Four Tips To Improve Your Riding & Ground Work

👉FOUR Tips To Improve Your Riding & Ground Work

Want to improve your ability to do effective ground work? Be a more effective rider, more balanced and coordinated? Here are a few tips to help you do that.

These tips are good for ANY level of rider. Whether you are just starting out or you are an advanced professional.

1️⃣BECOME AMBIDEXTROUS - you are weaker than you think you are on your non-dominant hand. This causes your horse to have to compensate for you. It causes you to ride crooked too. How can you possibly be effective giving subtle, minute cues with a hand you can’t even open a door with? ✏️How To Do It:
Start doing regular chores with your non-dominant hand. Scooping grain, carrying things, opening doors, picking up manure (switch sides from how you normally do it), etc.
Practice writing with your non-dominant hand, yeah it will be hard at first. Try cooking with your non-dominant hand. Anything that requires use of small motor skills and thoughtful concentration.
Super simple! Just requires you to be present and think which already will help your riding and handling abilities tremendously!

2️⃣VIDEO YOURSELF - I promise you are doing things you don’t think you are doing. Watching a video back of yourself can be quite humbling. DON’T BE DISCOURAGED! It is one of the best ways to self evaluate. Don’t you want to change that weird thing you are doing before more people see you doing it 😂? It’s easier than you think. Just grab a tripod off Amazon, put your phone on it and record. Your horse (and your trainer) will thank you.

3️⃣STRETCH - horse people are the worst ones for taking care of their bodies. We use and abuse them like it's no one's business. Commit to doing some type of deep stretching activity for a week, every day and tell me you don’t notice a difference in how you ride. We like to do Yin Yoga. It is deep stretching, holding for 2min at a time and it’s a game changer. Your horse’s back will thank you when you ride straighter because your body isn’t all bound up. You will be less prone to injury as well. You will be more coordinated on the ground because your body is more aligned PLUS it makes you more body aware which helps with proprioception. Everyday is best but a minimum of three days a week of good 30min of deep stretching is a game changer.

4️⃣NO REINS - Find some kind soul to lunge you on a broke horse or ride one in a round pen with no reins. If you are terrified of this idea, that means you are using your hands to balance. If you have to grab on the saddle to balance during a session, that has been your poor horse's mouth. The more time you can spend riding without reins the better. It will force you to focus on developing your seat and leg aids. It’s like losing one of your senses so the others become more heightened. DO THIS REGULARLY, weekly if you can. Yeah, it’s hard, just like all things worth while. For our ground work folks, this means liberty work. Learning to influence your horse at liberty will help you understand body language like never before. It will help you realize that the halter and lunge line never really gave you control, it was just training. When you can be that connected with your horse and have them focused on you, your ground work goes to the next level.

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📷This Cowgirl’s Lifestyle - Tabitha Smith