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?
In: Other
You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to hold onto a moving horse. For starters, the reins do nothing for keeping you on – that’s for guiding the horse. It’s all in the legs, and they get real tired, real quick. You *can* just sit there like a sack of potatoes, but your butt’s gonna hurt a lot more. So you need to use your stirrups to move *with* the horse up and down. There is the pommel of the saddle you can use to steady yourself if needed, but you can’t rely on it and you unless you’re being led, you need to let go of the pommel. And all of this assumes, of course, that you’re using a saddle and that the saddle is on correctly. Bareback is even harder because you don’t have stirrups – you may have reins or not, depending on the whole situation. If you don’t have reins, you don’t have a lot of choice in whether the horse decides to listen to you tugging their mane or kicking their side. But a skilled horse can absolutely control their horse without saddle or bridle, using their knees to indicate turns.
You have to tell the horse what to do and when to do it. It won’t necessarily just jump the fence or run its fastest.
You have to train it ahead of time to know what your commands mean.
You have to be able to stay on the horse while it is moving all kinds of ways and stay on in a way that doesn’t hurt you.
You need good balance and fairly quick reactions. Holding onto a horse at full gallop or who is jumping over hurdles or doing fancy manoeuvres in dressage is not as simple as it sounds.
I thought this too, then I rode a horse. Holy shit it’s not what it looks like, ride is an action verb
Like with riding a bicycle, there was a point in your life when you didn’t know how to do it properly and had to learn it. I’m sure it took a while to learn and you weren’t able to do it the first time, even though others seemed to be doing it effortlessly
You have to get the horse to understand what you want, you have to undetstand the horse and you have to get the horse to cooperate and do what you want. Horses are much stronger than humans, so you have to get the horse to willingly obey you. That takes some skill
Latest Answers