I was riding Ozzie this morning and my goal for the day was to develop our lightness & softness together. There are two parts to being able to ride a horse successfully. 

There is the WHAT you can do.

• I can trot in a circle
• I can do a leg yield
• I can do polework exercises
• I can do walk to halt transitions
• I can back up 3 steps
• I can canter my horse
• I can pop over a small fence
• I can go on a trail ride
• I can do shoulder out

The list is never ending!

However the second part of horse riding is really just as important. It’s all about HOW the horse does these moves & activities.

• My horse was too fast & spooky
• My horse was really relaxed & confident
• My horse was tense & worried
• My horse and I were totally focused on each other & in tune together
• My horse felt really heavy and on the forehand, and was plodding around without a lot of energy
• My horse felt so balanced & athletic it was awesome to ride!
• My horse wasn’t listening to me & was more focused on other things

The ‘WHAT’ you do is the functional part. And it’s probably the easier part for most riders, as you get taught what cues to use & the mechanics involved. And it’s what is more commonly taught in riding lessons. But that’s literally just the FIRST step in terms of partnership, connection, connectedness, trust, and all those much bigger goals we have as horse orders. 

To move onto those goals, we need to spend a lot more time working on the HOW. 

I’ll give you an example. 

Today I was riding my Connemara Ozzie. I was really focusing on developing that softness & connection between us when we are riding. And I can do this in a very practical way. 

Every step I ride, in a walk trot or canter, I specially ask Ozzie to either travel. 

• With his body in a straight line
• Using a gentle arc to the right through his whole body (not just his neck)
• With a gentle arc to the left through his whole body (not just his neck)

This doesn’t happen by chance. I am thinking about the shape of Ozzie’s body every single step I ride him. 

If I have asked for Ozzie to move in a straight line, or with a gentle bend in his body, and he does this… then I will do nothing. No nagging, no random rein moments, no weight changes, no looking in a different direction. I want to let Oz feel peace while we are both thinking the same thing. 

If I have asked for Ozzie to move in a straight line, or with a gentle bend in his body, and he does not do this, or he just does it for a few steps and then does something else… then I will do something, a small adjustment of sorts depending on what is the smallest cue I can use. 

The trickiest part of this whole operation isn’t asking for the body position I am looking for. And it’s not even correcting Ozzie when he changes bend without me asking. It’s not even me doing nothing when Oz gets it right (sometimes doing nothing when we ride our horses is tricky!)

The most challenging part for my riders is the level of awareness needed to notice the shape of our horses body for every single step that we are riding them. 

• It means we need to be crystal clear in our goal. 

• It means we need to be totally focused on our horse. 

• And it means we need to be 100% living in the moment. 

The reason I like to focus on asking my horse to bend his body in a gentle arc right & left when we ride, is that I have found that this goal directly leads to huge improvements in our goal for softness and lightness when we are riding.  

When your horse becomes softer & lighter, you really begin to level up your riding skills & your performance ability. It’s like unlocking the next step on the ladder to an incredible partnership with your horse in the saddle. 

So I have a question for you today. When you are riding, how often do you notice your horse’s body shape when you ride?

Once per session? Never? Every single step when you ride?

Let me know in the comments below 🙂