While riding on the lunge, learn to relax your shoulders with arm circles, as demonstrated.
For a good back-strengthening exercise, hold your arm up and stretch it back while riding a sitting trot, as shown.
To strengthen your back, pick up the sitting trot, hold one arm up straight, and stretch it back to tighten the back muscles.
By this time, you should be able to pick up the reins; however, check to be sure you are ready. Put your hands in the rein-holding position with no reins, and see if your hands jump up and down. If they do, you need to relax your elbows and shoulders. You can also learn to stabilize your hand by resting the bottom part of the hand on the pommel as you sit the trot. (Note: the hunter rider sits in a similar dressage position while sitting the trot, rather than leaning forward in a two-point position.)
The Posting Trot
The posting trot is an important skill to perfect, particularly since we use it so much of the time. An improved posting trot will give you steadier hands, better control of your leg aids, and a softer seat.
A hunter or jumper rider should lean forward and post forward and backward. In the posting trot, the rider’s shoulders should be inclined slightly forward, about 30 degrees from vertical. At this angle, you can move with the horse’s motion, which in turn allows your horse to trot out better. Hunter and jumper riders also use the posting trot as a tool to get off the horse’s back and allow her to stretch her neck out and forward.
A dressage rider, on the other hand, should sit over the vertical with shoulders and hips aligned. The thighs should hang as straight as possible; the knees should be slightly bent. The shoulders should never lean forward. The hips should rise out of the saddle and forward over the pommel and land back in the saddle in the same place. In this position, the rider is able to keep her lower leg quietly against the horse’s barrel throughout the phase of the posting trot so she can use it when needed. This position also helps the horse arch her frame and encourage her haunches under.
The hunter/jumper rider posts the trot with the slightly forward body angle shown here, about 30 degrees from the vertical.
The dressage rider posts the trot by rising and sitting over the vertical as shown, with shoulders and hips aligned.
The Canter
To ride the canter, let’s look at lunging once more. Think about the motion of the saddle as your horse canters. It moves in a twisting fashion. Your seat must move in a similar twisting way in balance with your horse. Some instructors may urge you to ride the canter with a forward-and-back motion, the way a child rides a rocking horse. This is a good visual for the beginning stages of your riding career, but you’ll need to add another piece of the puzzle at this stage of your skills. The horse’s leading leg will cause the twist to be canted more to one side than the other. Therefore, your inside hip should twist farther forward than your outside hip. Hold your shoulders still and allow your lower back to be soft and move with your horse.
The Hand Gallop and the Gallop
Hand gallop means the horse is still “in hand,” or controllable. Lengthening the stride and slightly increasing the speed is your goal. The hand gallop is used in lower levels of eventing; the speed at Novice is set at canter speed, 375 mpm (meters per minute, the universal unit of measurement for gait speed), increasing to 450 mpm at Training. Jumpers compete above 375 mpm, so this gait is used frequently in competition. The hand gallop also can be used as a schooling exercise for dressage horses to produce a more forward and expressive canter.
In the canter, the rider’s inside hip twists a bit farther forward than her outside hip, with still shoulders and a soft lower back, as demonstrated here.
The hand gallop and gallop positions are very similar to the jumping, or two-point, position. In this position, you no longer sit in the saddle. You take the seat, your third point of contact, away and ride from the heel up to the knee. Looking up and straight ahead will make you a much softer, much more forward rider. The most important concerns are that your hands are low, that the foundation of the position is in your lower leg, and that you’re not using the horse’s mouth for balance.
Hold the reins in the usual way in the hand gallop. In the gallop, hold your reins in either the half bridge or the full bridge. For the half bridge, stretch one rein across the horse’s neck so that you’re holding two pieces of leather in one hand. For the full bridge, stretch both reins across the horse’s neck so that both hands are holding two pieces of leather. The reins will be pulled across the horse’s crest instead of hanging in a loop alongside the neck. The bridges are also very useful tools in terms of safety. If your horse were to stumble, the bridge can keep you from falling because your arms won’t collapse on either side of the horse’s neck.
This is the correct hand position for the full bridge used in a gallop.
This is the correct hand position for the half bridge used in a gallop.
The gallop is the gait at which event riders shine. In fact, most cross-country work is performed at the gallop. Preliminary eventing speed is set at 520 mpm, Intermediate speed at 550 mpm, and Advanced speed at 570 mpm. Knowing how to ride at a specific eventing speed is an important skill. To learn what each speed feels like, set up a meters-per-minute track. You will need a measuring wheel (available at tack stores, hardware stores, or home improvement centers); stakes with flags; and a long, even stretch of ground with decent footing. Measure out the distance on the gallops, and place a stake in the ground for whatever speed you want to learn: 375 meters out from the start of your gallop for the canter; 400 to 450 meters for the hand gallop; 520, 550, and 570 meters for the upper levels. Wear a watch and time yourself from the starting point. You should reach your chosen stake in one minute.
The best way to gallop is to begin slowly and build up to it gradually. This is advisable because some horses get high on the speed, and a fast start can undo the hard work you’ve put into training an obedient horse that listens to your aids. When you’re eventing, leave the start box at a trot, then go into a canter, then a hand gallop, and then the gallop to ensure that your horse is still listening and rideable.
When jumper riders gallop in a class against time, they treat the gallop much the same as the hand gallop, a little bit quicker but not so fast that they knock the fence down. To practice, gallop toward the fence, and then slow down or “balance up” a few strides in front of the fence to allow your horse to get her legs underneath her to jump.
Galloping requires a lot from a horse, and she can injure herself badly if her body isn’t used to concussion at top speed. Think long and hard about whether galloping is right for you and your horse. The once-a-week rider should not gallop: galloping is for people who ride their horses five times a week. If you think galloping is for you, you must work up to it by conditioning your horse. Most event riders gallop once every five days, but your horse may not be up to this schedule. Warm up with ten to twenty minutes of trotting, then begin with three minutes at the hand gallop, two minutes at a walk, and another three minutes at the hand gallop. Then, after a few weeks or months (consult a trainer