I mean there are professional jockeys and show riders who must be doing *something* at a very high level, but I honestly don’t understand what. Like if I’m riding a horse that’s jumping over a fence, isn’t that all the horse? And I just need to not fall off?
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Jumping is a lot of different skills at once. Say you’re jumping one fence at a canter. You need to steer your horse to the fence, then understand what pace your horse is going at. So that means if your horse is too quick, you need to slow him down, or if he’s too slow, you need to speed him up. You also need to be able to see a distance as in where he is going to take off from. If you take off from too far away or too close, you can knock the fence down or be unsafe. So if your horse has a short stride or you know he is going to take off too far away, you’ll need to push him to the fence. If you have a horse that has a super long stride or he’s going to end up too close, you’ll need to condense his stride to put him at a better take off spot.
And we’re not even over the fence yet!
Once you’re at the fence, you need to balance yourself to stay out of your horse’s way. Yes, you want to stay on, but you don’t want to throw yourself forward and upset his balance, or get left behind and land on his back with a thump. You’ll also be looking where you want to go next, whether that is the next fence or the end of the arena. Your horse will be looking for directions of where to go after the fence. You will also be aware of his pace too. Some horses rush after the fence, and if there’s another one, you need to prepare for that. Or else you’re getting ready to slow down and stop and need to prepare the horse for that transition.
And that’s not even mentioning horses that duck out, or refuse, or are crooked to the fence, or are silly beans! There’s always something happening underneath you, making you actively ride at all times 🙂 Hope that helps!
Try lifting someone that’s cooperating. Now try lifting someone that’s acting like a sandbag. You’ll find the latter much harder.
With horse racing you make it easier for the horse if you move with it’s rhythm. It may not be much, but at high levels this counts.
With concours you need to give complex instructions to the horse so it knows which movements are expected. Like turning on the spot, putting it’s head down, walking diagonally. It takes years of training of both rider and horse to be well attuned.
First, you need to learn to not get in the way of the horse’s performance.
Second, you need to learn how to communicate to the horse what you want it to do.
Third, learn how to actively aid the horse in his tasks (like adjusting your seat, building a relationship of mutual trust and enjoyable co-operation, approaching obstacles/figures at suitable angle and tempo, reminding the horse to adjust its posture in minute ways to make certain advanced skills easier etc.).
There is nothing more to riding. You keep improving points 1, 2, and 3 until you think there’s nothing more to learn… then you encounter the horse that prices you wrong.
look at it this way. it takes a lot of skill to motivate the most skittish 600kg ball of pure muscle alive to a (from it’s perspective) extremely dangerous 10cm deep puddle that might be filled with crocodiles for all it knows.
like seriously, horses are astoundingly, stupendously stupid/scared easily. I know a horse who will refuse to enter a paddock because there’s a single fucking crisp packet lying next to the path.
I rode English saddle for years. I trained in jumping and steeple chase.
A horse will do anything you ask it. But you need to be the one who knows when to jump. How fast to go. Where to have your weight. Etc.
The horse is the tool. You are in charge.
A horse that doesn’t trust you? Won’t do the things you ask.
Among other things, you have to be able to maintain your riding position during transitions in pacing as, for example, going from a walk into a trot or a gallop.
Ppl with this sort of attitude will fall off the horse 90% of the time anything faster than a walk.
Distance perception – if you don’t get your striding right you can ask too big a question of your horse.
Basically if a canter stride is 12ft I have to calculate how many 12 fts are between me and the next fence, which is easier to do if I’m riding a line of fences, but if I’m just after coming around a corner I need to have the ability to shorten and lengthen my horses canter to get that distance right.
Horses often know their capabilities and if they get a fright show jumping etc, from a bad stride calculation from the rider, it’s hard to build confidence again.
You need empathy with the horse and to know how to care for a horse.
Also you need time and more time to care for the horse.
Also you need money.
Very, very amateur rider here.
I grew up with horses, on a farm, and could ride them fairly well. Not fast, not fancy, no jumping, never practiced anything like that and didn’t train the horses for it either. What we did was ride in the mountains, rough terrain, more or less cowboy style.We also used them as pack horses.
Fast forward thirty years, and my wife suggested we should rent some horses and go for a nice ride along a trail. Should be simple.
No way, no how, could I communicate to that rental horse which way I wanted it to go. It was used to having all sorts of strangers riding it, that wasn’t the problem. It was simply trained for a completely different set of commands than what our old horses were. It was like being in a strange land where nobody spoke any language I could understand. I had never learned the “proper” way of riding, and neither had our old horses.
Riding is not just about not falling off. It’s about somehow convincing an animal that’s big enough to easily kill you that it really wants to do this strenuous and difficult running and jumping stuff instead of relaxing and eating grass. While not falling off.
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