Rail and Pattern Horse » horse back riding

Learn How To Ride A Horse With Your Seat and Legs

Jean — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:36:34 +0000

Learning how to ride a horse isn’t as easy as the trainers make it look. For instance I use my hands and reins to control my horse and rate his speed way more than I should. Now I know better and I’ve spent years learning how to ride a horse but, still when I get nervous my reflex is to lean forward and use my reins to control my horse. How about you?

I, like many of you have been told by coaches and trainers that to learn how to ride a horse I need to sit back, relax and use my legs to control my horses body. And I have practiced doing just that. But today I had a ride that proves I still have a lot to learn about how to ride a horse to get the results I want.

Riding my horse today for about an hour, I had some success but I also had some issues with getting him to slow down and come back to me when I asked him to. So after an hour I told my trainer, Teresa Sullivan that I was finished and slid off. I say slid off because my horse is 16:3 hands and I’m past my youth so I don’t bounce off my horses anymore and certainly not one who is as tall as my horse, Snickers…

Anyway, Teresa decided to hop back on him to tune on him a bit. When she got on him, she tied the reins in knot and wrapped them around the saddle horn. Then she proceeded to ride him around the arena and over poles using just her legs to guide him. She walked, jogged and loped him around and around. She used her legs, seat and spurs to slow him down and cue him to perform his gaits.She was demonstrating how to ride a horse to get the results you want.

He looked incredible.

Her words to me….Snickers has told on you. His issues today were yours and not his. To learn how to ride a horse you need to learn to let go of the reins and use your body to guide him. Long story short, I got back on and rode him around for another 30 minutes or so and while I was a bit nervous I let go of the reins and used my legs and seat to guide and direct him. I’m not sure I have ever had a horse back ride that was more fun. The moral of my story, if you want to learn how to ride your horse then let go of the reins. ( in a safe environment and safe horse of course.)

Do you have stories of learning how to ride a horse? If so then share them with us. Click on the comment section below and leave us a comment.

Question- Which Horse Training Online Videos Would You Like to See?

Jean — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:07:04 +0000

I hope you’re having a great summer. Summer seems to have finally arrived here in the northwest. It’s nice to spend more time outdoors with our horses.

By this time you should have gotten two emails at least from me and have seen two Free Videos from Mark Shaffer. I got some feedback that one of the videos was hard to hear. I’m sorry about that. Live video feeds can sometimes be that way. I’ll try to make sure the future videos are a bit louder.

I also got some feedback from one person that they could not see the videos at all. If you have any issue then be sure to download the current version of Adobe Flash and that should take care of the problem.

Now I have a question for you. I am busy working with Professional Horse Trainers to bring you more online video horse training in workshop format. I’d like to provide what you want so please let me know which type of training you would most like to see from the following list.

Western Pleasure

Western Riding

Horsemanship

Showmanship

Lunge Line

Trail

Hunter Under Saddle

Please just send me an email at railandpatternhorse@gmail.com and tell me your top 2 or 3 types of online horse training you’d like to see.

Or you can go to my blog post and give me some feedback as well. This is the link to my blog post : HorseTrain

The Real Meaning of Ride Your Horse in Western Pleasure

Jean — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:15:07 +0000

Ok maybe it’s just me and you haven’t fallen into this particular horseback riding trap…Or maybe you have and just don’t want to admit it. What’s the trap? Read on and find out…

You love your horse and aren’t sure how to really get them finished for a particular riding discipline for example western pleasure. So as a responsible owner you send them out to a Professional Trainer to be trained. Then after months of paying a board and training bill and waiting to get on your horse yourself and ride…after all you and The Trainer don’t want you to ruin the horse….ever heard that one?…..

Anyway, you finally get on to ride your horse and in your mind the horse is push button right? All you have to do is just sit up on his back and look pretty and just let him do his thing. So you get on, you look pretty, you sit up there and you can’t get your horse to do a ***** thing you want him to.

The Trainer made him look awesome but you can’t even get him to lope slowly or even on the right lead. When he jogs he leaves his hind quarters out behind and bounces you all over the place. Your back feels like your spinal cord is being hit with a hammer each time the horse moves his back legs. Well maybe it’s not quite that bad but it’s sure not what you expected.

Two things I have learned from my years in horses:

No matter how trained the horse is you have to ride him every stride to get the results you want. It’s not enough to have him trained and just sit up on his back and look pretty. You actually have to know what cues he has been trained to respond to and you have to ride his stride.

Get on him early enough in the training to know exactly how he is being trained and that you can really ride him with the same cues your trainer is using. The trainers legs will hit your horse in a different place than yours and they most likely have much stronger legs than you do. So make sure early on that you can continue to ride your horse in the same way he is being trained or you are wasting your money and maybe even worse yet…You may find yourself very dissatisfied with this horse that in the beginning you really wanted to keep.

Your horse needs to be trained for you to ride, not your trainer.