Riding a horse that rushes and leans can be an unpleasant experience at best, and a harrowing experience at worst!
Horses don’t rush to be bad, or to try to scare us, most often they rush because they are unbalanced, they don’t know how to adjust their bodies and movement to carry a rider’s weight well and to navigate the turns and transitions we ask them to perform.
This sense of being unbalanced will make a horse just as anxious as it may make the rider, so the more the horse rushes, the tighter the rider grips the saddle and the reins, and this tension makes the horse lean into the turns and rush even more.
In today’s video, I would like to share three exercises to help your horse slow down and have better balance in their turns, while also helping you, as the rider, to feel secure and help your horse find rhythm and relaxed movement.
The order of these exercises is not random as we will be following the Structure Your Ride Formula I explain in this video.
We will begin with a Warm Up exercise, then move to a Rider Skill Building Exercise, and finally I will show you how to ride a classic Training Exercise for your horse.
Let’s get started! Hit play below!
p.s. These exercises are from my book, Stay in the Saddle, 67 Exercises for Horse and Rider.
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10 Responses
Interesting! I’d like to try this but my horse is afraid of crops, can you suggest a different way of doing this exercise without holding a crop?
Hi Jen, you can use anything that is stiff like a crop for this exercise it doesn’t have to be an actual crop!
-Julia, HorseClass Community Manager
That looks very useful for training my young warmblood.
Give the exercises a try and let us know how it goes!
-Julia, HorseClass Community Manager
great exercises, thank you for sharing!!
Allie is a nice quiet rider and Soldier seems a willing soul. They will do well with your help and excellent book.
Soldier has become a wonderful school horse, he’s a very good boy 🙂
-Julia, HorseClass Community Manager
Thank you Callie! Very helpful!
Happy to hear you enjoyed the exercises in this video!
-Julia, HorseClass Community Manager
fascinating demonstration. practical and clear advice. thank you.