HOW TO STOP BOUNCING ON A HORSE

hi guys so today we're gonna do a video about how to stop bouncing when you horseback ride but before we get started the question for this week is what is your most embarrassing horse story so i had this awesome pony jumper named bella and i was taking her to a show we had three amazing clear rounds we had the fastest time out of everyone but every round i messed up the course and so i was disqualified for every round which is horrible because i was talking myself up to everyone i'm like oh i know i'm going to win so leave your comments down below i'd love to know that i'm not the only one out there who has embarrassing moments [Music] so i've done my fair share of bouncy on horses i know it's super uncomfortable and i know it makes you feel like you can't ride so real quick let's talk about some reasons you don't want to bounce on your horse so reason number one is that it's uncomfortable not only is it uncomfortable for your horse but it's also uncomfortable for you another reason you don't want to be bouncing around is because it makes you look like you may not know what you're doing so i've definitely been there and it feels awful and i feel embarrassed about myself another reason you don't want to bounce is because it makes it hard for you to control your own body and really communicate well with your horse so if you're a newer rider you may find yourself bouncing at the trot or canner or even if you're a more experienced rider and maybe you're trying to learn how to ride in a full seat you're just finding it difficult to keep your butt in the saddle so hopefully what we can share today will help you learn to sit in the saddle and move with your horse so you'll stop bouncing so let's talk about why you may be bouncing in the saddle as you ride your horse so the first reason you may be bouncing is because you're getting tense and stiff and bracing against the movement of the horse so the reason you may get stiff when you're riding is that you're trying to hold on and you're trying to balance yourself from slipping and sliding but in reality getting stiff and bracing against the movement does the exact opposite of that another thing that bracing yourself is going to do is it's going to make you fight against the movements of the horse so let's imagine a soccer ball if a soccer ball is filled with air you can kick it and it's going to go really far but if a soccer ball is flat and you kick it it's not going to go that far so when you tense up you kind of make yourself like that soccer ball filled with air suddenly you're just the solid object that when your horse hits you in the butt you're just going to fly as far as you can away so you're going to really bounce out of the saddle more another thing that bouncing is going to do is it's going to mess up your riding position so your correct riding position as you're sitting up nice and tall your shoulders are back and then your foot is directly underneath your hip so you can draw a line from your head through your hip and to your heel but when you get stiff intense you hunch up your shoulders and you may lean a little forward like this and you're just bouncing around your leg might slip either this way or this way and so you're really going to mess up your ability to communicate with your horse another cause for bouncing in the saddle is when you stick your legs too far out in front of you so i've already talked about correct riding position ideally my feet should be underneath my hip but when you kind of start sliding like this and your leg gets in front of you that's automatically going to throw your weight back behind the center of the horse so i noticed this the most when it comes to post trotting the riders will swing their legs forward and be sitting back so when it comes time for them to post they're having to pull themselves up like this and they have no control of their hips and so they'll be bouncing and trying to pull themselves forward rather than if they had their feet under them it'd be a lot more controlled our third reason you may be bouncing on your horse is that you're gripping with your legs and your knees so when it comes to gripping with your legs many people grip with their thighs and their knees and so what this does is it immediately constricts your ability to move your hips with the movement of the horse another thing it does is look how high i can pop out of the saddle when i grip with my knees so what this means is i can be bounced out of the saddle really high i one time had my riding instructor tell me well don't grip with your knees because if the horse bucks you're just gonna fly off because look how far you can get shot out of the saddle and sure enough a few seconds later the horse started bucking and i flew off so you want to make sure your legs are relaxed and that way you can move your hips with the motion of the horse another reason you may be bouncing on your horse is because you're unfamiliar with the movement of their gates so if you're advancing to a gate you're unfamiliar with like a trot or a cantor or even just riding a different horse one thing that can really help you is taking the time to focus on how your horse is moving with each gate so horses have a rhythm to their gate that you need to find as the rider so how many times have you listened to a band playing and you can notice that there's an instrument that is off beat or like maybe you're clapping at a concert and then you can hear a few people clapping off beat well that's kind of how it is when it comes to riding and riding different gates of your horse is if you're off rhythm that means you're that clap that's off beat so what that might look like is you bouncing all over the place as you try to figure out the rhythm that you need to be in so now that we've covered some reasons you may be bouncing on your horse let's cover some solutions so one of the number one ways you can stop bouncing on your horse is by staying relaxed so when you tense up what you're trying to do is you're trying to maintain your balance so it's important to know where your balance actually comes from it comes from your core so when you can focus on relaxing everything else like your shoulders and your legs and your knees you can just focus on engaging your core to help you stay balanced so one super helpful thing you can do when it comes to staying relaxed is to focus on your breathing so when you tense up suddenly you may notice that your your breath is really quick so i used to go around a jumper course and i would be riding and suddenly i'd come back and i'd finish the course and realize that i was out of breath and that's because i was tense the entire time i was so focused on trying to ride correctly and do everything right i forgot to breathe so one way you can relax is simply by focusing on your breathing as you ride your horse another thing you can do to help you to stop bouncing is to check your riding position and make sure you're positioned correctly on your horse so when you're in the correct riding position it's going to be much easier to control your movements and it's also going to help you keep your weight down in your heels correctly compared to if you're sticking your legs out here your weight's getting behind or if your legs are back here and your weight is getting forward so we want to make sure we're sitting over the center of the horse and that's going to put our balance over the center of the horse another solution that will help you to stop bouncing on your horse is to make sure your legs are relaxed so we've already talked about being relaxed before this is a very specific area to focus on so we talked about how when you pinch with your knees you restrict the movement of your hips so what you want to do is make sure your leg is relaxed through your thigh and your knee and that's going to allow you to move your hips with your horse so a good indicator you're pinching with your knees is if you can't get your hand in between your knee and the saddle so ideally i can just slip my hand in between the saddle and my knee comfortably but i don't really want my knees this far off but just laying gently against my saddle so i can stick my hand in here so when you relax this part of your leg it allows you to stretch your weight down and around your horse which is going to help secure you in the saddle so you're not going to bounce as much so another way you can help stop yourself from bouncing in the saddle is by focusing on the movement of the horse especially at each different gate so what i mean by this is taking the time to feel how your horse moves and how your seat moves with them at each different gate so at a walk track can or you can do this and it's just a great way to learn how your hips need to move with the horse so you aren't going to be bouncing so when i do this what i can tell is that the walk it feels like my hips are going to swing side to side so i can make sure i do that with my seat and my hips as i ride my horse at a walk at the trot it's going to be more of an up down motion so that means i can move my hips up and down with the horse and at the canner it's going to be a scooping motion so i can scoop with my seat to help go with the horse's movement so there are a few great exercises you can do to help yourself learn the movement of the horse one thing you can do is you can ride with your eyes closed at each gate and this is going to just help you focus on how you're moving i do recommend that you have an experienced horse person lunging you as you do this though we don't want you to accidentally run into the fence or run out of the ring another exercise you can do is you can hold the front of your saddle and you can kind of secure yourself in the saddle by doing this and this is going to help you move with the horse and allow you to feel what it feels like and also help keep your butt in the saddle again i do recommend you have someone lend you while you do this just because you may not have complete control of the horse or a hold of your reins another great video we have that can help you in this area is how to post trot on your horse so i'll put the link in the description down below so you can go check that video out if you got anything out of this video please subscribe to our channel we share new horse videos every week that you can check out [Music] you

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 120,887

Rating: 4.9475794 out of 5

Keywords: How to stop bouncing on a horse

Id: cqo0pK_P6fM

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020