I thought is might be fun to have a thread where you can post one TOP RIDING TIP that you've discovered and also ask for help on one issue and see if we can't all learn from each other. Here is my starter for 10...

1) TIP: if your horse rushes his fences and if this makes you tense up or get tight, try jumping very small fences without stirrups. By taking your stirrups away, it is much harder to tense up, you will start to sit deeper in the saddle and have better 'feel' and control of your horse's rhythm making it more difficult for him to rush. Try also jumping with the reins in one hand when you get more confident.

2) HELP: years of reschooling naughty horses has taught me to sit well back on the canter transition anticipating a buck (!). However, it has now got to be a bit of a habit and I find it really difficult not to lean back a little as I ask for canter even when I try not to. If I do manage not to sit back, I somehow lose a bit of contact on the horse's mouth which encourages him/her to come above the bit and lose the outline. Any exercises to help?

 I am not a very experienced rider but my most important tip is to breathe with harmony and balance, and in step with your horse, not holding your breathe in at the top of your lungs but breathing downward through your boots.

TIP:  If your horse is rushing, anxious, tense, or unbalanced at the trot, put him on a relatively small figure-of-eight so he has to keep thinking about bending, changing directions, and balancing himself.  You may have to do two or ten or twenty to start with, but I've found this a very effective exercise over the years.

HELP:  Hmmm....thinking of a good one.  Ok, I need to sit back when working on dressage/flat work.  Since college ingrained the hunter seat in me, I've lost my dressage seat and tend to tip my shoulder forward, especially when concentrating on channelling forward energy through the bit.  Sit back exercises?

 TIP for Jenny:  It might be that when you were sitting back for prepare for the inevitable buck, you lengthen your arms to maintain the contact.  Now that you don't lean back, you're still unintentionally straightening your elbows (out of habit), losing the contact.  Could that be the case?  Think about it and feel for it the next time you canter.  Just one more thing to think about!

TIP for Solaris:  Sit back (don't just lean back) on your seat bones and loosen your lower back.  You can't maintain the same hollow lower back as in hunt seat, so I always think about "tucking my pelvis" under me to get the right feel.

HELP:  My 3 year old RPSI gelding is recovering from a locked patella.  We tried a few things (bute, muscle relaxers) to get it to unlock, but ended up injecting the ligaments.  The usual exercises to get the hind end stronger are deep sand and hill work.  The problem?  He's not started under saddle yet!  I guess I could get a lot of exercise too by working him in hand in the sand and up hills, but I think that would be more of a detriment to him, dragging me along!  Do you think walking and eventually trotting poles on the ground would serve the same purpose? 

My TOP RIDING TIP:

Struggling to keep those heels down? Try shortening your stirrups up farther than what you usually riding in. Since your legs will be all bunched up, pushing down on you heels will lengthen out your leg and get you to keep your heels down.

 TIP for remmer:  I do think that poles would help strengthen him, as well as backing him to strengthen opposing muscles and ligaments.  What do you mean you don't want to jog uphill in deep sand??    Anything that encourages him to pick up his hind feet and use his rear end to push will be good. 

I know where you are coming from on that thing with naughty horses, I'd had the same experience.   Keeping the bend into the outside rein is the answer for the naughty horse that can buck through a transistion, and the answer for keeping your contact on the more trained horse.   If the horse loses his bend, he is more likely to come up off the bit.   Also, if the horse loses the bend, he can stiffen in his neck and back muscles, which can create the buck.

Get into a sitting trot on a smallish circle --15? -- get your horse really bending into the outside rein, keep a good contact with springy fingers and your shoulder back, sit on your seat bones, and keep your legs deep and on, keep swinging in your back, watch you don't stiffen up.   Before your canter transition, ask for a little leg-yield to the outside, at the moment of response put on the canter aid, make sure you are soft on the inside rein.  Keep your chin up, and be ready to push the canter through with your seat and leg.  Open up your circle as the horse pushes through and keep your canter forward, swinging and bending into that outside rein.       Robin

Solaris:

What do you mean you don't want to jog uphill in deep sand??

Well, I was considering changing and adding to my cardio workout, but I'm not sure this is the way to go!  I think I'll start with poles and backing, until I figure out how to get to the sand and hills in the daylight. 

TIP for Remmer - do you have another horse you could pony off of?  That way your youngster could come alongside as you go up and down hills and through deep sand on horseback.

I've really been focusing on the canter transition recently (I had 6 horses to school yesterday so lots of opportunity to practice).

With the best schooled one, he tends to get very 'sharp' through the transition so you have to be light in your seat as you ask... but if you DO ask correctly he will stay in an outline. So he's a good one to practice on. I think what I tend to do is as I sit back, I tighten my hands - I think i'm expecting that head to go DOOOOOWN  between the knees LOL. But this particular horse responds by rushing through the transition because I've pushed through my seat as I sit back... and lifting his head because my hands have lost their softness. By focussing on gently sponging the reins and softening my seat as I ask for canter, I was able to keep him soft and sort of 'lift' him into the canter (dunno how else to describe how it felt but I could feel him coming up underneath me through the transition). And he stayed in an outline !!!!! YAY

I've been taking all this forward with the less schooled horses with some success. With the Riding School ponies, I like to teach them to 'cue' for canter by the rider sitting back as it is good for the kids - most kids tip forward when they learn to canter which puts them in an unsafe position so by teaching the ponies to wait for a 'sit back' feeling before cantering, they are much more useful on the school. But I've been keeping my hands really soft so that the ponies can't use them for support through the transition which I think i've been allowing them to do. It is interesting that Prince (for example) finds it very hard to pick up canter on a soft rein - he was really looking for that solid contact to balance off of.

Well, I've certainly benefitted from this tread! Thanks everyone, keep the good advice flowing in.

 

JayneP-Admin:

TIP for Remmer - do you have another horse you could pony off of? 

 

I do, Jayne and that is the plan when I have enough daylight.  Rem (my older gelding) is an experienced lead pony, since he took my younger gelding out on the trails as a yearling and two year old.  My problem is time and daylight.  It's a 15 minute walk to the sand and hills and by the time we work for a half hour and get home, that's an hour.  I get home at 4:45 and it's dark at 5:30 - don't cha just love daylight savings time?   AND, that hour's time doesn't include getting ready and tacking up.  This is the biggest problem.  I might be limited to working in the sand on the weekends and "just" hand walking on the week days.  Maybe, I could hire a tractor to come and "deep break" a track around my arena....  The things we do for our horses!

Jenny - it sure sounds like you're doing well with the canter issues.  Keep up the good work and I'm envious of the fact that you are riding six horses a day!  I'd settle for one....

 TIP: Do you find you and/or your horse 'falling in' on circles or corners? Look to the tip of your horse's outside ear - that will help you and your horse maintain a straighter frame on those curves. When 'falling in' is no longer a problem, slowly start adding some bend to those circles.

HELP:  How can I learn to 'feel' the correct diagonal rather than having to 'look' for it?

Tip for Countrymouse - I had the exact same problem as you. Finally I figured out that I was just thinking about it way too much. My first couple of times riding after a three year break I was concentrating so hard on my muscles that no longer knew what to do with riding that it was two or three rides in that I picked up the trot and didn't feel balanced, and suddenly felt very out of sync. I sat two beats and sure enough it made all the difference... I really think that our brains get in the way of a lot sometimes, especially around horses! Turns out that when I wasn't thinking I was just naturally picking up the right diagonal, and my body knew when it was wrong. Try thinking of something else. Give your mind something to focus on, maybe have someone there talking to you and asking unrelated questions or something.

Help - I'm trying to get Julie back into shape (or at least closer to it than she is right now...) but because she's been off work besides light riding a few times a week if any because of many various small medical issues, I want to take it slowly. Anyone have any tips on how to best do this?

countrymouse:

HELP:  How can I learn to 'feel' the correct diagonal rather than having to 'look' for it?

 Oh, I can help with this one! If you take sitting trot (preferably on the lunge but with a quiet horse you can practice just in the ring) and relax you should be able to feel the horse moving your seat bones from the inside to the outside.

Keep relaxing and focus on that inside, outside, inside, outside swing. Now all you have to do is wait for the horse to swing you to the inside then instead of swinging BACK to the outside, start rising instead. You should be on the correct diagonal - although it does take a bit of practice to get the 'feel' right. If you start this way, gradually you will start to feel that inside/outside swing subconsiously at which point you will start to hit the correct diagonal instinctively (well, most of the time LOL). It will eventually get to the point where the incorrect diagonal just plain feels wrong!

 The techie explanation is that the horse's hind limbs are what move you from side to side. As the outside hind comes up and forward and underneath the horse, you get moved to the inside. Then as the inside hind comes up and forward you will be moved to the outside. As you want to SIT when the inside hind hits the ground (so you can influence it and create better impulsion) you therefore want to RISE as the inside hind comes up and forward, hence as you are moved to the outside... hope that makes sense!

 

 Thank you JennyB - that is an awesome explanation - can't wait to try it out.