Uncle Nev's Trail Rides
Virtual Lessons
The following links should be helpful for beginner riders who want to learn the basics of riding a horse.
In addition to these virtual lessons, you will also benefit from the practical experience which can be gained from a trail ride at Uncle Nev's.
The virtual lessons are broken up into the following areas:
And remember - you can always ask our friendly staff for assistance if you want to learn more.
We would like to thank the copyright owners (www.newrider.com) for giving us permission to reproduce these virtual riding lessons on our website.
The Saddle
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
Saddles are the first, and most major cause of the rider finding it difficult to sit in the correct position. Unfortunately, saddles are generally designed and made by saddlers who rarely, if ever go near a horse. They are mostly very good craftsmen, but not good designers. To design a saddle that assists, rather than hinders the rider, you need a good knowledge of the correct rider position on the horse, that where you could run a line down through the ear, shoulder, hip and heel. It is similar to a standing position, but with the knees slightly bent, so that if the horse were whisked away from underneath you, you would land standing on your feet.
If your feet are in front of your knees when sitting in the saddle, if the horse were whisked away, you would land on your backside, if your upper body is tipped forward, often bringing your lower leg too far back, you would land on your nose. The Classical position on a horse was not developed because it undoubtedly looks much more elegant, but because it is the only position of balance which enables the rider to move as one unit with the horse. It is far less tiring for both horse and rider, and enables the rider to stay aboard much more effectively.
Saddles, in general, get in the way of this position. The stirrup bar, the piece of metal to which the stirrup leather is attached, is invariably much too far towards the front of the saddle. The lowest part of the saddle seat is not central in relation to the saddle flap, (the large piece of leather that goes under the rider's leg), and so it pulls the rider out of position, and out of balance. This is why so many riders find it easier to sit correctly without stirrups than with.
Quite apart from the stirrup bar problems, most saddles are instruments of torture! The seat is usually made from a closed cell foam which is springy, if you drop a hammer on it, it bounces off. A drum tight piece of leather goes on top of that, with a couple of seams strategically placed to bruise your seat bones! You are then expected to be able to sit to a bouncy trot, with the saddle reverberating away under you, pinging you up like a pea on a drum! My theory is that if the rider is wriggling around in discomfort, think how uncomfortable the poor horse is going to be too, with all that movement on his back.
There seems to be a notion in the horse world that 'no pain, no gain'. Of course you will be a bit stiff after your first few lessons. You will be sitting astride the back of a horse, stretching your hip joints sideways, and using muscles in a way that you would not do for any other sport or activity. Discomfort is fairly inevitable, but you should not be in real pain.
Awareness of a horses movement
Before you go for your first lessons, see if the school will let you watch a lesson first. This will give you the opportunity to see how a horse moves in walk, trot and canter. You will see that his back does not stay still or even move in one piece, but works in two halves. Watch his legs - you will see that as he picks up a hindleg and brings it under his body, his back and hindquarters will lower on that side Likewise, as his hindfoot steps onto the ground again, you will see that the hindquarters and back rise on that side as the foot pushes against the ground.
When you do get on the horse for the first time, try to feel this movement in walk, and become aware of it. Learn to recognise which side of the horse's back is dipping under your seat, and which side is rising up. You will feel one side lower as the other side rises, then vice versa. Try also to learn to feel the horse's belly swaying from side to side under your legs. Learn to feel when it is swinging to the left, and when it is swinging to the right.
Watch the horse's back and feet when he trots. You will see that unlike the walk, which is a flat pace, and which the beginner will find perfectly easy to stay on board, the trot makes the horse's back spring up and down, as his feet move in diagonal pairs. If the rider does not make a movement to compensate for this upward spring, he will bounce about like a cork on a rough sea. This is unnerving for the rider, and also uncomfortable. It is even more uncomfortable for the horse, who has to bear the brunt of the rider's weight thumping up and down on his back, worse still, often also hanging onto the reins to keep the balance.
In riding, we absorb the movement of the trot in two ways, either by rising to the trot, or by sitting to the trot. We will be looking at both in greater detail a little later. The sitting trot produces all sorts of variations on the way to stick the seat to the saddle, mainly because the only correct way is almost never taught. The same thing happens in the next pace, the canter, whereby the poor rider tries very hard to get his seat to adhere to the saddle, and in nearly every case is expending far too much energy trying to achieve it.
Nearly always, the rider ends up opposing the horse's movement in some way, which is rather like trying to canoe up a river against the current- but with one big difference. The river has no feelings, so doesn't object if we try to row against the current. The horse finds any movement uncomfortable which opposes his own. It prevents him using his own back muscles in the way they were intended, and makes forward movement difficult for him. Horses with a naturally less energetic temperament respond by slowing down, horses with a more anxious, energetic temperament often respond by scooting off underneath the rider, trying to get away from the discomfort.
Riders often ask me how a horse can feel all of this through a saddle. If he can feel a fly land on his back, and twitch to try to remove it, how much more easily can he feel our movements? So, if your instructor is making you do things to the horse that instinctively feel unkind, then they probably are. If we can make riders aware of the horse's feelings, right from the first time that they sit on his back, then we can start to make the world a better place for horses.
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
The Walk
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
The walk is the slowest of a horse's paces. It is a four-time movement in which each footfall is distinct. The sequence is near hind, near fore, off hind, off fore.
Collected and Extended Paces
The horse doesn't have just one speed at each of the paces. He has a 'working' pace which is a natural, steady movement at any of the paces.
If you liken the horse's body to a spring, in a collected pace it is like compressing the spring - the hind legs come well underneath and the neck comes back. The steps are short and springy with lightness.
In an extended pace it is as though the spring has been stretched - more ground is covered with each pace and the body of the horse is elongated.
The Rising Trot
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
Rising trot, when performed correctly makes it very easy for the horse to carry us, and is also little effort for the rider to trot long distances without tiring, but when ridden badly, it is another story altogether. We looked at saddle design on one of the other pages, and here it needs another mention. When the stirrup bars are too far forward on the saddle, it pushes your seat onto the back (cantle) of the saddle. When trying to rise to the trot, you will already be in the wrong position to allow the horse's movement to move you, rather than you having to pull yourself up and down against the movement. This is the prime cause of lazy horses. When the rider is to use the horsey term 'behind the movement', that is out of sync, it slows the horse down considerably. The rider then kicks and thumps him in the ribs to get him to go faster, when all he is saying is 'I can't, you are stopping me'.
What happens is that the rider is not able to maintain a position of the lower leg, whereby the toe is directly under the knee, not in front of it or behind it. When the toe is in front of the knee, the rider is in the 'chair' seat as it is called, with the feet stuck forward and backside pushed to the back of the cantle. The rider then has to lever himself up and down out of the saddle in order to try to rise to the trot.
Chair seat - note the bent line between heel/hip/shoulder/ear
Instructors are also much to blame, by insisting that the rider brings the upper body perpendicular throughout the rise and sit phases of the trot. This is stupid, because it makes it so much more difficult! Instructors saying 'up down, up down' do nothing to help, as this also makes you rise too upright, locking the knee and standing up on your stirrups, landing with a heavy (poor horse) double bounce back in the saddle.
The most important thing to remember, is to keep that toe under your knee. Holding onto the strap on the front of the saddle, if you have one, bring your upper body slightly forward from your hips (not your waist which would make you collapse your lower back and sit like a sack of potatoes), and as you rise, let your hips swing slightly forward towards the pommel (the front arch of the saddle), then return as lightly to the saddle as possible, keeping your hipbones slightly forward as you land in the saddle, so that you are ready to receive the forward and upward thrust from the horse's back.
Don't land with your pelvis upright, as it will again, make you come behind the movement, and land much more heavily in the saddle. Think of allowing your pelvis to swing forward and back, as if making an arc shape, never up and down. In this way, the horse's movement will take you, instead of you having to make an effort to heave yourself up out of the saddle, against the horse's movement, making it so much more effort for you both.
The sitting trot
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
Firstly, it is necessary to understand how a horse moves in trot. His feet move in diagonal pairs, springing from one pair to the other, with a moment of suspension in between, so that the movement is two time- i.e. you can count one, two, one, two, in the rhythm of the stride.
For those of you without your own horse or saddle, you can still practise it at home on a stool. If the rider is to sit easily in the saddle, as if softly glued to it, then the only way that this can happen is if the rider is totally synchronising his own lower back and pelvis to mirror the undulations of the horse's back. Sitting on a stool, flex your back in, so that you emphasise the natural slight hollow in your lower back. Feel how your pelvis rocks forwards onto the front edge of your seat bones, which are shaped like the rockers of a rocking chair.
Make sure that your upper body stays still, and that it is not also rocking back and forth, it is just the pelvis that should move. Now, return the pelvis to upright, so that the back is flattened again, taking care not to go past the point where it is just flat, and not rounded out the other way, so that the ribcage is collapsed. Practise this a few times, flexing the back in, then flattening, feeling your seat bones acting as a pivot point on the stool.
Back flat - pelvis upright
Back flexed in - pelvis tilted forward
This is the main movement used in absorbing all of the upwards and downward undulations of the horse's back. In essence, by flexing the spine in, you are shortening your spine by the same amount as the horse's back is rising, and by straightening the spine, you are lengthening it again, by the same amount that the horse's back is falling, in that way, the seat remains softly on the saddle, neither bouncing, nor gripping. The horse's back does not only move up and down, but also from side to side.
On the stool, place your hands on your hips, so that you can feel your hipbones. Practise tilting the top of your right hipbone forward as you flex your spine in, so that you feel your right seat bone tip onto the front edge of it's 'rocker', then bring the right hipbone back to upright, so that your spine is straight again, next tipping the left hipbone forward, flexing in your back, then bringing it back to upright again, straightening the spine. Put these four movements together, and it will feel like the four beats of the horse's walk. Now speed it up to the two time rhythm of the trot! Place your fingers on your hipbones again, and count one, two, one, two, out loud, pushing your left hip forward on the 'one', and your right hip forward on the �two, also flexing your lower back in and out slightly in the rhythm of the one, two.
When practising sitting trot, it is important not to try to achieve too many strides at first. Most riders find it difficult to co-ordinate for more than half a dozen or so strides to start with, and the longer the duration of the trot, the rider starts to bounce, so the horse stiffens up his back muscles against the discomfort of the rider's seat thumping the saddle, so that the trot becomes even harder to adhere to. Do lots of transitions (changes of pace) between walk and trot, which will also greatly benefit your horse, ensuring that his stride stays soft and springy, therefore making it easier for you to sit to anyway. Do hold onto the strap on the front of the saddle, as when your hands stay down, invariably, so does your backside!
Gradually build up until you can maintain ten or twelve strides, then fifteen or sixteen, and so on, until, before you know it, you will be able to sit comfortably to the trot for as long as you need to when schooling or in a lesson.
The Canter
(Reproduced with permission from the copyright owners www.newrider.com)
The canter is a pace of three time, like a waltz, and the back of the horse should come up under the rider, so that each stride feels like a little jump.
Very often, riding school horses are not schooled so that their hind legs act to push them forward from behind- instead, the horse just pulls himself along with his front legs, and his back flips up and down, making it difficult for the rider to sit to. Again, the more the rider bounces, the more the horse will stiffen up his back. It is very uncomfortable for him, and is often the primary cause of why so many horses are reluctant to canter, and why beginner riders find it so difficult to maintain the canter. Horses that are sensitive and more forward going by nature, tend to react by running off and speeding up.
It is the rider's lower back that must absorb the canter movement, not the upper body by 'rowing' the shoulders back and forth, as if rowing a boat. Not only does the latter look ugly, the seat bones are pushed down concavely against the horse's back, which is trying to come up convexly under the rider, if the canter is not to be flat and lifeless. �Rowing� with the shoulders also makes the seat heavy, and 'squashes' the canter, making it very much more difficult for the horse to lift and round his back under the rider. I have another simulator at home which is purely rider powered, i.e. it acts on springs.
If the rider scoops the backside into the saddle, 'polish the saddle' as you hear some instructors advocate, the machine reacts by 'bottoming' on it's springs and nearly bucking the rider off! The sobering thought is that if it does this to a machine, how much worse must it feel to the horse?
So how do we absorb the movement of the canter? Again, sitting on the stool, place your hands on your hipbones, so that you can feel, and flex your back in, and straighten the spine again, just as you did at the beginning of the trot exercise, but now moving the hipbones forward and back to upright together, not separately, (as in trot), at least at this stage in your riding career, and in the smooth, (call out loud again) one, two three, one, two, three, time of the canter. Allowing the lower back to absorb the movement in this way does not prevent the horse from raising his back.
The seat bones acting as a pivot, merely mirror the rise and fall of the horse's back, allowing the canter to rise up under the rider's seat, and not restricting the back of the horse. The rider also appears to remain very still in the saddle, which is so much more pleasing to the eye, than all of this obtrusive upper body movement that is so often seen in canter, and a darn sight more comfortable for both parties!