Here's a trick that I learned as a child, that may help you get the feel of keeping your hands quiet and steady as you learn to horseback ride. One of the more difficult things to do while learning to post the trot is to keep your hands independent of your body. The tendency is to lift your hands up and down as your body rises and falls when you post. The reason you don't want this to happen is because moving your hands around too much can result in some confusing and uncomfortable pulls on your horse's mouth. As you ride, you want to develop quiet, steady, sympathetic hands, that work independently from you body and give clear communication to your horse through the rein aids.
This Try It Today experiment is something you can practice in your kitchen at home and while it won't be exactly duplicate what happens as you ride, it may give you some idea of what should and shouldn't be happening with your hands as you ride. So find a fence rail, chair back or counter-top and try it today!
'Try it Todays' are quick experiments that will help you learn about riding or horsemanship skills. After you've tried this experiment leave your observations in the comments below or contact me through one of these social networking sites. I'd love to hear about your results.
More Riding Experiments
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