If you’ve ever felt this, you’ll never forget it.
When you pick up a rein, your spine and your pelvis should be able to elastically give to your horse in what is a kind of spongey feel. If you’ve ever felt it, you’ll know it without doubt and you’ll never settle for less than that perfect physical connection between horse and rider.
And it has NOTHING to do with your hands – it comes from your spine and pelvis being in the perfect position to ALLOW the feel in your hands. This sooo… explains all the times my instructor was yelling “Stop pulling!” and I was calling back saying “I’m not!”
That’s the Horse Rider’s Challenge – to be in a magnetic, stuck to our horse’s back like a glove, physical riding position that allows us to ride our horse with the Feel and sensitivity that these wonderful creatures deserve.
Teaching the magnetic riding seat, where-ever you are in the world, is my area of expertise.
Photo above: Bobby and I back in 1997 – bareback and bridle-less around the pony club cross country and obstacle course. I thought I was pretty hot stuff being able to do this kind of thing. Little did I know what was REALLY possible.
Our horse’s elevated back is the first key to their enjoyment
A few weeks ago, we talked about the horse’s side of what has to happen in order for our horse to enjoy being ridden – the elevated back that comes from them being in a Comfort Zone – click here if you want to refresh that.
OUR riding seat is the other critical key to our horse’s enjoyment.
It is all so much easier to ride your horse to well being, when your riding seat is stable. When your riding seat is stable, you can easily develop the Feel and sensitivity that makes it possible to ride your horse to physical and emotional well being and have riding be a pleasure for your horse too.
To get that awareness of our body automatic, to achieve the flexibility of our pelvis and spine and get stability and sensitivity in our riding, we work OFF the horse to start off with. Working off the horse allows us to completely focus on getting ourselves right without having to even think about what the horse is doing. This is a MAJOR key to success.
And then we can take that improvement out to our horse easily with an idea that my horse Bobby came up with years ago that will knock your socks off with it’s simplicity and effectiveness.
So working OFF the horse is how we get those incredibly fast improvements in our riding position that you’ll hear people raving about in testimonials all over this website.
It’s sports psychology meets the healing of alternative therapy that makes your beautiful new riding seat AUTOMATIC when you get back on your horse.
If Fast Track to Brilliant Riding is too big an investment for you, then have a look at Foundation for Riding Excellence – it’s 20 lessons extracted from Fast Track – the lessons that have the biggest impact on your riding seat. You’ll find them on the Training Programs page here.
Get organized for this simple awareness lesson
Grab a plain old kitchen chair that you can sit on facing backwards, so that you are looking at the back of the chair and have your hands holding the back of the chair at about rein height.
If you haven’t got one of the kind of chairs that it is comfortable enough to sit backwards on, then get the flattest chair you have and sit close enough to your desk to be able to push and pull gently on your desk like Kristina in this photo to the right.
Then very gently and very slowly, increase the push a little on your hands like Donna is doing on the kitchen chair to the left here or if you’re at a desk, pull very gently and very slowly increasing the pressure a little, like Kristina is doing at the desk to the right here.
Are you pulled forwards or pushed backwards out of your position with that pull or push?
If you are, then I expect you’ll notice you’re probably going to be pulled out of your riding seat on your horse pretty easily too, because it’s the same position of your sitting bones on the horse.
Yeah yeah I know a chair isn’t a horse… But notice what I’m talking about next time you ARE on your horse and I guarantee you’ll be feeling the same thing. Push on the front of the saddle with one hand and feel if you get pushed backwards. Then pull a little on the front of the saddle too.
Then reach behind you without changing your seat position and pull a little on the back of the saddle too. If you’re pulled even a little backwards, then you will benefit hugely from the right kind of helping hand.
Do you need a hand to get that perfect riding seat that I’m raving about?
You might have noticed by now that we’re pretty good at solving problems around here. 🙂 So if you’re one of the vast, VAST majority of riders who are not in a magnetic riding seat that is enjoyable for your horse, then it might be time to look at how to fix that.
If Fast Track is not in your ability to do right now, then maybe we’ve solved that with our smaller program Foundation for Riding Excellence – these 20 lessons are taken directly from Fast Track and if you convert to Fast Track later, we refund the price of the Foundation course (always solving problems. 🙂 )
All good ideas ripple outwards, gaining momentum. Good riders, I mean REALLY good riders, who can ride their horses with sensitivity and a deep connection is one of those ideas worth that momentum.
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