The Art of Riding

Ride: [rahyd] verb, rode, rid; rid⋅den, rid; rid⋅ing;
–verb
1.
To sit on and manage a horse or other animal in motion; be carried on the back of an animal.

“To sit on and manage a horse” is how the English dictionary defines riding. If you ask me, or any other horseback rider, riding is not just sitting on a horse and telling it where to go. No, in fact, it is MUCH more involved. No matter what type of riding you do, whether it is Western or English, no matter what horse sport you are involved in, riding is MUCH more than simply sitting on a horse.

To begin, let’s start with the horse and rider connection. You have to know and trust your horse. This is a fifteen hundred pound animal you are dealing with; there is no room for error. Horses have minds of their own, which is why this sport is so much more complicated than any other. These creatures are constantly testing you: can they trust you, are you a strong leader, why should they listen to you? Over time, you will learn to read your horses body language and actions, which will help you understand what kind of mood he is in on a certain day, or how he is feeling, whether it be lethargic or hyper. If a horse can depend on you understanding them and not pushing their limits, they will soon accept you as their leader. To gain this trust, doing simple things to show you care, are most effective. Such as daily grooming, feeding grain, rewarding with treats, riding consistently ect. The more time you spend with your horse the more trust you gain, and the more confidence you have around him.

Now let’s get into the saddle. Throughout this I will be focusing mainly on English riding, since that’s what I do, but here and there I will add a post on Western activities. For those who are not very exposed to the horse world, English riding is like what you see in the Olympics and Western is like barrel racing. Western riding uses the large saddle with a horn on the front and is more common in a ranch like setting; it is the picture of the brown saddle. English riding comes from England, this uses a smaller saddle and focuses on rider balance; it is the picture of the black saddle.

English riding consists of four main gaits (or speeds that the horse travels), these are the walk, trot, canter and gallop. The walk is a slow four beat gait, where a horse moves each leg at a different time, generally the horse begins with moving his right hind leg for beat one, then his front right leg fro beat 2, beat three is his left back, and beat four is his left front. Repeating this over and over again, gives you the walk. The trot, faster than the walk, is a two beat gait where two legs move together at the same time. The left front and the right hind will more together as beat one, next is the right front and left hind as beat two. The canter is a three beat gait, a bit faster than the trot, and is more of a rocking chair motion, where the trot is more bouncy up and down. For the canter the left hind leg will come forward as beat one, then the left front and the right hind will move forward together as beat two, lastly the right front will move forward as beat three, this gives you the right lead (a lead is the direction in which you are cantering, the leg coordination changes between left and right) canter. Finally the gallop, which is a much more forward gait, but is also a four beat gait as the walk. If you are galloping in the right lead, the beats begin with the left hind moving forward, next is the right hind for beat two, beat three is the front left, and beat four is the front right; which gives you the gallop. This is how a horses legs move in correspondence to each gait.

To ask a horse to change gaits, you use your “natural aids”, these are your hands that hold the reins, your seat (the bones of your femur that you sit on), and your leg. By squeezing your legs on the horses’ side, you ask him to more into a faster gait, such as halt to walk or walk to trot. To ask for your horse to slow down use your hands and gently squeeze the reins. Eventually you get into coordinating your aids at the same time, and then also using them independently.

These are the VERY basics of riding. You can never stop learning how to ride; the knowledge keeps building on itself. But, for now this is what you need to know in order to understand things I will talk about in the future.