop and i pitch forward a little bit so they'll feel that but secondly horses are prey animals they're constantly looking for things that may pose a threat to them so if i'm looking down and i'm focusing at something on the ground the horse is going to be like what is that over there and that's a lot of the reason why horses stop at jumps i can't tell you how many times i've gone flying over my horse's head because i was looking down as i was approaching the jump and the horse sensed it and they stopped looking down does not communicate confidence to your horse so as i ride my horse and if i'm looking down i can feel that they're a lot more wobbly and wiggly compared to if i'm looking up you know i'm sitting confidently in the saddle i'm riding my horse forward they're gonna be riding a lot more in a straight line compared to looking down and i randomly have to turn and things like that so mistake number seven is getting tense on your horse when you start to get nervous so how many of you have been walking around a corner in your house and suddenly someone jumps out and scares you and you go like that okay you get super tense and you freak out so that's the same thing we basically do when we start to get nervous or anxious about something especially when it comes to horseback riding i know i had this horse pepper i still have her she would have these episodes where she'd just freak out and i could tell when it was coming so whenever she started to get a little you know crazy and wild i would start to get tense because i was anticipating her about to blow up a lot of times we do that on our horses or if i'm jumping a big jump that's intimidating to me i'm going to get a little tense beforehand because i'm not really feeling confident in the horse to go over the jump so what does this communicate to your horse so think about your horse in the wild you know wild horses galloping around the field all's good suddenly a mountain lion comes running after the herd and it jumps on one of the backs of the horses and it's like this and it's trying to bite the horse's neck okay so when i'm sitting on my horse and i'm starting to get nervous and i'm pinching with my knees and i'm pulling on the reins it feels to them like the exact same thing so this is naturally going to make your horse start to feel anxious and start to get worked up horses can feel the smallest fly landing on them so they can also feel your heart beat as you sit on their backs and what horses do when they start to get nervous i've been standing around them when this happens i can physically see the heart beating in their veins and i can also feel it so when they start to feel our heart beating they're like oh her adrenaline's getting kicked up so that means something's about to happen and i need to be ready so even if you're feeling nervous or anxious on your horse you can still position yourself to communicate confidence to your horse so when you're tense you know you're squeezing with your knees you're pulling on the reins you're probably pitching forward so when i want to communicate confidence to my horse i can sit back and relax stretch my weight down into my heels you know have a hold of my reins but i don't need to be pulling on the horse's mouth i've already mentioned this technique in this video but another great way to control yourself if you're feeling anxious is by breathing deep so breathing deep will naturally just relax your body and cause you to sit back and it's also going to control your heart rate a little bit so when i when i'm starting to feel nervous or anxious i can focus on my breathing and that way i'm focusing on something else rather than why i'm so anxious or nervous mistake number eight is not keeping your legs under you as you ride your horse so if you're riding in the correct riding position you should be able to draw a straight line from your shoulder past your hip and down to the back of your heel so that way your foot is staying under you and you have control of your movements a lot easier when your leg is under you so when i put my leg not under me i can put it this way or i can put it this way notice how i don't have as much control of what my body is doing so a lot of this comes with pinching the knee so if i'm like this i cannot control what my upper body is doing if i'm like this still can't control it and i also probably can't control my leg either so one way you can fix this is i remember my writing instructor telling me pretend someone is grabbing you from your hair and pulling you straight up so that way i'm sitting up in the saddle and they're creating a straight line from my shoulder through my hip and down to my heel so another thing you can do to help keep your legs under you and your lower leg under you is to focus on wrapping your leg around your horse so when you do this you can't wrap your leg around your horse if you're pitched back and you definitely can't do it if you're pitched forward so if you can properly wrap your legs around the horse that means you're more than likely going to be in the right riding position so mistake number nine is riding with straight arms so with the correct riding position your elbows will be bent your hands will be square and your shoulders will be back this way you're balancing yourself over the center of your horse and helping yourself stay straight so when i straighten my arms here naturally look my shoulders naturally slung forward right and it's going to cause me to kind of tip forward so one reason i see riders riding with straight arms is because their reins are super short and so naturally they just have to have straight arms this is getting in the horse's mouth you're going to be applying unnecessary pressure so first of all make sure you have a decent rain length so you're not all up in your horse's mouth and if you need to you can follow with your arms as you ride in this way you're not pulling on their mouth or applying unnecessary pressure so when you keep your elbows bent you're going to keep your hands even so so many times i see riders riding like this where their hands are uneven but if i want even pressure on my reins all i have to do really is bend my elbows and then this is also going to help me keep my shoulders back so mistake number 10 is not knowing the one rain stop before you get on a horse so what is the one rain stop the one right stop is the emergency brake for horseback riding so if your horse is wanting to bolt if they want to buck or rear or have a freak out all that power that allows them to do those movements comes from their hind end so what the one range stop does it disengages the horse's hind end and this takes away the power for the horse to move forward or freak out or buck or rear so how do you do the one range stop it's super simple and super easy and i show it to anyone i'm putting on a horse for the first time so what you do is as you're riding and your horse is taking off let's say what i'm going to do is i'm going to reach my hand about halfway down the rain i'm gonna grip my rein and then i'm gonna bring my hand back to my hip and when i do that you'll notice that his head just naturally turns towards my knee so if he's taking off and moving forward and i do this he's just gonna have to step in a circle and you can see he's stepping his hind end around so he's stepping his hind legs one in front of the other so the only motion he can really do here is to move in a really tight circle he can't buck he can't rear so this is a great thing to know before you get on a horse this will help you feel confident in how to handle your horse if you're in a bad situation so if you found this video helpful you would probably enjoy another video we've done about how to improve your seat when horseback riding so i'll put the link in the description for you to check that out you see this mic right here so this was bought by the money we've made from equine helper so by supporting us you're allowing us to number one make better quality videos number two reach more people and help them get their answers to the horse questions they have so we just thank you guys so much for your support and be sure to tune in next week for our next horse video [Music] you

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 135,196

Rating: 4.9727139 out of 5

Keywords: horse riding mistakes, Horseback riding mistakes

Id: FdCIX_h603o

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020