How aware are you of what all of your body parts are doing while you ride? Itmight seem like a strange question, however, often when we ride there are parts of us thatare a little tight or tense, which will in turn cause our horse to be tight and tense.

Think about it. If your back is tense you will lose movement, particularly in the hips andseat. You will lose rhythm and will not be able to ride as lightly as you should be or feelwhat the feet are doing. Your seat will hit harder on your horse eventually making his backsore because the two of you are out of time, even if only slightly. If your arms andshoulders are tight, you will have too much tension on the reins, losing feel and causingheaviness. Remember its only natural for your horse to push against pressure.

If your goal is to be able to truly feel the rhythm of your horse, to feel every step andmovement he makes and to influence him with just the smallest of cues, your entire bodyneeds to be soft, supple and relaxed. Have you ever experienced some tightness or sorenessafter riding your horse? Think about which bit was sore; chances are that was the bit thatwas tight when you rode. Is it possible that your tightness effected your horse’smovement?

So how do we loosen up and what causes us to be tense? Three main keys will influence us inthis way. Mental, emotional and physical fitness, or rather a lack of one or more of these.Lack of mental fitness can cause us to not truly trust the horse, so we hang on to him and work much harder than we need to. Lackof emotional fitness affects us similarly. When we get scared or worried, we tighten up andhang on. Lack of emotional fitness also shuts down many of our senses so we can be totallyunaware of what our body is doing at the time. And lastly, physical fitness. It stands toreason that if you are out of shape and out of practise, you’ll have to work harder to stayon. You will have plenty to think about already without worrying if your little pinkie istense or not.

There’s a great little exercise to do in the Level 3 programme to really getyou loosened up. Revisit your faithful passenger lessons, only this time with a twist. Asyou ride, make a conscious effort to loosen up one part of your body at a time. Start withyour toes and wiggle them while you ride. Do this for a few minutes until you feel themreally let go, then move up to your whole foot. Repeat the process as you progress to yourlower leg, upper leg etc and don’t forget to do your head too. Try to isolate as manydifferent parts as possible. This will do wonders for your feel and contact riding and willreally improve your independent seat. You can do it with a saddle at first if you like andchoose which ever gait to begin with, however we encourage you to build to be able to do thefull exercise bareback at all gaits. By Level 3 you should be able to do this.

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