(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)
