Horseback Riding 101

Lesson 5: Where Do I Go From Here?

How to turn corners

When you ride in an arena, you would think a horse would just naturally turn corners, rather than bump into the fence. And to a point, that’s true. But there are good corners and bad corners; there are corners the way you want to ride them, and the way your horse wants to go. Since you are the ‘brains of the outfit,’ the choice should be yours.

Here is what makes a good corner, and why:

· A good corner is ridden at exactly the same pace into, through and out of it. · It hugs the fence line, making a deep arc to actually get through the corner. · The horse’s body bends through the corner. · The rider’s body also changes position through the corner.

All this is necessary for the physical well-being of the horse (the more he uses himself athletically, the better developed his muscles will be, and the longer useful, happy lifespan he is likely to have, all other things being equal.) It is necessary for the rider in order to set herself up for the next maneuver, if that eventually involves things like coming out of the corner to jump a fence, and just to set up a nice, straight walk down the other side of the arena….to the next corner.

And it is necessary in a show. If two riders/horses are equally attractive to the judge in what they do and what they are, riding good corners can be one of the tiebreakers. SO you might as well start now to get those little details working in your favor.

How to ride a corner:

On the straight side, be sure your horse is moving forward. Tap him or press him with your legs until you get a walk that is forward enough so that your relaxed hips swing in the saddle with the movement.

As you approach the corner, use your ‘soft eyes’ to look into the corner. About twenty feet from the place where the lines of fence meet, begin putting a little more pressure against the horse’s side with the leg toward the open space of the arena, the inside leg. Allow your outside hip to go forward slightly, keeping your leg position. Allow your inside shoulder to come back slightly as you press in with your inside leg.

As you continue to approach the corner, without twisting your head (which is looking approximately between the horse’s ears), glance through the corner and out the other side. You will make your body and your horse’s body follow your eyes out of the corner.

It will take a bit of practice to make all these things work together every time. It will take lots of riding to make them second nature, but that’s the intent and it’s never too soon to begin.

A refinement to this is moving your outside lower leg back just an inch or so, still keeping its downward position, to help the horse use his hind legs in the corners, too. But don’t add this until you’ve got the basics down:

· Prepare with your eyes 20 feet or so from the corner. · Begin to press the horse’s side with your inside leg, and increase pressure in the corner. · Allow your outside hip to turn slightly so that it is in front of your inside hip just a little, mimicking the bend in the horse’s body. · Allow your inside shoulder to drift back. · Practice the corners in both directions equally, for your muscular development and that of the horse.

(This helps keep your reins even outside and inside. The horse’s body gets ‘shorter’ on the inside and ‘longer’ on the outside. When your outside hip goes forward, it takes your torso and arm along with it, following the greater outside arc. When your inside shoulder comes back, it takes your arm with it so that you won’t end up with a loopy rein on the ‘shorter’ inside arc. This also helps the horse know where he is to put his body without kicking, pulling and tugging.)

As you ride out of the corner, square your shoulders again, use equal leg pressure on each side of the horse, and ride down the long side, sending your ‘soft eyes’ ahead of you toward the next corner.

This may seem simple, but it isn’t easy. You are learning a whole new ‘body language,’ and with it, you are also truing to control a horse that has its own mind and body language. It may take you 50 corners to really feel comfortable about what you’re doing, and to relax enough that the horse relaxes, too.

Don’t be surprised if there is a lack of impulsion—that is, your horse slows down—as you begin to practice this technique. You are experimenting and unsure, and he feels that. Relax, relax, relax. School horses are chosen for their ability to tolerate your learning curve. If you’ve bought a horse, you should have bought a similar type. And, working on your own, remember that you may be wildly enthused about continuing the exercise until you get it exactly right. But in horsemen’s’ terms, you don’t want to fry your horse’s brain about it. He will be getting bored. When you suspect this is the case—or after about 20 minutes at any one thing, tops—do something else, or call it a day, give him a carrot and let him go back to being a horse; groom him and turn him out to play.

Once you’ve got the technique down, then work at keeping the same pace into, through and out of the corner.

WARNING: School horses, because they do the same things over and over, do get bored. And having slightly simple brains, they assume they will get done faster if they literally cut corners. SO it may be extra hard, with an experienced school horse, to get him into those corners. Until he knows you mean business about it, you may have to use an opening rein—moving your outside hand away from his neck and firmly toward the corner—to get him deeply into it. The horse is not being bad; he’s just being a school horse who thinks he knows more than you do, and he does, at least about the little ‘school horse’ tricks he has gotten by with in the past.

During all of this, and the next exercises, remember to:

BREATHE…..BREATHE……BREATHE…..BREATHE

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8