Connection, contact, throughness... this lesson will transform your horse!

Ideally ‘the text books’ will say the aim is to be able to walk trot canter with a lovely long stretched neck, with your horses nose out in front of the vertical seeking the bit and working beautifully over their backs, but often things are less than ideal!

Often I see riders who are struggling, for example, horses who have a ‘less than perfect conformation’ as they naturally have a high head carriage, or a very short neck, or the horse is tense, so they don’t feel they can relax, or they simply have not yet been taught correctly.

In this lesson I will teach you a really useful exercise to help your horse release the jaw and accept the bridle and stretch forward and down - then the back will be able to lift and your horse can then swing the hind legs under. You should start to feel your horse becoming beautifully soft as they work through their body. It’s a really good feeling for your horse, like an on board physio session!

Do your legs flap when you are riding - this is for you!

It is really important to stabilise your legs so that you can effectively apply your leg aids and get an instant reaction from your horse. If you are a rider with flapping legs or swinging legs this causes a lot of interference. We need to quieten down any other ‘noise’ so the communication with our aids becomes much clearer.

To obtain a stable lower leg position takes A LOT of practice and body awareness.  In this simple little exercise you will be standing up straight in the stirrups with just a slight bend in the knee. The idea is if you can ride standing up like this you will feel where your leg needs to be positioned for the rest of your body to be fully supported. At first you will be wobbling around all over the place and barely able to stand up even in halt - don’t worry you will soon find your balance and transform your riding!

Sitting trot is easy... when you use the correct muscles!

In this lesson I will explain precisely which muscle groups you need so use - and the muscles we don’t want to be using - so that you find sitting trot easy. This is a really important ‘future proofing’ lesson because in the next program at medium level it is compulsory to be riding your test in sitting trot.

The Transverse Abdominis is the main player in the sitting trot, this is a band of muscle which extends between the ribs and the pelvis, wrapping around the trunk like a corset from front to back, similar to a corset or a back support - these are the muscles you need to be using.

Rather than clenching and making the rider stiff as a board, which is not what we want, the 'transverse abdominis' lifts the trunk up, using the muscles sectionally in bands on each upbeat of the sitting trot. I promise by the end of this lesson you will find sitting trot much more natural and easy!

This is the start of our 'mini series' on how to build a big beautiful trot!

We start in walk with transitions within the pace which are the key to building a a big trot - as well as developing collected walk ready for the future. In this lesson I will be teaching you to release your hand when you give a rein aid so that you are not to blocking your horse in front. This is important, otherwise the hind legs can't swing under and your horse won’t be working correctly through the back, and I also want as much freedom in the shoulders as possible. I can’t emphasize enough how it's really important that your horse really listens to your aids and so when it comes to the next step it will be easy.

Next, my aim is to teach Raffles to wait for my leg aid, but I need to teach him that my leg doesn't always mean go forward, it can also mean to take a bigger step - that's the goal at this first stage, just one or two big steps. At the end of each season in this program we will revisit Raffles trot development, so that you can follow step-by-step and get a realistic idea of the timescale to produce a big beautiful trot... to be continued!