This week in lessons

The week in lessons we are going to work on hand position; keeping wrists and knuckles pointed towards the horse, and pulling back so that the straight line from hand bit maintains the same angle. This does mean pulling up slightly, but by using the shoulder and forearm, not the biceps.

I think often because rider's are female, and perhaps not all that strong, trying to ride big lumbering beasts, we go with what muscles we have and try to use the leverage that curling the forearms offers to out muscle the horse.

The problem with this method though, is it creates tension which the horse will naturally fight back against. Instead you need to not give the horse anything to fight, by taking as hard as you need to, and then softening again right away...don't wait for the horse to respond, just give, and if the horse has not responded, try again. Using the biceps to curl the arm to pull on the horse also tends to lift the horse's head and neck up and back, and cause the back to hollow. This is a position of tension for the horse, so even if the horse WAS relaxed, it will start to think it is, or should be tense because of its posture.

The flip side is  riders that straighten their arms and pull back using a lowered hand and a stiff forearm. This had many flaws; not only is it a rigid way to pull, it also causes the rider to get hunched forward and crooked. From the horse's point of view you are pulling on their sensitive bars, and they tend to contract and curl away from this type of pull, which also causes them to drop onto their forehands off balance.

Other issues like kinked wrists, or my Nemesis, the flat left hand, also cause unevenness in pressure that can make the horse rigid, twisted or behind the bridle.

The "Educational" hand is one way to feel the following hand of a compassionate rider, but we don't really want to show like that, so it is important to learn to keep that following feel even with normal hands.

For jumps we will do doing things like asking the horse to maintain an arc over a jump (so jumping on a circle as an example) and working on a LOW following release.

For flat work, we will be working on lots of transitions and turns, as well as continuing to look at the CADORA tests.

And a warning...I am off to see if I can find some Popsicle sticks and empty cardboard tubes...see if you can figure that one out....

Karen