When you see an equine athlete performing, you’ll notice that although they exhibit tremendous power, every movement is fluid and relaxed. There is no tension or stiffness anywhere. If this type of performance is your ultimate goal, the first thing you need to check on is your own riding. When you ride are you fluid and relaxed, with no tension or stiffness anywhere? Many novice riders get so focused on a particular movement that they end up carrying a lot of tension in different parts of their body, shoulders in particular. Stiffness in the rider results in movements and cues that are laborious and abrupt instead of smooth and flowing, and this will result in resistance and stiffness in the horse’s movements as well. This is why many of the exercises in this first section are designed to help you develop your feel and learn to stay relaxed in the saddle.

Next in a series
After taking a look at the fundamental riding skill of using your legs in the last issue, we take a brief look this issue and next at the horse’s mouth.

Here’s a good exercise to remind you of how little rein pressure it takes to send a signal to your horse. To try it, just hang your bridle on a doorknob, like it would hang from a horse’s head. Now stand about five feet away, take one rein in your hand and just lift it until you make contact with the bit and it starts to move. You’ll see that it doesn’t really take a lot of pressure or movement on your part to get movement out of the bit.

Next in a series
We continue our look at the fundamental riding skill of using your legs. In the last installment, we looked at forms of leg contact and also leg position.

If you’re going to be effective in controlling the horse’s body parts individually, you’re going to need to refine your cues as much as possible. One way that we do that is by having specific zones on the horse’s belly for your leg cues.

I’m often asked: “When I use my legs, should I be kicking or holding them steady?” Well, just as we’ve talked about how you shouldn’t use steady pressure with your reins, I’m not a big believer in steady pressure with your legs either. A large percentage of the time, I’m going to have you bump the horse’s sides with your calves, or what I call your “boot tops.” To use your boot tops, you’ll turn your knee out so your calves can make contact with the horse’s side and then just bump your legs against him.

To be effective with your leg cues, you need to be straddling your horse with your weight resting on the bottom of your hip bones. You also want to get to where you can stay balanced in the saddle no matter where your leg is on the horse. As we’ll discuss later, you’re going to need to move your lower leg from the spot just behind the horse’s elbow, to move his shoulder, to a position way back on his barrel, the cue to move his hip. So if you feel like you need to use your legs or the stirrups on a regular basis for balance, you’ve got a long way to go before you have the freedom to use them to effectively cue your horse. Keep just enough weight in your stirrups to keep from losing them.

Responsive Hands Create a Responsive Mouth
Have you ever ridden a horse that was so responsive to the reins, it could have been made from silk threads and never broken? If you follow the basic strategies I’m going to lay out, you should be able to create that level of responsiveness in your horse with time and practice.

So where do you start? With yourself! Until you’re trained, how do you think you could train a horse?

Last in a Series
This time, we finish up this ongoing topic series and discuss: Putting The Five Easy Pieces Together. In the last several installments, Les Vogt has taken you through exercises of his Five Easy Pieces. When you’ve mastered them, you should be able to put any part of your horse’s body where you want it, without resistance.

Putting The Five Easy Pieces Together: It’s a great warm-up to be able to go through the Five Easy Pieces in sequence. As you’re going through the exercises you should never have to change the lateral posture of your horse. In fact, you hands should barely move as you do through the whole sequence.